Hooking Up Apartment Ethernet Jacks

jazzmac251 · Sep 7, 2014

Just moved into a brand new apartment complex. While there is an Ethernet hub in the closet for FiOS, the wall jacks in the apartment don't seem to be connected. The Verizon guy that came to install the FiOS setup said you have to do something to the outlets to get them up and running. He mentioned it wasn't very difficult and he did one himself while waiting for the install process to finish.

I now need to get a hardwired connection on another computer in a different room, but I'm not sure what he did to make that happen. Could someone walk me through the process and/or point me in the direction of an already existing walkthrough? Most of the Googling I've been doing has either focused heavily on the act of physically installing Ethernet ports into your walls or is a bit too technical for me to readily understand.

Thanks!

christinebcw · Sep 7, 2014

"He did something" and "while sitting there" but we're supposed to guess what he did? Hmmm...

Have you unscrewed an Ethernet wall-plate in an apartment? If so, can you see if the single large wire is split into 8 smaller ones, and those are 'punched down' or connected to the wall-plate's backside?

(I'm thinking he did punch-downs 'while sitting there'.) If the back of the apt's ethernet wall-plate isn't connected, then you need someone familiar with Ethernet cabling to come out and do 'punchdowns' on every wall-jack. No, it's not difficult but you need a punch-down tool, good eyesight, a little patience AND the awareness of the Ethernet cabling sequence.)

Here's a photo of what a rough-punchdown job would look like:

Single cable is actually 8 wires with a 'jacket' which is cut away, and the 8 wires are 'punched down' into very specific patterns. (The 'hanging out' wires might be trimmed as a final testament to neatness... and the joys of a hand-vac.)

smorizio · Sep 7, 2014

on your fios install there going to be a white odn unit that your cable boxes and verizion router plugs into. the router/phone going to have a cox wire going to it and power. on the back of the router is four ethernet ports. the fios installer should have plugged one of the wall jack ethernet cable into this port. if not he had to plug a data cable for your home into this from some main cable box for the home. if the home was wired right all the cables should go back to what called a ethernet switch. it may be in a closet or down stairs. the ethernet ports is one wire for each port so they have to go back to a junction in your home.

jazzmac251 · Sep 7, 2014

christinebcw :

I think you misunderstood me. I actually never said anyone was "sitting there". I said the installer hooked up one of the Ethernet ports while he was waiting for the install process to finish (he had to call out contractor support due to a micro-bend that must've happened when the builders wired up the apartment). It was actually quite nice of him to do, and I appreciate it.

Unscrewing the plate now...

jazzmac251 · Sep 7, 2014

Yeah, it looks like those wires have been hooked up. I don't know if they're in the right order, though. I'm attaching some dropbox photos so you guys can have a better look, including one of the main box in the closet.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10076075/2014-09-07%2019.55.37.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10076075/2014-09-07%2019.56.56.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10076075/2014-09-07%2019.57.03.jpg

I don't really understand how the modem was connected. From the pictures, it looks like the blue ethernet wires are the various ports throughout the apartment and they all go into one central switching hub in the main box. What I don't understand, though, is that it looks like one of the room ethernet cables was removed from the switching box, had an adapter attached to it, and was connected directly into the LAN ports of the modem. Why not just attach the main switcher box to a LAN port and wire up the whole apartment?

Unless...maybe some special wiring needed to be done? Is it because the way the switcher unit is wired up is incompatible with Verizon's standard, so they have to manually rewire a single room's cat5 cable on both the switcher end and the ethernet port end to match what their hardware wants to see?

If that's the case, how would I best go about figuring out what that particular wiring scheme is, preferably without taking apart the wall port in the other room and comparing it to the end the Verizon tech wired directly into the router?

USAFRet · Sep 7, 2014

There is no "walk me through it" video.

From the wall plate, where does that wire go? You have to find the other end.
Presumably, they all terminate at the same location. Hopefully near the FiOS router.

Find that, and maybe we can walk you through what to do next.

jazzmac251 · Sep 7, 2014

USAFRet :

Thanks for your response. Check my previous post for pictures of the terminal and wiring.

