Newbie cat 5e wiring diagram help

Call a professional installer...

when you say telephone connection via the network do you mean VoIP?

By the time you buy the tools and such to do the job, you really arent saving too much money, plus if you have any problems dont expect a rebate from a professional company to fix your screwups.

If you insist on putting in the cable fine, but you should have a cabling contractor terminate all the cables, you will be thanking me in the long run.

45 locations with 4 jacks each. Thats 180 jacks and cable runs. Figure on $15,000 to $25,000 just for a GENERAL idea.

Think what you really really need at each location. You'll need at least one telephone jack and one network jack. Some locations might need a second network jack for a laptop and a few will need a network jack for a networked printer. No, you can't daisy chain anything. You need a separate run for each phone and each network jack.

Those 180 jacks and cables could be reduced just over half. Now we're at a more reasonable $8,000 to $13,000.

While it might not be your best bet (the best being a professional installer to do it), you might consider a pro to install the essential things you need, watch what he does, pay him to teach you, and do the rest yourself. But in all honesty, I really don't think that's a good route to go.

Or perhaps talk a pro into doing it for a charitable write off. You supply the grunt labor and material (around $1,800 for jacks and non-plenum cables).

Maybe. Do you have different standards? Here each data jack is a home run and voice jacks could be split, if you don't have to terminate them on a patch panel. The last "I gotta have a patch" panel job terminated the house cable on 110 blocks for high density, and we then used cross connects to the PBX and the house cable so he could use Cat5e patch cables (3' green ones to be exact) to patch each extension to a house jack. Now he does all his own MoveAddChange work by moving the patch cord. We picked up the 96 port Cat FIVE panel for about $50 on eBay. I think the two wall mount frames cost more the the two patch panels :-)

Of course the thing to keep in mind as you spin this cable is that once you get into the flow, "cable is cheap". It's easier to spin extra cables all at once than go back and run a few more.

Maybe someone from your side will have a web site for us to see.

Carl Navarro

. I have seen several colour diagrams which give info on how to

first time I got involved in any major electrical wiring, a professional supplied me with drums of cable which I put in place then he came along later and made the connections while I watched. Saved a lot of money in labour costs. Depending on the quote for a complete install, that idea has a lot of attractions. many thanks to those who have given me the benefit of their experience and knowledge. regards Peter

You could conceivably run four cables to every point point, and just terminate the ones you really need. Then you have extra cable in case a wire is bad, or for expansion.

Like others have said, you need a pro to do the terminating, at least of the network cable. Once you see how that is done, you could terminate the telephone lines yourself, as they are a lot more forgiving. If you can, I would use different color cable for the telephone jacks, and terminate with an rj-11 jack where the phone/modem or fax machine will go.

How complicated is the wiring job? This will help determine what you can do yourself. Is everything all on one floor? Can you just run the cables above a suspended ceiling most of the way?

See the pictures of my network in progress:

only thing that's missing from the pictures that been done is the T1 is hooked up and the Xpedius box is connected. All the telephone stuff is moved, but we haven't hooked up the new phone system yet, so the phone stuff is just in a temporary state with a bunch of cross-connects between three 66 blocks.) I probably could have ran the cable myself across the ceiling, if I had the j-hooks. What they did first was lay out all the cable on the ground in bundles of a certain length. One bundle for each location. (One bundle for one wall, another bundle for the front counter, and a small bundle for a central location that just needed 4 cables.) Then they hung the individual bundles on j-hooks above the ceiling. The next day one guy came out and straightened all the cables out before he tied them loosely together. The next step is to drop the cables down conduits in the wall, and power poles to the counter and the other location. The final step is to tone each cable and terminate each end and probably label the outlet and the termination point at the patch pannel.

Randy R