Female-Female Ethernet Cable

[ajbrun]

I'm looking for a female-female cable to go into a wall. I've only so far found male-male. I'll explain what we're trying to do so you can get a better understanding:

We will have a computer downstairs and 2 computers upstairs. We want to put a cat5 cable in the walls with a socket on the wall at each end. We'd then plug a cable from this socket into a computer at one end, and a router at the other. It's supposed to work like a telephone line inside the walls, where you get sockets to plug a phone in.

NOTES:
* This will NOT be using a telephone wire!
* There will be ONE socket per line. It will NOT be so much like a phone wire where you can have 2 different phones on the same wire.

Hope you understood that - it all in an attempt to get the wires less visable .

PS - I might be using cat5 cable and rj-11/rj-45 terms incorrectly. If I am, I hope you can understand what I wish to achieve. Same cable that's router-PC.

[Paul Adams]

Cheap & nasty solution, RJ45 coupler:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?...ldID=&doy=31m1


Better solution, wall-mounted panels connected with CAT5e/CAT6 cable:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?...ldID=&doy=31m1


I would definitely go for the second one, but it requires a bit of know-how with how to wire them up and test them (there are many diagrams on the Internet for the pin-outs for RJ45 though).

[ajbrun]

Thanks for the quick responce .

The 2nd one does look good - it's the kind of thing I was thinking of. Is there anything else that's needed at all?

We have a telephone socket that's more like a box - about 2 inch deep. From the pic on the linkm that thing doesn't look very deep at all. Is that like a face plate to the box or is it all you need?

[mark22]

That second one's just a face plate for the box, I use one over a telephone cable to the router upstairs and it works fine for me.

Don't get why telephone cable is so frowned upon? It's just four twisted pairs of copper wire isn't it? Otherwise you need to try and pull some cat5 through the wall or channel out and put more in.

[aidanjt]

well, telephone cabling is cat3, its more subceptable to noise and interference, and you never know what kind of cheap crap is being run up the back of your wall for the telephone lines.. lets just say your not going to use it for a server backbone.

[Paul Adams]

Originally Posted by ajbrun

The 2nd one does look good - it's the kind of thing I was thinking of. Is there anything else that's needed at all?

We have a telephone socket that's more like a box - about 2 inch deep. From the pic on the linkm that thing doesn't look very deep at all. Is that like a face plate to the box or is it all you need?

This is just the face plate, it is the front for a recessed box or an external "gang" depending on how you want to mount it and what type of wall it goes on - same principle as electrical outlets, they can be recessed into the wall or mounted on it.

[ajbrun]

Originally Posted by mark22

Don't get why telephone cable is so frowned upon? It's just four twisted pairs of copper wire isn't it? Otherwise you need to try and pull some cat5 through the wall or channel out and put more in.

I did make a thread suggesting this a few weeks ago, but no-one thought it was a good idea. If yours works, I'm happy for you, but I don't want to take that risk. Thanks for the responce though .

[ajbrun]

If I get this, will a phone line be able to be put into one of those sockets, or is it ONLY for CAT5?

If that won't work (I don't think it will TBH), does anyone know of a place that sells something similar, just one with 1 phone socket and 2 cat5's?

[Paul Adams]

RJ45 is the type of connector.
CAT 5/5e/6 is the type of cable.

UK phones I believe are BT103 connector type, so you can't just plug a phone into an RJ45 socket, no.


How about this:
http://www.solwise.co.uk/networking_sundries.htm

Check out the "modular connectors" - I would go for:
NET-BACKBOXDOUBLE
CON-MOD-QUADFACE
2x CON-MOD-CAT5
1x CON-MOD-BT
1x CON-MOD-BLANK

Then you can wire in a phone extension and a network port in the same gang.
And if you only need a single network port at the other end, then you would just need:
NET-BACKBOXSINGLE
CON-MOD-SINGLEFACE
CON-MOD-CAT5

(Edited to reflect new response)
(Edited again just to add "Wow, company is based in Anlaby - I used to cycle there regularly when I were a lad" but add no actual value)

[ajbrun]

Originally Posted by Paul Adams

Check out the "modular connectors" - I would go for:
NET-BACKBOXDOUBLE
CON-MOD-QUADFACE
2x CON-MOD-CAT5
1x CON-MOD-BT
1x CON-MOD-BLANK

Can this be done using only a single back box?

My Dad says you can't get a "CON-MOD-TRIFACE". I think this is what we need as the option for a double back plate isn't really open to us. If I (or even someone else) could find one, then my problem would be sorted!

[Paul Adams]

Originally Posted by ajbrun

Can this be done using only a single back box?

My Dad says you can't get a "CON-MOD-TRIFACE". I think this is what we need as the option for a double back plate isn't really open to us. If I (or even someone else) could find one, then my problem would be sorted!

Due to space limitations I doubt it, not in a modular form anyway.

Single faceplate space only accomodates 1 or 2 module format - so you could use a BT and a single RJ45 module, then hang a switch off the RJ45 port instead maybe?

Then the list is just one of each of the following:
NET-BACKBOXSINGLE
CON-MOD-DUALFACE
CON-MOD-BT
CON-MOD-CAT5
plus a cheap switch (something like this for around a tenner), if you need more than 1 machine at this location.

[ajbrun]

So basically, the switch spits the cable into 2 or more cables that can be all used at the same time for different purposes?

So what's the difference between that and a router?

[Paul Adams]

No, you misunderstand (I think)...

The modular faceplates just present the ports in a nice configurable way - the modules are still wired separately.
I was talking about a regular network switch to plug into the port instead of a PC directly.

If you want to have a phone socket and 2 RJ45 ports in a faceplate then you'll need 3 cables, 1 phone and 2 CAT5/5e/6.
(Okay you could daisy chain the 2 RJ45 ports but that would be pointless.)

So then you'd need to feed the phone extension from another BT socket, and connect the RJ45 port to the other one that you need it hooked up to.


A router is a networking device for communicating between different networks, such as your home network and the Internet or 2 different offices in a company connected by a WAN link.

A switch (or "switching hub") is for local networks and is just to connect machines together - it is a fundamental part of a network so the machines can all talk.

Some (a lot of) broadband routers come with built-in switches so you can connect 1,4,8, whatever computers to all access the Internet at the same time.

[ajbrun]

You've said 2 RJ45's. One goes into the dualface, but where does the other one go?

[Paul Adams]

A picture is worth 2,000 bytes...
Click for pic

Blue lines = your local area network (LAN)

This example is with a single face RJ45 panel at one end (where the router is) and a dual face panel with RJ45 and BT ports at the other end.

If you wanted 2 RJ45 ports in the face plate itself, you would need to run 2 cables in the wall, and have a dual plate at the router end too, then plug both into the router.

Let me know if that's clear or not, it was a rush Visio job.

[ajbrun]

I think that's what I thought it was like TBH. For our situation, I think it might be chaper (and easier) to install a network card in the PC downstairs, and just have 1 cat5 going through the house.

I know you'll probably say "well why wasn't he going to do that anyway?", well there is a reason - we didn't have the right phone line upstairs, but that's all changing now anyway.

Thanks for all that - you've been a great help . All I've got to do now is convince my parents that that's the best solution.