Using both RJ45 and RJ11 on Cat5 cable

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 03, 2005 Posts: 8

I am putting Vonage into an office already wired with Cat5 cable, terminated in rj45 connectors at the outlet (where the phone will go). We have two phone lines and one fax. Ignoring the fax, what I'd like to do is take each of the phone lines and combine them into one 4-conductor (2-line) feed, then send those through the cat5 to the outlets. This all seems quite do-able from a wiring standpoint, but is there any hardware that will make this easy? I have seen the jacks that will take two 1-line RJ11s and turn it into one 2-line. I then either need to hard-wire this or find hardware to connect it to cat5 cable and keep it as a 2-line phone cable (although I am running this to three outlets in a star patterns, so if it did all of this that would be even better). And at the other end, an adpater to go from the rj45 at the wall to the rj11 at the phone.

If I have to hardwire I can since it seems straight-forward to simply be consistent in the wires used, but plug & play would be a lot easier.

Thanks,
Jim

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 03, 2005 Posts: 8

I guess another question is, realizing that I can plug an rj11 male plug in the the rj45 female outlet, what do I need to do to make sure the cable to the outlet is configured correctly to carry the 2 phone lines?

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

I believe that you can find cat 5 adapters that plug into the RJ45 jacks and break them out into 2 or 4 RJ11s. As far as plugging an RJ11 into the RJ45 jack is concerned, you'll be picking up the 4 center contacts of the RJ45, which should correspond to pairs 1 (center pair) and 2 (outer pair). These should be color coded blue-bluewhite and orange-orangewhite on the cat 5. The corresponding pairs on the RJ11 are red-green and yellow-black.

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 03, 2005 Posts: 8

Through another forum I found some answers to my questions, and I thought I'd share them in case anyone else needs this.

So any 6-pin plug (rj11, rj14; 2-, 4-, or 6-conductor) will plug into an 8-pin jack (rj45). If you are only using a 1-line connection, you can run your voice through the cat5 without any adapters just by plugging it in. If you want to use a 2-line set-up, you must make sure that the rj45 connections were made using the "A" wiring scheme, not the "B". If you have the "A" scheme, the cat5 cable and rj45 terminals line up so you can plug any 2-line phone cord (rj14) into it and it will work just fine. No adapters are needed. If the "B" scheme was used, either re-wiring to the "A" or making an adapter would be necessary.

Hope this helps,
Jim