Alabalcho · Sep 8, 2014

Check your wiring closed (the one where FIOS box is installed), do you see something similar to that

christinebcw · Sep 8, 2014

IF the wall-plates are wired - wires connected to the wall-plate - then I would assume "They're done correctly" - it's too much trouble to do them wrong when it's an equal effort to do them right. So, I would assume, if wall-plates are wired, then they can become active IF they're plugged in back at the equipment closet.

(Testing if they're already active is easy - plug a powered-down notebook in with an ethernet cable, turn the notebook on and after a few moments, you'll either have an internet connection (active! yes!) or not (which means "wall-plate's cabling isn't connected back at the equipment closet").

(As for misunderstanding, yes, the original post isn't clear about much - like, "Where was the electrician doing the work from - the equipment closet or an apt's room - while he was 'waiting'?" I had to assume one of those two locations, but I'm not sure what he could have been doing because it's not clear where he was sitting/standing. But, this is all mute at this point.)

christinebcw · Sep 8, 2014

jazzmac251 :

Thanks for these. (Photo #2 and #3 are the same 'shot', yes? Just checking). Photo #1 is the back of a room's wallplate, and #2/#3 are back in the equipment closet.

Those two look like 6 wall-plates are connected, and there are two empty connections that could be made.

jazzmac251 · Sep 8, 2014

Alabalcho :

Yep. You can see the my setup directly if you download the photos I Dropbox'd in my second post. I do have one of those in the closet next to my router.

christinebcw :

I think it's not wired up back in the closet. As shown in the photo, one blue cat5 cable is coming out of the wall and plugs directly into the the back of the router. The length from the tie-off (where it's grouped with similar cables coming from the wall and going to the ethernet hub) to the cable end (which is plugged into the back of the router) is very short, which makes me suspect that this cable used to be connected to the ethernet hub itself. The technician must have removed it from the hub to plug it into the back of the router. I wonder why he didn't just plug the hub into the router and activate the entire apartment?

christinebcw :

Yep, that's right. photo 2 and 3 are the same. So, what should I do from here?

bill001g · Sep 8, 2014

I suspect you have a phone patch panel. The 2 connections on the bottom with 2 wires hooked to the same connectors is not something that is done for data so its hard to say what that is.

This is what a data patch panel tends to look like.
http://www.hyperline.com/img/sharedimg/patch-panels/ppf-12.jpg

You would either have to put in a data patch panel or directly terminate the wires going to the rooms with RJ45. In ether case you would then plug these into a small switch.

christinebcw · Sep 8, 2014

BillG points out something I'd never paid attention to - Pix 2 and 3 have 4 wire connections, not 8-wire which is typically used in RJ-45 (ethernet) punchdowns.

Jazz, you might pull out another wall-plate from an apartment room and take a look at that RJ-45 block - are 4 wires punched down (connected) or are 8? (Notice on the side panel, there are numbers - your pix #1 shows "5 6 7 8" on the facing side. Are there 8 cables punched down on those wall-plates, or only 4?

(If it's 4 only, then there will be additional consternation, I might add. But more on that later. And, no, none of this answers your question about why cables are plugged into that router. Do they have RJ45 jack-plugs? I wonder if there's a fee-increase issue, or some 'program' that the ISP will sell you?)

jazzmac251 · Sep 9, 2014

Wow, alright. That hub actually is for data.

I took the shocking step of simply plugging an ethernet cable into the router then plugging the other end into various ports on the ethernet hub. #4 did the trick.

I don't understand why the tech didn't do that in the first place. He clearly took the ethernet cable out of the hub, manually attached a clip onto it, and plugged that cable directly into the router. WTF?

christinebcw · Sep 9, 2014

So, do you now have two rooms that are Ethernet-connected? If so, you might run an IPCONFIG on both computers and check their default gateway (which should be the router's IP address and should be the same) and then the subnet's - which should be the same, too. If those are the same, then you can set up Sharing Folders, Files and Printers.

But I wonder what your neighbors do, and if you set up Sharing, then security with neighbors might be a consideration.

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