Quick Phone Jack Install

When you are doing any type of renovations to your house or office you always need to consider Phone, Data and TV wiring.  I recommend you use Cat5 cable for everything  (at least for phone and data - internet).  Cat5 is the blue cable that you always use to hook your computer up to your modem or router.
Cat5 cable has 4 pairs of cables in it, so 8 wires.  I have worked in this industry for may years now and it is very frustrating to watch people use this cable wrong.

 There is a color code that should be followed:

  It would seem like it would make no difference if you were to use any color in any order, well it does.  It would probably work, but some of the pairs are twisted more then others for reasons.

Anyways... Lets talk about installing a phone jack. When installing a phone jack it is very simple.  You will use pair 1 (blue/blue white).  Hook one end up to the jack and the other end up to the demarcation point or protector.

 

On the jack you will see spots for red, green, black, yellow.  Those are the original colors that were used in 4 wire quad cable.  You can still buy this cable and it works fine but I will get into my reasons for using Cat5 later in this article. So the Blue goes where the Red is labeled on the jack and Blue/White goes where Green is on the jack.  It probably will work if it is backwards, but the polarity will be wrong.

This is the demarcation point or protector.  Blue goes on the right and Blue/White goes on the left.

Here is a picture of the quad wire I was talking about earlier.  So pair 1 would go on the jack, just follow the colors on the jack.  Then at the protector you will need to put red on the right and green on the left.