New house, new Cat5, confused by connector / wiring block

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 11, 2009 Posts: 5

I am in the middle of building a new house, and have pulled Cat5 cable for the phone lines, these all come to a single point in the garage.

I went to the local electrical supply store and told them I needed a terminal block for phone wires, and they gave me this:

http://www.icc.com/wiring-block-with-feet-100pair-p-841.html

And a pack of 10 of these:

http://www.icc.com/connecting-block-4pair-10pk-p-861.html

But, I can't figure out exactly how I should run the Cat5 cable into the block. I can tell that on the connecting block it has colors for each pair in the Cat5 cable (I only intend to use blue, 1 line) so do I simply place my solid blue wire in one slot, my white/blue wire in another and then pinch that down with the connector block?

It looks fairly simply. but I can't see any metal on the wiring block to conduct anything. I feel like I am missing something really simple here.

The connector blocks and the wiring blocks have alternating high/low pegs (the colored pegs on the blocks are higher than the white pegs, on the wiring block they are all white, but still alternate high/low. Do I just make sure that all my solid colors are on a high peg, and the white+color is on a low peg?

The internet service will be provided by Cable internet, so I only need the 1 line hooked up as have no need for fax/DSL.
Thanks.

Posts: 1179 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1179

unless you intend to have multiple phone lines coming into your home, your 110 block is way too fancy and probably cost a pretty penny for it. you can get by with a generic 110 block if needed. Personally since you are only connecting one line, I won't even try that. You only need to connect all the solid blue wires and all the white with blue striped wires together then you are good to go. The 110 block is normally not needed for a single family home unless you have 15 phone jacks around the house. they are normally found in apartment units with like 8 apartments each etc where the number of jacks become too large and difficult to manage and repair.

Posts: 350 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Dec 04, 2005 Posts: 350

For a basic description check this page on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/110_block

For more detail on how to install one, take a look at this one as a start: http://cableorganizer.com/phone-data-connection-blocks/110-installation-instructions.htm

If you don't already have one, you'll need a punch-down tool. I would recommend one with a metal blade. Some kits will come with a small plastic one but they often don't stand up to more than a couple uses.

Even though you don't have more than 1 phone line, I'd suggest that you connect at least 2. You never know what you may need in the future (additional line for kids, home office, fax machine, etc).

Anyway, you would strip a short bit of the wire and it will go into a little slot-like terminal. You use the punch-down tool to press the wire into the slot. The wire should then be fairly firmly fastened.

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 11, 2009 Posts: 5

Thanks, it looks fairly easy to do. I think I will go with setting up for 2 lines now, less of a headache in future.

My main worry was that I would just have a bunch of wires going into the block and none of them actually being connected to each other. If I am reading the instructions correctly I just strip some of the wire from the pairs I want, line them up with the slots and punch them down using the connectors/punch down tool.

Once they are all punched down everything should be good to go once I plug in the Vonage adapter to any of the phone jacks around the house.

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 11, 2009 Posts: 5

OK, so I think I made a mistake somewhere with this. I plugged my Vonage adapter into a phone jack last night, plugged a phone into another jack, and... nothing.

Here is what I did, hopefully it makes sense, and someone more experienced than I can tell me where I went wrong.

1) Took my 110 punch down block, and some lengths of cat5 wire, I took the blue, blue/white, orange and orange/white and threaded them onto the punch down block. I did not strip any of the wire, simply threaded the individual strands through the block. Mine pretty much looked like the 3rd picture here

2) I then took my cable that was routed from each room, stripped off some of the outer blue jacket, cut the 2 pairs that I did not want to use off. Then untwisted the blue, blue/white, orange, orange/white as little as possible, and used the punchdown tool to push them down onto the block with corresponding colors. Again, I did not strip any of the insulation, so no bare wires.

3) I then used some connecting blocks I had, and pushed them down onto the wires. These had little blade looking parts on the bottom, which looking at them it looks like they pierce the wire on the block, creating the circuit.

4) At each phone jack in the room, I connected blue to red, blue/white to green, orange to yellow, and orange/white to black.

5) Took my Vonage adapter, plugged phone line into the back, plugged other end of phone line into wall. Nothing.

6) Took a dual phone socket, plugged phone and Vonage into same wall jack. Nothing.

So, here I am wondering what I did wrong? Do I need to strip some of the insulation on the punch down block so that I have bare wire? If nothing else, I guess I can simply remove the 110 block and connect all the wires together that way, but would prefer to troubleshoot and fix what I have.

Thanks.