Help with structured media panel

[Slickone]

I just bought a preowned house that has a structured media panel, which I've never had, and am trying to figure out what all the previous owners have going on with it and what I need to do to get it right. Seems the previous owner had AT&T fiber, and I plan to carry over my Xfinity cable instead, so I want to remove anything to do with the fiber setup.

As shown in the photos, there are three yellow ethernet cables, one coming from the top left hole in the panel, one coming from the AT&T box, and the other coming from the hole in the wall (where does it go?). None of these are connected to anything on this end, as all three shown lying on the wire shelf.

There's a blue wire and a white wire coming in from the orange tube. Both are just "cut" on this end, and lying on the wire shelf. When looking at new homes, I noticed this orange tube sticking out of the house to the outside. What is this supposed to be used for?

There's a black wire and a blue wire, both coming from the top left hole in the panel, going to a small box (and as shown in the blurry photo, the blue wire is half cut).


As for the coax cable, oddly only one is attached to the splitter. As shown, most of the coax cables aren't connected on this end and I assume those all go to each room, but I assume they had Direct TV (there's a dish on our roof), although one cable is connected for some reason. Also, as shown, why are two of them connected to each other here?

Do people usually put their cable modems inside these panels? And maybe use that one ethernet cable that runs to the hole in the wall to connect the modem to a router in one of the rooms?
Should I buy a better? I see some are much nicer, which a shelf to hold a modem.

 

[Slickone]

Forum would only let me attach 5 photos. Here are the rest.

 

[drinkingbird]

Forum would only let me attach 5 photos. Here are the rest.

No way to give definitive answers, you will probably need to invest in a cable tracing tool (tone and probe), or something like the Klein VDV Scout which can trace lots of things at once.

The orange duct is your main feed from outside.
Within the orange duct:
Likely that cut white coax is the cable company's main incoming feed, they will need to put an end on it and connect it to the "in" of the coax splitter.
Blue is probably for incoming phone I would guess (maybe an old POTS line or it is fed from a VOIP box somewhere, not sure if cable, AT&T, etc). You'd need to look at the other end of the orange tube and see where that blue ethernet goes (ethernet is often used to deliver phone now). I can't see why they'd have an ethernet incoming, unless there is a second fiber provider and their ONT box is in a shared space, in which case that ethernet would be for their data, and the coax may also go to that ONT for TV.
The white with green end is AT&T's fiber incoming.

The splitter was probably installed by the cable company at some point, then when the previous homeowner put in satellite and only needed one TV, they connected just that one. You can connect whichever rooms you want back to the "out" ports of the splitter, and cable company will be on the "in". I also see two coaxes coupled together, maybe that is his directTV and whatever is connected to the splitter is just old from previous cable. Again you probably need to disconnect all of them and trace and label the wires to have it make sense. Probably most of those feed rooms and one comes from attic or wherever the satellite is. He either just directly coupled the satellite feed to the room where he needed it, or it is running via the splitter. Your only option to figure that out is just disconnect them all and trace them out. If you don't want to invest in a tracing tool, once you have a TV signal, you just go room to room with a box, and connect one cable at a time to the splitter, when you find one that connects, label that wire, rinse, repeat. Kind of a pain but works. A tone and probe set can be gotten cheap and will be faster.

The rest is just guess work, you need to trace it out, but:
Yellow from top left is probably to a room in the house somewhere that the builder figured is where a router would go. Likely has an RJ45 wall jack on it. Or maybe it goes to another box somewhere else that has lots of ethernets feeding the rest of the house.
That yellow is connected via blue coupler to the yellow on the bottom right which I'm assuming is one of the yellows coming out of the wall box below it. That would have probably been the LAN off his router running to an access point or wired PC, switch, etc. He just had to extend it a bit as it wasn't long enough to get to the wire shelf.
Yellow from AT&T box also appears to come out of that wall box, which would have been the WAN on his router.
Top right Black is probably a phone jack somewhere in the house or feeds to a breakout box with lots of phone lines.
The blue coming out of the wall box below is probably the blue connected to the black phone line going to the rest of the house via that RJ11 box. His AT&T router that was sitting on the wire shelf probably had a phone output on it

 

[follower]

I just bought a preowned house that has a structured media panel, which I've never had, and am trying to figure out what all the previous owners have going on with it and what I need to do to get it right. Seems the previous owner had AT&T fiber, and I plan to carry over my Xfinity cable instead, so I want to remove anything to do with the fiber setup.

