T-connections with Cat5 UTP?

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in part:

How many runs are there? How many have more than one cable?

Charitably, I prefer to believe the wiring is for a head end rather than some disgusting daisy-chaing.

The idea should be to terminate all runs in jacks. One should be the uplink which is where you put your router to feed the other(s), You may be severely limited to the number of live jacks you can use.

No, Tee connections will not work. But patch-thrus might.

-- Robert

So the rental company is liars or idiots or both.

Terminate each leg with RJ45's;

Those rooms where you don't need anything, plug in a jumper. Those where you do, if middle of the map, you'll need a switch to extend it on.

Your electrician screwed up. If you can't pull new cables and set up a correct home-run network, you may be able to fudge something together using 2 pair per connection, making a 10Base-T network. Or, using small switches at each computer location, you can have an "in" and an "out" connection while connecting your computer to another port on the switch.

There are some apartment buildings that supply ethernet. In that case, there would be one per unit, and it would be convenient that you choose which outlet it is connected to.

Otherwise, it sounds like you should replace the plates with two jack plates and wire up one end to each jack. You can then put a patch cable across where you are not using it, or a small hub (repeater or switch) where you need to connect both along with something else.

-- glen

Thank you all for your help. My main problem is really that the network wiring is run together with the telephone wiring, so that of the two jacks in each plate only one is left for network use.

There are three plates in total, so only the middle one poses a problem. (The Ethernet connection from the outside enters the apartment at one of the end jacks; fortunately though, the ISP installed their own separate jack, so I'll just put a patch cable between the ISP's jack and the home network jack.) Due to the way the middle plate is installed, as part of a larger panel, it would seem difficult to replace it with a larger plate or similar in order to get an extra jack.

However, since I don't use neither the middle phone jack nor the end one after it I'm now planning to disconnect the phone wiring from the middle jack so that I can terminate one network cable to each jack at that plate, and put a switch there. (And then restore the phone jack when it's time to move out.)

Buy a 3-port wall plate. It will be $2-3 or so.

This kind of T connections do not work for twisted pair Ethernet.

Sounds like wiring practice sometimes used for wiring ISDN digital phone service.