# rewiring home telephone system



## brainfart58 (Aug 23, 2008)

My home is 57 years old as well as all my telephone cables. I am going to completely rewire the system using Category 5e, data communication cable. Somewhere I have read that using anything in the system with a lesser rating than 5e, will down grade the entire system to the lowest rated component in the line. Can someone please tell me if inside wall jacks are rated by category. Do I need to replace the jacks in order for my system to function properly?


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## telecom69 (Oct 12, 2001)

To me it would make sense to replace the jacks as well since you are doing a complete rewire,and yes there are category 5e walljacks available ...I dont think that leaving the old jacks in would make any difference if your system is working ok at the present ...then again I dont know anything about the American telephone system ...at the end of the day it would be a complete new system and ready for any future developments if you renew the lot ....


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I'm confused, are you wiring for phone service or Ethernet? If you're wiring for phone service, your old jacks are fine. There is no difference between CAT5 and CAT5e jacks, and some CAT6 cable is also compatible with the same jacks. CAT6 sometimes is 23ga and sometimes 24ga, CAT5/CAT5e is all 24ga wire.


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## wacor (Feb 22, 2005)

never have used CAT cable. So this might be a dumb comment. But unless the jacks are special or specific to the cable then what is to be lost by connecting to them and seeing how things work?


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I'm still trying to find out if this is for networking or phones!


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## ARTETUREN (Dec 2, 2007)

For telephone, everything is OK. Any type of wire. Just do it ...You don`t need replace the jacks.


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## Soundy (Feb 17, 2006)

Yeah, regular phones will work fine over just about any sort of wire. You could use old speaker wire if you really wanted to, it only needs a single pair. There is no "lowest common denominator" issue. The only real reason to use Cat-5/5e/6 for phone wiring is for convenience (if you're pulling both phone and network wiring, it's just as easy to pull two Cat-5/5e/6) and future expandability, and maybe to have some extra pairs available for other uses (additional phone line, alarm wiring, etc.)

And no, you don't need to replace the jacks. But if you really want to do it up "right", you can pull two or three Cat-5 runs, and install jack and wall-plate systems that allow you to snap in a variety of different jacks depending on your needs.


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