ADSL Twin Faceplate

Back when I first had broadband installed the BT engineer fitted a dual faceplate (ADSL and Telephone) as the master socket. He then ran a CAT5 cable for there to the PC in another part of the house. At one end is a RJ45 plug to go into the ADSL socket and at the other end it terminates into a RJll socket which the ADSL modem plugs into.

Looking at this cable it only uses some of the pairs with the others just cut off. As I'm thinking of resiting the PC, would a normal CAT 5/6 cable be ok to plug in as long as the extra cores are not connected to anything at the RJ11 socket end. Also would these unconnected cores be a potential source of interference?

An RJ45 cable will fit into the ADSL socket. I think it uses the 2 centre pins (4+5)
How does it terminate on the back of the extension socket? If its IDC terminals then you may have problems getting a good termination using stranded pacth cable.
If you have a soldering iron or know someone that does then a little solder on the bare strands may do the trick.

Yes If you mean pluging one end in to the adsl socket of the faceplate and refitting the RJ11 socket on the other end. Its easy to do, just get a cat5 cable of the required length and at the RJ11 socket end just connect the blue pair in the cat 5 cable. There is no need to alter the plug at the adsl socket.

Maybe its just me, but most cat5 I see is solid core

Thanks for that. thats exactly what I meant.

Its probably you

Cat5e specs indicate - solid copper conductor AWG24 (American Wire Gauge 24) AWG tables show this as 0.51054 mm diameter.

No mention of 'strands' that I can see in Cat5, 5e or 6 specifications.

Edited by deleted (Sun 27-Sep-09 17:27:54)

Infrastructure wiring is solid core and patch / drop leads are stranded. Solid core patch / drop leads will eventually fail.