Home phone cabling -- Leviton alternatives

Hi.

I just bought an old house. Phone comes into an old style screw termination block (5 screw terminals with center ground arranged in a X pattern).

The center ground comes from the demark, connects to the center screw of the block. Seperate ground also hooks to this point and links to hot water pipe.

Question 1

---------- I'm assuming I can wire in a seperate ground cable directly from the demark to the house ground (water pipe) bypassing the old termination block entirely.

Question 2

---------- There are about 7 lines of inside wiring hooked to 2 terminals (all on one pair) of the termination block. Utter rats nest. I hate disorganisation. Once I have the ground moved, I'd like to get rid of the old termination block.

At Home Depot I saw the Levitron stuff. Thats all they stocked.

I have DSL, phone and internal CAT5. Have no interest in Cable TV (really no interest).

All I really need is the "DSL Filter Board and Module" to pre filter off the DSL and then pass the voice onto the "1x9 Bridged Telephone Expansion Board" where I can punch down the internal lines.

The DSL will be routed to a my 24port RJ45 punch down block which I have mounted into my mini rack -- this is where the in-house CAT5e is run to also. I already have the punch down block, freebie from an old job.

Options? a: Is there an alternative to the Leviton stuff which better suits my needs?

b: Use some standoffs and mount the 1x9 and DSL pcboards directly onto the house framing but it's a little cheap.

c: I see Leviton sells a version of the 1x9 and DSL boards with a plastic mounting bracket (Home Depot only had the bare pc board version). Looks like these brackets are designed to pop into a cabinet but I could remove the pops and screw them to the framing.

d: Be convinced as to why I should buy one of their cabinets to house the boards. At Home Depot I saw the "Advanced Home Telephone and Video Panel". I'm guessing the Telephone Line Distribution module performs the same task as the 1x9 Bridged board, but with RJ45 connectors rather than punching down and it has room for the DSL filter board) but this seems way overkill for what I need.

e: Something else :-)

Anyways, I'd appreciate any advice.

Thanks

Tony

jones snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (Tony Jones) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

Yes you can.

Siemon, OpenHouse, Futuresmart, ChannelVision. There are several brands.

That works too - or you can get a S110 termination block and wire up your house that way too.

Because it's nice and neat. But since you're willing to mount directly to your house, I guess you already made up your mind (more or less).

You said you're not interested in distributing cable TV... but what about a cable modem, digital cable, etc? If you're going to wire your house, you might as well do it at once. Even if you don't use RJ6 for cable TV, you can distribute your satellite signal or any video/sound signal of your choice (perhaps CATV or a room audio system?)