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| Subject - Help | |
| Chad036 | Can someone exlplain to me how phone lines work?? Im not familiar with LV lines. I have a phone line in a basement that I am finishing that is run in Cat 5 and I was wondering if I can splice off that with Cat 3...Will this work? |
| justinelect | Welcome to the forum. Sure Chad this will work fine for a phone line. I personnally don't have much knowledge at all on phone work except to say that what you are suggesting will work because I have done it before. Justin |
| lctrc789 | Yea, Chad that will work fine in a house with no problems. You just have to make sure you match the wires right of course. Cat 5 is a good wire in a house usually most homes have old stuff that doesn't even make a CAT category. Unless you are using a high speed DSL or a computer with high speed you should be OK with that for a normal phone line Good luck |
| JimmyDee | If you have an easy access back to the phone service where it enters the house, it might be a good idea to run a separate cat 5 all the way back for each phone outlet. I did this for my computer room so my DSL link would work with no problems. You may not need this now but in the future may be happy you did. This is not necessary but I think a good suggestion. Jim |
| Tmibowl | Chad, Cat 3 supports data rates up to 16MHz (Frequency) and Cat 5 100 MHz. If you hook up Cat 3 to a Cat 5 which you can do, you only receive the data rate of Cat 3 (normally voice/phones) even though you have Cat 5 coming into the house. I would suggest that you continue to use Cat 5 in the house so that at a later date if you want to hook up other electonic devices you are already set up for it. More info, Cat 3 and 5 are UTP type of communication cables (Unshielded Twisted Pairs). When installing the Cat 5, you need to make sure that you do not untwist more than half of an inch of the twists (per pair) at the termination because this can adversely affect the performance of the entire cable. Good luck |
| JimmyDee | Good input Tmibowl. Welcome to the site and thanks for the info a lot of us electricians don't have the knowledge to answer. Jim |
| Chad036 | Thanks for the info guys |