Can you use Cat 5 wire for telephone?

Category: home and garden home entertaining
4/5 (2,378 Views . 19 Votes)
Cat 5 cable and RJ-45 jacks have eight wires. Ethernet uses two pairs (four wires), one for send and one for receive. Telephones use two wires. Therefore, you can run both ethernet and telephone over the same wire, and still have two wires left over.



Also, can you use Cat 6 wire for telephone?

There would be no advantage to using CAT6 with a phone. We know that CAT6 can transfer data at higher speeds but the real question is will the network equipment send the data at speeds about 1000mbps. If the answer is no there would be no benefit from using CAT6.

Secondly, what wire do I use for phone line? Most telephone wires are one or more twisted pairs of copper wire. The most common type is the 4-strand (2 twisted pair). This consists of red and green wires, which make a pair, and yellow and black wires, which make the other pair. One telephone line needs only 2 wires.

Simply so, can telephone wire be used for Ethernet?

No. Phone wire is Cat3, it's quality is much too low to support modern Ethernet (which requires Cat5 or higher). HPNA adapters can use phone lines to tranmit 802.3 frames; but WiFi would be much cheaper.

What is the difference between cat5 and telephone cable?

Network cables are usually thicker and rounder than a telephone cable. Network cables, including Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6a, etc., are twisted pair cables for carrying signals in structured cabling for computer networks such as Ethernet. While phone cables are narrower and flat, and are made up of four wires.

29 Related Question Answers Found

Are Ethernet and phone cables the same?

Ethernet cables have a larger bandwidth than phone cables. Users can send and receive more data, at quicker speeds, via Ethernet cables. Phone cables have a smaller bandwidth and data takes longer to move across a network.

What type of wire is used for DSL?

There are three main types of wired broadband connections for consumer or residential use: DSL, coaxial cable, and fiber. DSL uses traditional copper wire telephone lines. Cable television companies traditionally provide service over coaxial cables.

Is Ethernet faster than WIFI?

Ethernet is just plain faster than Wi-Fi—there's no getting around that fact. On the other hand, a wired Ethernet connection can theoretically offer up to 10 Gb/s, if you have a Cat6 cable. The exact maximum speed of your Ethernet cable depends on the type of Ethernet cable you're using.

Can you convert rj45 to rj11?

How to Convert From RJ45 to RJ11. Although RJ-45 and RJ-11 connectors are generally not compatible, there may be occasions when you can convert a cable with RJ-45 connectors to an RJ-11 jack. If you need to use a length of cable with RJ-45 connectors in an RJ-11 application, you can purchase an adapter.

Can I use rj11 for Ethernet?


It is possible to physically fit an RJ11 connector into an RJ45 receptacle, however this will never function for an actual Ethernet connection. The reason is that the RJ45 connector has 8 pins, while the RJ11 has only at most 6. Most common Ethernet cabling today is either Cat5E or Cat6.

What can I use instead of Ethernet cable?

Just like powerline adapters, MoCA adapters are faster than WiFi and far easier to install than traditional Ethernet cabling, making them one of the easier alternatives. MoCA adapters use the existing COAX cabling in your home to transmit networking frequencies from your router to your devices.

Why are there 8 wires in an Ethernet cable?

Twisted-pair is a technique for ensuring that the signal that's transmitted down the wire actually gets there cleanly. Originally Answered: Why their are 8 wires in Ethernet cable? First off, Ethernet is full-duplex and twisted-pair. That's to say that each computer/switch can transmit down the wire at the same time.

How do you wire a phone jack?

Connect the Wires
  1. Line 1 (primary phone line): blue wire to red terminal; white-with-blue-stripe wire to green terminal.
  2. Line 2 (secondary line): orange wire to yellow terminal; white-with-orange-stripe wire to black terminal.

Which 4 wires are used in cat5?

The four wire pairs in a CAT-5 cable are distinguished by the color of their insulation. The four colors are (in order) blue, orange, green and brown. Thus, when refering to the "second pair" of wires, it is the orange pair.

Can you run Internet through a phone line?


DSL is a very high-speed connection that uses the same wires as a regular telephone line. You can leave your Internet connection open and still use the phone line for voice calls. DSL doesn't necessarily require new wiring; it can use the phone line you already have.

What is the color code for telephone wires?

Telephone Cabling using Cat5 or UTP
White with Blue Green Tip
Blue with White Red Ring
White with Orange Black Tip
Orange with White Yellow Ring

What do the different colors on telephone wires mean?

Telephone wiring is color-coded
red, green, yellow and black. They are used in pairs for each phone line you have. LINE 1 uses the red-green pair. Line 2 uses the yellow-black pair. The cable is very small, as are the wires inside, and should not be confused with electrical wires, which are much larger.

What do you do with old telephone jacks?

You can hide the phone jack with a message board made of cork, a dry erase board, or a chalkboard. If the jack sticks out too far for the message board to hang flat against the wall, attach a thin, empty picture frame to the back of the board to hold it away from the wall.

How do you connect 4 wires to 2 wires?

The first option is to use the black wire of the 12-3 cable as the hot wire. Connect the black wires of both cables together, and connect the common white wires together. Cap the red wire and leave it untouched in the junction box. Place plastic twist caps on all splices.

What wires are not used in cat5?


Ethernet Cat 5 cables have eight wires (four pairs), but under 10BaseT and 100BaseT standards (10 Mbps and 100 Mbps, respectively) only four (two pairs) of these wires are actually used.

Gigabit Ethernet Introduction.
Pin Color Function
4 Blue Not Used
5 White with Blue Not Used
6 Orange -RD
7 White with Brown Not Used

How do I wire a phone jack for DSL?

If you hook the red and green wires from the outside phone network to the red and green wires on your inside wiring, then you will have phone and/or DSL service on all connected jacks. There is traditionally a second "spare" set of wires in case you want to add a 2nd line, coloured yellow and black.

What is difference between rj11 and rj45?

The main difference between these two is their actual use. RJ11 is the cable connector that using in telephone sets while RJ45 is used in networking, where you connect computers or other network elements to each other. RJ45 has 8 wires inside whereas Rj11 has 4 wires.