Help wiring new house

[Spev]

Moved to a new place recently. Goal is to have every room wired for Ethernet connections. Currently each room has a phone jack, and upon inspection looks like they could easily be rewired to an RJ-45 port for Ethernet.

 

Now onto my issue. There is a central area in a closet where all the coax cables connect. There's 4, as far as I can tell. One from outside and then 1 from three rooms. They all meet together. So when my internet was installed today the technician connected 2 of the coax cables together. Connecting the one from the outside to one of the rooms, and then connected to the router. So I have wireless internet, but not wired.

 

In the same area where the coax cables connect I have found this only about a foot away. (I don't know what this is)

 

The blue wiring connected comes from what looks like standard Ethernet cabling but only blue wires being used since for some kind of phone setup:

 

Inside the port looks like this: (Have zero clue what's going on in here)

 

Can anyone explain to me what's going on here? Is the cable coming out of the hole in the wall possibly connected to the phone wiring in every room? If I had an idea of what the device in the pictures was doing (or is at all) it would probably help me understand it more. 

 

If the cable coming out of the wall is connected to each room I could rewire it to be ethernet and disconnect it from the device in the pictures. Then somehow split the coax signal to not only connect to the router but connected to the cable wiring, giving both the router and the house wiring access? I'm not sure but could use some help.

[You_are_a_cunt]

I've done my fair share of wiring and I can honestly say I have no idea what that clusterfuck is.

 

The main goal is identifying what each cable is then reusing what can be reused or removing unnecessary cables and replacing them with what you need

[Spev]

Just now, revsilverspine said:

I've done my fair share of wiring and I can honestly say I have no idea what that clusterfuck is.

 

The main goal is identifying what each cable is then reusing what can be reused or removing unnecessary cables and replacing them with what you need

Right. I'm first trying to identify what device is in the first picture. If I can figure out what that is then it would help me figure out what it's connected to. I'm not very familiar with phone wiring, so I'm at a bit of a loss right now.

[TheNorthBridge]

Looks like a doorbell transformer. Probably only runs to your front door. Check for voltage on the black lead in the junction box, if it's hot and you have no use for a doorbell then just wire up a new outlet in it's place. 

[You_are_a_cunt]

Just now, Spev said:

Right. I'm first trying to identify what device is in the first picture. If I can figure out what that is then it would help me figure out what it's connected to. I'm not very familiar with phone wiring, so I'm at a bit of a loss right now.

What does it say on the side? I can see some writing but I can't really make out what it's saying

[Spev]

1 minute ago, TheNorthBridge said:

Looks like a doorbell transformer. Probably only runs to your front door. 

Oh fascinating. I never would have guessed that. I do have a doorbell so that could be it. So maybe doorbells just use cabling that ethernet/phones do and only use blue wiring. So if that's the case then it's probably just an isolated device for the doorbell. From the cables inside it looks like it gives power too. So in that case them I'm just at a loss as for what to do.

 

As far as I know simply wiring the jacks in my rooms for ethernet and plugging one into the router isn't going to give my entire home network access.

[Spev]

4 minutes ago, revsilverspine said:

What does it say on the side? I can see some writing but I can't really make out what it's saying

TheNorthBridge thinks it's a doorbell transformer. So it might be something that's just for the doorbell and not related to the phone wiring at all...

[TheNorthBridge]

Typically low voltage cable like 18-2 is used for doorbells, but in a pinch data cable can be used just fine, like ghetto PoE. I'm an electrician, typically I do industrial work, buy I've wired up a few doorbells in houses here and there. 

 

As far as serving your house, you'll need a seperate cable drop for each jack you need. It's time consuming work, but if you plan ahead and get some cut-in boxes you could make it look really professional for a third the cost of hiring a contractor. 

[kb5zue]

First of all, the "device" in the first picture is in fact, a doorbell transformer.  It converts the 110VAC in the wall to the 12V the doorbell requires.  As for the rest of your project, have you considered the cost of materials?  You can't run Ethernet over phone lines so the logical step would be to use the phone lines to "pull" ethernet cable thru the walls but that would be a painful task to say the least.  Since your internet provider has already set you up with wireless, why not just stick with that.  It is obviously available throughout you entire residence and a much easier project to tackle.  As for your PC, just put a wireless card in it and you would be good to go.