As shown in the photos, there are three yellow ethernet cables, one coming from the top left hole in the panel, one coming from the AT&T box, and the other coming from the hole in the wall (where does it go?). None of these are connected to anything on this end, as all three shown lying on the wire shelf.

There's a blue wire and a white wire coming in from the orange tube. Both are just "cut" on this end, and lying on the wire shelf. When looking at new homes, I noticed this orange tube sticking out of the house to the outside. What is this supposed to be used for?

There's a black wire and a blue wire, both coming from the top left hole in the panel, going to a small box (and as shown in the blurry photo, the blue wire is half cut).


As for the coax cable, oddly only one is attached to the splitter. As shown, most of the coax cables aren't connected on this end and I assume those all go to each room, but I assume they had Direct TV (there's a dish on our roof), although one cable is connected for some reason. Also, as shown, why are two of them connected to each other here?

Do people usually put their cable modems inside these panels? And maybe use that one ethernet cable that runs to the hole in the wall to connect the modem to a router in one of the rooms?
Should I buy a better? I see some are much nicer, which a shelf to hold a modem.

Call a technician.

 

[CaptainSTX]

I just bought a preowned house that has a structured media panel, which I've never had, and am trying to figure out what all the previous owners have going on with it and what I need to do to get it right. Seems the previous owner had AT&T fiber, and I plan to carry over my Xfinity cable instead, so I want to remove anything to do with the fiber setup.

As shown in the photos, there are three yellow ethernet cables, one coming from the top left hole in the panel, one coming from the AT&T box, and the other coming from the hole in the wall (where does it go?). None of these are connected to anything on this end, as all three shown lying on the wire shelf.

There's a blue wire and a white wire coming in from the orange tube. Both are just "cut" on this end, and lying on the wire shelf. When looking at new homes, I noticed this orange tube sticking out of the house to the outside. What is this supposed to be used for?

There's a black wire and a blue wire, both coming from the top left hole in the panel, going to a small box (and as shown in the blurry photo, the blue wire is half cut).


As for the coax cable, oddly only one is attached to the splitter. As shown, most of the coax cables aren't connected on this end and I assume those all go to each room, but I assume they had Direct TV (there's a dish on our roof), although one cable is connected for some reason. Also, as shown, why are two of them connected to each other here?

Do people usually put their cable modems inside these panels? And maybe use that one ethernet cable that runs to the hole in the wall to connect the modem to a router in one of the rooms?
Should I buy a better? I see some are much nicer, which a shelf to hold a modem.

This panel was setup to distribute CATV throughout your home. It also can be used to connect a cable modem.

What you need to do is first identify and label both ends of each coaxial cable. This can quickly be done working with a partner and an inexpensive tester like the Sperry TT64202. The most important cable to locate is the cable running from your media panel to the demarc located somewhere on the exterior of your home. This is the coaxial cable that Comcast will use to bring service into your home.

Then you need to decide what services you are going to purchase from Comcast (video, internet, phone, alarm)

Where do you want TVs in each room and is there a coaxial jack that can be used?

Then for Internet where is the best location to put your modem and router. If you are going to use WiFi as you primary method to connect devices then you want to centrally locate your router in the middle of your home particularly if the media panel isn't in a central location. If you have a PC that you want an Ethernet connection for consider locating your modem/router in that room. If you stream a lot of video then consider putting the modem/router next to where your primary TV for streaming is going to be. You can use any of the coaxial jacks in the house to connect both a TV and a modem or just a modem.

It also might be possible to repurpose the blue wire if it was originally installed as a landline phone jack somewhere in the house and is at least Cat5.

If you want to use hard wire connections for some network devices you have the option of using MOCA adapters. MOCA allows data and video to share the same coaxial cable. If you don't need to have the coaxial cables used both for video and data you can purchase some less expensive Ethernet over coaxial adapters.