CAT 5E & telephone help

Just finished rewiring a small office & I have been asked if I can put in the CAT5E for the new office. The existing Netgear switches & the server is still up & running in these new offices because it is linked to some portacabins & a workshop.

The issue I have is, I was looking at one of the existing cat5 double sockets in one of the portacabins & they have the pc plugged in one socket & the telephone plugged in the other.

How does a telephone system work with the Netgear switches because all the telephone cables come back to where the server & netgear stuff is based (is it called node 0) & they go into a telephone patch panel type thing & then some cables go from the telephone panel into the netgear switch?

Can I use the same type of cat5 cable for network & telephone ?

We used to use the same cable with no probs at all. At the patch panel we routed the phone ones to the switchboard and the PC ones to the hubs/routers.

If they're using the same sockets, then they may be IP phones anyway which are cabled exactly the same way as PCs.

Thanks for the reply doormouse1.

I havent had any experience in doing this. I need to get some cables in before the builder makes it impossible for me. Might even have to get someone in to connect it all up but I fancy learning a bit more about it.

So basically, this is how I would assume it should be done. All the PC cat5's back to the netgear switch & all the telephones back to the switchboard ? correct ?

Why is there some links from the telephone switchboard to the netgear switch ? Is that because they are IP like you said ?

If I remember right with cat5 there are spare pairs in the cable that can be used for phone connections but is they are ever converted to the up comming cat6 then all pairs are required for the computer system.

It is possible that the inter connection is where the phone pairs are extracted and routed to the telephone switchboard which could of course ne a manual or automatic one.

Whether the phone cables go straight to the switchboard or to the patch depends on the local setup. I always took them all to a patch - more flexible, if anyone moved desk you could swop phone numbers at the patch without reprograming the switchboard.

If there are cables from the switchboard to the switch there are two possibilities;
1) The phones are IP (if this is the case, there should be no other cables going from phones to the switchboard - they should all conect via the switch).
2) There is another switchboard on that site (or on a remote site) and the two switchboards are using the network to route calls.

AlanE said:

If I remember right with cat5 there are spare pairs in the cable that can be used for phone connections but is they are ever converted to the up comming cat6 then all pairs are required for the computer system.

It is possible that the inter connection is where the phone pairs are extracted and routed to the telephone switchboard which could of course ne a manual or automatic one.

Click to expand...

YUK YUK YUK

You should never share a cable - that goes beond the scope it is designed for.

A dual cat5e point will have TWO runs of cat5e to it from the patch panel. At the patch panel, one will be patched to the network switch, and the other to the telephone PBX, possibly via a comms patch panel.

For extra telephone extensions you will need the PBX programming - this can be involved if you are not experienced, as there are so many different types of system.

The phone system may be linked to the switch for several reasons. It hay have a http interface for programming - you can alter PBC settings via a web page on any networked (or remote) machine. It may also support screen popping, this is when an incomming call is answered at a desk, the name, number and info stored in the database about the name and number is screen popped onto the operaters screen ready for them.

I have carefully taken note and will store the information in the most appropriate place, as will the OP if he still needs to make use of it.

Edit--response to spam (now removed)