I'm a little bit new to the actual specifications of hardware operations so this is something I wanted to ask because it seems to be the case according to what I've read. (I've been primarily a software person myself.)
I understand that standard 4-pair wire (cat 5) running data at 10mbps does not use the blue/white and blue pair (wires 4 and 5), which is typically the standard color for running a phone line along an ethernet wire.
If this is correct, is it possible to run a standard analog phone line over cat 5 ethernet sold in hardware or computer stores, simply by connecting to the blue & blue/white pair and using that? Since the wire is typically twisted pairs, I had the impression this was possible without crosstalk between either the ethernet and the phone line.
Also, if the network cards being used are of the typical 10/100 type that sell these days for $20 or less, or are included on the motherboard of the user's PC, does that mean you can't do this because
100mbps will use all 4 pairs, or is it that you can run 100mbps service over the other pairs and it won't really use the inner blue-blue/white pair?The things I have read indicate there are two types of 100mbps service, 100Base-T, 100Base-T4 and 100Base-T8, where 100base-T8 uses all of the wires in a 4-pair ethernet cable, and 100-Base-T4 uses only two of the pairs. How would I know which is being used in ordinary connections?
This also seems to imply that the other pair (wires 7 & 8) is also available for use as phone service, conceivably implying you can run
100mbps ethernet and two analog phone lines on the same 4-pair cable without problems or interference. I'd like to know if this is the case.Paul Robinson snipped-for-privacy@robinson-telephone.com