 

Just sayin...........

 

[Spev]

1 minute ago, TheNorthBridge said:

Typically low voltage cable like 18-2 is used for doorbells, but in a pinch data cable can be used just fine, like ghetto PPoE. I'm an electrician, typically I do industrial work, buy I've wired up a few doorbells in houses here and there. 

 

As far as serving you're house, you'll need a seperate cable drop for each jack you need. It's time consuming work, but if you plan ahead and get some cut-in boxes you could make it look really professional for a third the cost of hiring a contractor. 

It's a brand new place and already built. I'm going to leave the doorbell transforming as is. Just currently I'm not sure where the phone wiring connects together. Some central location. I can rewire the ports from phone->ethernet easily. But I assume they connect at some central location. Some how I would have to connect them together with a switch or something.

[Spev]

2 minutes ago, kb5zue said:

First of all, the "device" in the first picture is in fact, a doorbell transformer.  It converts the 110VAC in the wall to the 12V the doorbell requires.  As for the rest of your project, have you considered the cost of materials?  You can't run Ethernet over phone lines so the logical step would be to use the phone lines to "pull" ethernet cable thru the walls but that would be a painful task to say the least.  Since your internet provider has already set you up with wireless, why not just stick with that.  It is obviously available throughout you entire residence and a much easier project to tackle.  As for your PC, just put a wireless card in it and you would be good to go.

 

Just sayin...........

 

The wiring already existing in the walls can be easily changed to ethernet to like a 568-B RJ-45 port. It's just currently setup for phone, so only a couple of the wires are being used. The rest are just tucked back and not in use. I'd rather have a hard wired connection for many of the devices in my home is why.

[TheNorthBridge]

4 minutes ago, Spev said:

It's a brand new place and already built. I'm going to leave the doorbell transforming as is. Just currently I'm not sure where the phone wiring connects together. Some central location. I can rewire the ports from phone->ethernet easily. But I assume they connect at some central location. Some how I would have to connect them together with a switch or something.

Do they run outside to a telecom/ISP junction box? Or a basement, if you have one. Also, yeah most times if I pull phone lines I'll use CAT5e/CAT6 so switching it from phone to data is easy. 

[Spev]

4 minutes ago, TheNorthBridge said:

Do they run outside to a telecom/ISP junction box? 

Well at the moment I have no clue. In my old home there was a central location where all the ethernet wiring in the house met together. I had to change the faceplates in each room and re-wire them from phone->ethernet which was easy. Then in the central location (the office) I connected them to my router. I thought maybe something similar would be the case here, but maybe it's outside? I guess I might try opening all the ports in each room and see if there's cabling from each room connected somewhere waiting to be connected. Sort of how all my coax cables from each room connected at a central location. Maybe that's the case for the phone wiring too, I'm not really sure.

[Mister Mister]

So it looks like the green wire is the ground, white and black and neutral and live, but are they connected INTO the phone line?? It seems that the metal casing could be a 30v transformer and the blue wires are for the phone jacks. Phone wiring is supposed to stay on even when the power shuts off but it appears he just connects the phone lines directly into the AC wiring with a DC transformer to step the 120 (or 240) down to 30v...Hmm... I think you need a new electrician 

[TheNorthBridge]

9 minutes ago, Spev said:

Sort of how all my coax cables from each room connected at a central location. Maybe that's the case for the phone wiring too, I'm not really sure.

If you can't find where they go inside I would check outside. Coax is a lot different than phone line, and usually (not always) the installer will run them all to a box outside. 

[Spev]

2 minutes ago, Mister Mister said:

So it looks like the green wire is the ground, white and black and neutral and live, but are they connected INTO the phone line?? It seems that the metal casing could be a 30v transformer and the blue wires are for the phone jacks. Phone wiring is supposed to stay on even when the power shuts off but it appears he just connects the phone lines directly into the AC wiring with a DC transformer to step the 120 (or 240) down to 30v...Hmm... I think you need a new electrician 

It appears that it's a doorbell transformer actually. I just thought it was something related to phone since it was using just a couple wires from the cabling.