Use my Phone line for my network??

[jebise]

Hello,

We moved into a newly build home and i wanted cat5 put in but the builder refused. Anywhow we don't use the phone jacks in the house and i noticed 2 of the 6 cables are used. I know cat5 is 8 wires but what type of wiring do i have?

These are the colors of the wires i see and can i use this for my home network?

White/Green
Green
Orange
White/Orange
Blue/White
White/Blue

 

[jebise]

bump

 

[occdavid]

It's 3 twisted pair. However someone else may want to confirm this, but I think if you punch it down correctly you could get 100Base-TX speeds out of the 3 pairs. See the Wiki on 100BASE-TX. So it might work... But Cat5e or Cat6 would have been better. So you could have a gigabit network. I think it should be required in all new construction these days.

 

[jebise]

Thanks, would that be enough for stream HD content? don't think so.

yeah i know but they refused not much i could have done .

I'm thinking just going to run the cables up the cold air return from the basement to the attic and just drop them down.

 

[occdavid]

Depending on how the construction is, that might be the best way. I ran a few around the current home I'm in. I picked up one of the reel type fish tapes. 50 foot was good for me but never ended up using more than 15 to 20 feet for the runs I had to do.