Forgive me if I provide too much or too little detail. In a nutshell, I'm trying to place my router in a different location in a home partially pre-wired for ethernet, but the jacks aren't working as expected.
I live in a two-story townhouse that was wired initially by at&t U-Verse (I am not the initial owner). There is a communications panel with a ridiculous number of wires in the garage (all photos with DM prefix), which the last service rep that came out said was the demarc for them. I believe it's the wire marked Term. or Bldg in the photo. He marked another wire with a "?" for me, because he couldn't figure out where it went.
Inside the home proper on the upper floor, there is one one wall plate with one jack labelled internet that gets plugged into the WAN port of a Arris 5268AC, and another jack for phone (which I've never used). Two feet from it is another wall plate with a single (blue) RJ45 jack wired using 568A (LAN1, to make this easier). About 45 feet opposite this (other side of room), is another blue RJ45 jack (LAN2) fairly close to a coax term (separate wall plates). On the ground floor, almost directly under LAN1 I have a third pair of wall plates. One with a blue RJ45 (LAN3) and telephone jack, and another with a coax term. The wall plate with LANA3 was wired 568A-ish for data with the blue pair going to the phone jack instead. Every jack mentioned in this paragraph resides in a firewall, where the outlet boxes themselves have been coated with fire-stop putty prior to drywall going up. The three RJ45s as described are the only three that I have ever seen in the entire home, and all of the ethernet cabling is 5e (same with jacks).
The phone might actually be terminated in the attic (there's some wire labelled phone up there). The home also had a wired alarm system as well as some form of link to a common fire sprinkler/notification system (shared by the townhouses in building). I mention these because of the demarc so many flipping cables.
I assumed LAN1 would connect to LAN3 which is about 14 feet below it. Using a cable tester, it seems to be open. However, a cable tester did show LAN1 and LAN2 to be in sync. LAN3 at some point I'm positive was working because my media center equipment (TV, game console, set-top box, etc.) were using it. The problems began when I tried plugging in a router to LAN3 and it utterly failed to do anything (but the router could feed a signal into it from LAN1. LAN1 to LAN3 shows open for all wires.
Trying to run fish tape through the wall, I ran into two problems: a) the fire stop putty is a bit difficult to manipulate, and b) trying to do it from upstairs to downstairs end exactly how far it is from outlet box to floor. I'm afraid the floor goes between the wall joists and that only a small hole was cut for ethernet cable.
I am at a complete loss as to how to even begin diagnosis and/or repairing this. Some possibly stupid questions I have are:
I live in a two-story townhouse that was wired initially by at&t U-Verse (I am not the initial owner). There is a communications panel with a ridiculous number of wires in the garage (all photos with DM prefix), which the last service rep that came out said was the demarc for them. I believe it's the wire marked Term. or Bldg in the photo. He marked another wire with a "?" for me, because he couldn't figure out where it went.
Inside the home proper on the upper floor, there is one one wall plate with one jack labelled internet that gets plugged into the WAN port of a Arris 5268AC, and another jack for phone (which I've never used). Two feet from it is another wall plate with a single (blue) RJ45 jack wired using 568A (LAN1, to make this easier). About 45 feet opposite this (other side of room), is another blue RJ45 jack (LAN2) fairly close to a coax term (separate wall plates). On the ground floor, almost directly under LAN1 I have a third pair of wall plates. One with a blue RJ45 (LAN3) and telephone jack, and another with a coax term. The wall plate with LANA3 was wired 568A-ish for data with the blue pair going to the phone jack instead. Every jack mentioned in this paragraph resides in a firewall, where the outlet boxes themselves have been coated with fire-stop putty prior to drywall going up. The three RJ45s as described are the only three that I have ever seen in the entire home, and all of the ethernet cabling is 5e (same with jacks).
The phone might actually be terminated in the attic (there's some wire labelled phone up there). The home also had a wired alarm system as well as some form of link to a common fire sprinkler/notification system (shared by the townhouses in building). I mention these because of the demarc so many flipping cables.
I assumed LAN1 would connect to LAN3 which is about 14 feet below it. Using a cable tester, it seems to be open. However, a cable tester did show LAN1 and LAN2 to be in sync. LAN3 at some point I'm positive was working because my media center equipment (TV, game console, set-top box, etc.) were using it. The problems began when I tried plugging in a router to LAN3 and it utterly failed to do anything (but the router could feed a signal into it from LAN1. LAN1 to LAN3 shows open for all wires.
Trying to run fish tape through the wall, I ran into two problems: a) the fire stop putty is a bit difficult to manipulate, and b) trying to do it from upstairs to downstairs end exactly how far it is from outlet box to floor. I'm afraid the floor goes between the wall joists and that only a small hole was cut for ethernet cable.
I am at a complete loss as to how to even begin diagnosis and/or repairing this. Some possibly stupid questions I have are:
- The at&t tech had some form of contactless continuity tester that could be used on live circuits without unplugging anything. Is there are reliable and reasonable affordable version of this type of tool, especially one that doesn't need to be plugged in at both ends?
- Does anyone have any experience and/or recommendations for fishing cabling through a firewall (fire-stop wall)?
- Can a 568A cat 5e cable work with 568B cat 6 jacks?
- Can anyone explain what's going on in the anchor photo? The cable seems to be looped around the screw post in some strange way.
- Is there some convention at&t follows for cable colors? Other than black for coax, I'm getting mixed signals for the demarc photos.
- Is it safe to assume splicing ethernet cables does not work like it does with common 120V wiring? I ask because of the funky types of connections going on in the demarc box, LAN3, etc. I was afraid somehow they spliced LAN2 and LAN3 together and that LAN3's connection somehow broke.