Mystery Box #1

[Tony_Kent]

I've a box on the wall in my utility room with lots and lots of very fine wires in it; shown below.

My question's a simple one; what is it for?

It's the right-hand one in this picture.

 

[ericmark]

I would guess telephones or LAN's.

 

[RandomGrinch]

Door control and intercom?

 

[Tony_Kent]

Door control and intercom?

I suppose it could be, there is a door intercom, but there are also ethernet points all over the house too, with no apparent connection to anything. There are all manner of legacy electric bits in various places; I'd love to be able to get hold of whoever did the wiring to work out what's what.

 

[Murdochcat]

Ethernet points …. Would you use them ?

Where is your router?

 

[Diver Fred]

Was or is your 'house' a block of flats?

The R/H box looks to be a Telephone cross connection point but with the multiple cables going both ways is a little weird. Certainly not a LAN or WAN distribution - that would be cables with 4 pairs together.

The big black box inside the grey case is a TV distribution point.

 

[ericmark]

Many years ago I had a fax machine, old I know, invented by Alexander Bain in 1843, but I had a more modern version, and the idea was when a fax was detected it would auto disconnect phones in the rest of the house, at one point even two phone numbers with different ringing sounds which the fax machine could recognise so only auto disconnected phones when called on fax number.

However we did not always have the fax in the same place, and when not being used, we wanted to be able to revert to just phones, so there were double phone sockets around the house, one would auto disconnect with fax, the other would remain connected.

However as time went on fax was used less and less, and also we went to wireless phones, so all the wiring became redundant.

The same was repeated with TV coax cables, and speaker cables, the move to 28" TV's in bedroom from 14" resulted in picture quality not being good enough,

Ethernet points was another thing which was hard wired until nearly everything we have got became wifi, hard wired may have been faster, but it has not really been used in years.

 

[brig001]

TV aerial amplifier

https://www.amazon.co.uk/global-F280-16-Way-Distribution-Amplifier/dp/B000NNM8W2

 

[Murdochcat]

Alarm wiring ?

 

[crystal ball]

Was or is your 'house' a block of flats?

The R/H box looks to be a Telephone cross connection point bit with the multiple cables going both ways is a little weird. Certainly not a LAN or WAN distribution - that would be cables with 4 pairs together.

The big black box inside the grey case is a TV distribution point.

Plus 1 for the telephone box, looks like the system in a factory I used to work in

 

[Tony_Kent]

Was or is your 'house' a block of flats?

The R/H box looks to be a Telephone cross connection point but with the multiple cables going both ways is a little weird. Certainly not a LAN or WAN distribution - that would be cables with 4 pairs together.

The big black box inside the grey case is a TV distribution point.

No, it was once upon a time Newcastle Council offices, but it was gutted in around 2010, back to the brickwork and re-done as “executive” housing.

Whatever was considered state of the art back then is probably what they put in

 

[plugwash]

No, it was once upon a time Newcastle Council offices, but it was gutted in around 2010, back to the brickwork and re-done as “executive” housing.

Was the whole building converted to one "house"? or are there mutiple residential units in what used to be one large office building?

If the latter, then I strongly suspect that box is a telephone distribution point for the building. You can see one big cable with it's pairs spread accross the top of the connection block, while there are lots of cables with their blue (first) pairs connected to the bottom of the block.

 

[Tony_Kent]

Was the whole building converted to one "house"? or are there mutiple residential units in what used to be one large office building?

If the latter, then I strongly suspect that box is a telephone distribution point for the building. You can see one big cable with it's pairs spread accross the top of the connection block, while there are lots of cables with their blue (first) pairs connected to the bottom of the block.

It was a terraced street of houses that had been used as offices.
I think this is one to get an expert in for; whether it’s phones or some bizarre Ethernet setup I need to get the Ethernet sockets working.

 

[Diver Fred]

It was a terraced street of houses that had been used as offices.
I think this is one to get an expert in for; whether it’s phones or some bizarre Ethernet setup I need to get the Ethernet sockets working.

Still one house? If not then you definitely need some help to see if anything is still live. Although you could try measuring the voltage with a multimeter on each pair - should be about 50v if any thing is live.

The cabling is NOT network (WAN/LAN/ethernet) cabling - wrong wire colours and not in groups of 4 pairs (8 wires) of colour/white + white/colour.

 

[plugwash]

It certainly looks like phones, the question is whether it's abandoned, or whether it's still in use supporting phone service for you and your neighbours.