Grex Do-it-yourself Conference

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Grex Do-it-yourself Item 44: Telephone Wiring
Entered by ball on Fri Feb 24 08:32:14 UTC 2006:

An Item for the discussion of telephones and telephone
wiring...

17 responses total.

#1 of 17 by ball on Fri Feb 24 08:39:18 2006:

USOC / RJ25 Pinout

  ,-123456-,  Pin  Colours        Signal
  |        |  ~~~  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~  ~~~~~~~~~~~
  `-,    ,-'   1   White/Green    Line 3 Tip
    `-,,-'     2   White/Orange   Line 2 Tip
               3   Blue           Line 1 Ring
  (looking     4   White/Blue     Line 1 Tip
   into wall   5   Orange         Line 2 Ring
   jack).      6   Green          Line 3 Ring

  RJ14 wiring is the same, but only lines 1 and 2
  are present.  RJ11 only has line 1.  Tip floats
  near ground potential.  Ring is negative with
  regard to the Tip.

#2 of 17 by ball on Fri Feb 24 08:46:43 2006:

25 Pair Colours (U.S.)

  Pair  Tip     Ring
  ~~~~  ~~~~~~  ~~~~~~
    1   White   Blue
    2   White   Orange
    3   White   Green
    4   White   Brown
    5   White   Slate

    6   Red     Blue
    7   Red     Orange
    8   Red     Green
    9   Red     Brown
   10   Red     Slate

   11   Black   Blue
   12   Black   Orange
   13   Black   Green
   14   Black   Brown
   15   Black   Slate

   16   Yellow  Blue
   17   Yellow  Orange
   18   Yellow  Green
   19   Yellow  Brown
   20   Yellow  Slate

   21   Violet  Blue
   22   Violet  Orange
   23   Violet  Green
   24   Violet  Brown
   25   Violet  Slate

#3 of 17 by ball on Fri Feb 24 08:51:02 2006:

Now that's done, does anyone happen to know whether I'm
likely to find exterior-grade two-pair cable at Lowes, Home
Depot or perhaps Menards?  If not, I may have to find a
friendly electrician who can pick some up from their
distributor.  I'm not that familiar with N. American cable
manufacturers.  Are there brands that I should avoid?

#4 of 17 by ball on Mon Feb 27 01:28:25 2006:

I bought some cable at Ace Hardware. They had four-core, but
it was not twisted pair so I had to buy three-pair (six-
core) cable instead.

Today I looked for a convenient place to drill a hole for
the cable.  I didn't find one.  Our apartment is the top
floor of an old house which, along with plenty of character,
has very thick walls and inconvenient windows.  Tomorrow I
may call the nice people at Illinois Bell to ask whether
they will be kind enough to install (hopefully at no cost)
the cable run and a wall jack.

#5 of 17 by rcurl on Mon Feb 27 02:57:03 2006:

It's pretty common to run telephone wire along baseboards. Depending on the
baseboard you might add a molding on top of the baseboard and run the wire
behind that to hid it. In any house it is hard to go horizontally. I've only
run telephone/data cables down and up via the basement, where I can put the
horizontal runs.

#6 of 17 by gull on Mon Feb 27 06:11:48 2006:

If you're doing it yourself, pull extra cable. It doesn't take much more time and it may come in handy later. At work my rule of thumb is to always pull at least one more line than I think I'll need, whether it's video cable or CAT5.

#7 of 17 by ball on Tue Feb 28 08:59:55 2006:

Re #5: Routing the cable indoors is not a problem.  Getting
   the cable indoors from the network interface box outside
   is a significant problem because of the old, thick, brick
   walls.  I started this project because I could benefit
   from DSL.  This cabling problem may be a show-stopper
   though.

#8 of 17 by rcurl on Tue Feb 28 20:17:59 2006:

Just drill a hole. Brick is pretty easy to drill.

#9 of 17 by ball on Wed Mar 1 03:14:40 2006:

It's thick, way thicker than any drills I have could cope
with.  I have no idea what else is in that wall and besides,
it's not mine.

#10 of 17 by ball on Wed Mar 1 03:27:28 2006:

Illinois Bell are sending a man out in the morning to have a
look at the old jack and wiring.  I don't pay for the call-
out, which is good because I'm not confident that he will be
able to replace the old wiring (some of it's buried in the
wall, some is above the ceiling, some is very, very high on
an outside wall).  If he can, they'll likely want to charge
me a lot of money. It would be much more sensible to install
a new jack and a short, accessible drop of cable to the NID,
but that incurs a line installation fee.  I think I'd rather
spend the money on a drill and take my chances.

#11 of 17 by rcurl on Wed Mar 1 03:40:47 2006:

A 1/4-inch one-foot long drill for brick is available (since other people 
have the same need). A 1/4-inch hold is hardly noticeable an easily 
plugged later. Is the brick a facing or is it structural? The latter about 
twice as thick (and now only found in old buildings).

#12 of 17 by ball on Wed Mar 1 16:46:00 2006:

It's structural.  The nice chap from Illinois Bell came
suitably equipped and was kind enough to install a jack and
drop a new line.  Next stop DSL!  :-)

#13 of 17 by ball on Wed Oct 4 02:08:37 2006:

My DSL service was turned on 2006-10-01.

#14 of 17 by ball on Sat Oct 24 17:48:12 2020:

    Fourteen years later (in a different house), I find
myself thinking it would be nice to have an ordinary
telephone line in the study.  Sadly, line rental and basic
service costs about as much as broadband Internet, so I'll
probably have to go for an IP phone instead.

#15 of 17 by tod on Tue Nov 24 02:55:37 2020:

I have an analog naval ship phone in the garage with a converter to IP.

#16 of 17 by papa on Tue Nov 24 22:51:04 2020:

You can pretend your telephoning from the Battlestar Galactica.

#17 of 17 by tod on Thu Jun 17 01:00:05 2021:

re #16
It's not a TA-954 but rather a rotary.

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