[gta]

I have telephone jacks in most of the rooms on the first floor except for one room where I am planning on putting the cable modem.

Is there a way to tap into one of the phone jacks in the other room and bring it into this room or is there another way?


I am aware of those powerline phone adapters, but I want to avoid using those if possible.

 

[teamo]

You can tap off a phone jack in one of the other rooms but the best practice is to run a a new home cable from the demarcation point where the phone line comes into the house. Is there a basement underneath this room where you want to run the new line?

 

[gta]

There is a basement, but locating the demarc point is difficult. Im not sure where to look first.

 

[Jim Port]

Look near the electric meter or service panel.

 

[dftc]

It's probably a grey box somewhere on the outside of your house. Its the point where the phone company's line comes in and goes into your house.
While it is good to run a whole new line back to the demarcation point for some reasons, it isn't a requirement. In fact, if you look at some of your existing jacks I'd bet they are wired to another nearby jack and not back to the demarcation point. Most residential phone networks are still installed using a "Bus topology" where the jacks are connected to each other.
Going through the basement is probably the easiest route if you can do it.

 

[gta]

It's probably a grey box somewhere on the outside of your house. Its the point where the phone company's line comes in and goes into your house.
While it is good to run a whole new line back to the demarcation point for some reasons, it isn't a requirement. In fact, if you look at some of your existing jacks I'd bet they are wired to another nearby jack and not back to the demarcation point. Most residential phone networks are still installed using a "Bus topology" where the jacks are connected to each other.
Going through the basement is probably the easiest route if you can do it.

You might be right about the wiring. I found the grey box outside, but it seems the wire from the telco was snipped, probably by the optimum crew. There seems to be one wire going into the house though. That I confirmed by going to the basement.

I have optimum voice by the way.


Here is a picture. It is quite old, but still works.

 

[gta]

So how would I go about wiring?


Also should I use cat 3 or cat 5e cable?

 

[sublime2]

Simply tap off another Jack.
no reason to run a new line.

 

[dftc]

Cat 3 is ok, but cat 5 is better and the difference in price should be pretty small for your project.
The rest of your house probably has the old 4 wire cable anyway.
You will only use two of the wire pairs in the new cable and most of the cat 5 you will find has 4 pairs. The blue and orange pairs would be the correct ones for typical phone lines. The rest of the unused wires can be wrapped back around the cable at the ends to keep them out of the way. Your old cable probably has green, red, black, and yellow wires. With the new cable you attach the mostly blue to the red, the white with blue stripes to the green, the white with orange to the black, and the mostly orange to the yellow.
Get some kind of jack to install at the new location and run your wire. There are dozens of decent tutorials on the Internet about this topic so I won't go through it all step by step. It's not difficult however. Just take a look at how your existing jacks are wired and try to replicate that.
Make sure that you don't have any phone signal before you start. These are low-voltage lines but you can still get a decent shock if a call comes in while you are working.

 

[gta]

Thanks for the help.

But lets say I did run a wire all the way from the NID box. Do I just connect the same color wires to the terminals in the picture?

 

[teamo]

If you tap off of the terminals in the picture you would just use the same colors. Solid blue/white with blue for pair one. Solid orange/white with orange for pair two.

 

[dftc]

Yes, but I see a big mess of cut wires in the picture. Make sure at least one other cable is going into the house intact and connect your new cable to the same terminals. The goal is to tie your new jack into all the others in the house. If all of those wires are cut at the demarcation point then that won't work. You'd just be connected to a dead block on the side of your house.

 

[sublime2]

Yes, but I see a big mess of cut wires in the picture. Make sure at least one other cable is going into the house intact and connect your new cable to the same terminals. The goal is to tie your new jack into all the others in the house. If all of those wires are cut at the demarcation point then that won't work. You'd just be connected to a dead block on the side of your house.

Perfect reason to just tap off another Jack that you KNOW works!

 

[gta]

Yes, but I see a big mess of cut wires in the picture. Make sure at least one other cable is going into the house intact and connect your new cable to the same terminals. The goal is to tie your new jack into all the others in the house. If all of those wires are cut at the demarcation point then that won't work. You'd just be connected to a dead block on the side of your house.

I can see some wires that are not cut and they are going into the house. I do see one telephone wire in the basement that corresponds with the location of the NID box, so that must be it.

Those cut wires you see I believe were from the main telco line, but perhaps the optimum tech snipped them.


Can you splice the one telephone cable and run the line that way? Would that degrade the signal quality in any way?


I would tap into another jack, but that would require drilling additional holes to route the wires right?

 

[dftc]

The optimum tech should have cut just the wires coming into the box from the telco. I just couldn't tell if he got carried away when I was looking at the picture. If those are the only cut wires then you can connect your new cable to the same terminals that the other cable going into your house uses. That will tie everything together and won't degrade any signal quality.
You could think of the demarcation point box like a junction box for this purpose.

 

[gta]

I took some time in my basement to see if I could splice a line and I found the perfect spot.

I know about those splice connectors, scotchlok or something, but I don't want the wires hanging out.


Is there some kind of box that can contain the splices neatly? I saw something called a telephone wiring block. Can that be used in this situation?



I'm going to abandon the idea of running from the telco box because frankly it would be a lot of work. I would have to drill a hole, figure out a way to protect the wire from outside elements, plug the hole to stop drafts etc...

 

[dftc]

I think this is starting to get a little more complicated than it should be. Splicing into the middle of a cable to add a new jack is not a great way to do this. You really should either connect to another jack or connect back to the demarcation point.
No matter how you do it, you're going to need to drill a hole or two. If you drill a hole to the outside you can seal it up with a very small amount of inexpensive caulk. The cable won't need any special protection if it exits the house near the demarcation point.

 

[sublime2]

I took some time in my basement to see if I could splice a line and I found the perfect spot.

I know about those splice connectors, scotchlok or something, but I don't want the wires hanging out.

Is there some kind of box that can contain the splices neatly? I saw something called a telephone wiring block. Can that be used in this situation?

I'm going to abandon the idea of running from the telco box because frankly it would be a lot of work. I would have to drill a hole, figure out a way to protect the wire from outside elements, plug the hole to stop drafts etc...

Yes. Use the block. Cut the wires, attach both cut ends to the block along with your new line.
That's it.

 

[gta]

Well i got lucky. I was able to connect a new line from one of the jacks in another room and I was able to route the new wire through an existing hole behind the wall without making any new holes.