[scout2028]

My house was built at the end of 2009 and has standard telephone jacks in every room. We gave up land lines years ago so the phone wires in the house are not being used.

My wife's computer has had difficulty with decent WIFI speeds. We have a Lantana with a Linksys EA7500 in the front guest bedroom and her computer is located in the laundry room separated by 2 exterior walls and 2 interior walls. I've placed a range extender in the dining room but it helps only a little and not even that all the time.

Recently I ran a 25 ft. ethernet cable from the single port on the range extender through the dining room through the kitchen up the wall over the door and then down to her ethernet port. Now getting ~100 Mbps on her system. And that's WiFi to the range extender and ethernet cable to the computer. That's great but the ethernet cable running through everything is not a long term solution.

Based on a previous thread

Looking to replace phone jacks with ethernet connections

I suspect that the cabling already exists for me to have a direct ethernet connection from my router (it has a open port), directly to her system. Adjacent to her computer is a telephone jack and adjacent to the router there is what used to be a telephone jack that CenturyLink converted to 2 RJ45 jacks when we had their service. (Went back to Comcast after CenturyLink for 2+ years.)

The previous thread noted above referred to a low-voltage panel but I do not have one in the garage but I do have a 'Network Service' box on the outside of the house. (Can't get to it now because of overgrown shrubs but have someone coming to trim later this week - at least he said he was.) I think this box was used for standard telephone wiring.

Is that the low-voltage panel?

Is it as simple as rewiring the laundry room receptacle from telephone to RJ45 and plugging an ethernet cable from router to wall and then another from laundry room wall to wife's computer?

Do I need to do anything inside the exterior box?

Thanks,

[Dana1963]

Most practical would be to run CAT5 cable from existing location to desired location inside wall thru attic to new location preferably thru in interior wall. Either complete yourself or hire electrician maybe $100 or less. Electricians sometimes charge premium for attic work.

[scout2028]

As a matter of fact I was making a list of electricians to call to do exactly as you suggest when I came across the thread I noted. That will be my fallback plan. However, if it's as simple as changing the receptacle on two jacks, I can probably handle that myself.
Thanks,

[Dana1963]

Configuration of CAT5 wiring is displayed on jack connection it is either A or B but must be the same at both terminations. Cable from modem to jack and to computer either net can be 568a or 568b.
The maximum length of a CAT5 cable before degradation is 100 meters or around 320 +-feet

[villagetinker]

We had a similar problem. My solution was to move the modem to the center of the house, and all of our connectivity problems were solved. We use laptops, so I was trying very hard to avoid cables. We have a piece of furniture very close to the center of the house. I was able to reroute the Comcast cable from a bedroom through an interior wall to the new location and then move the modem to that location. Send me a PM if you want all the details.

[positiveinlife]

I had the same problem. this is what i did:

Changed the phone wall connectors to cat 6.
Back fed a ethernet connection from my modem to the new jack in that room.
Changed the phone connectors in the low voltage panel to cat 6.
Placed a network switch in the panel .
identified the one line that was back fed to the panel buy connecting a lap top to all and find the live one.
connect it to the input of the network switch.
connect all remaining to the switch and you are good to go.

[scout2028]

VillageTinker:
Many thanks for the suggestion but . . .
for now the router is needed where it is and I really (!!) don't want it to go elsewhere. The Range extender handles everything else very well including TV, iPads, laptops and sitting on the lanai. It's just this one computer behind too many walls that has the problem. If I have to, I'll have an electrician run a cat5 cable from the guest room to the laundry room.

Thanks again.

[elevatorman]

Put a range extender in the laundry room.

[tsmith167]

You should look into a mesh router. I have an eero that covers 3500 sq ft through several walls with no problem. No wires to run. Simple solution.

[danglanzsr]

I also have a Lantana. I used a TP-Link power line ethernet connection to install an AC3000 wireless modem in the living room area. It works great everywhere and can be done in a half hour.

[biker1]

Yes, you are correct. Since you aren't using CenturyLink anymore, the cat5 cable in the room where your router is located is not being used anymore. You need to find out where the cat5 cables (from each room) terminate. That will typically be a low-voltage panel in the garage but it sounds like it is elsewhere in your home. If you can find where they terminate then you should be able to splice the cat5 cables from the two rooms together. The trick is figuring out which cat5s to splice together. You need to match up the 8 color coded wires (4 pairs). There are compression connectors (insert two wires and crush the connector down) that are handy for this. It sounds like you still have an RJ-11 connector in one room. Replace that with an RJ-45 - 4 pairs, use the "A" connection stencil. At this point you should be able to run a cat5 cable from your router to the RJ-45 connector in the one room and a cat5 cable from the RJ-45 in the other room to your computer.

However, the best solution was from tsmith167 in post #9. Buy a mesh router. It should provide more uniform WiFi performance than a range extender and you also wind up with a single namespace for WiFi.

Originally Posted by scout2028

My house was built at the end of 2009 and has standard telephone jacks in every room. We gave up land lines years ago so the phone wires in the house are not being used.

My wife's computer has had difficulty with decent WIFI speeds. We have a Lantana with a Linksys EA7500 in the front guest bedroom and her computer is located in the laundry room separated by 2 exterior walls and 2 interior walls. I've placed a range extender in the dining room but it helps only a little and not even that all the time.

Recently I ran a 25 ft. ethernet cable from the single port on the range extender through the dining room through the kitchen up the wall over the door and then down to her ethernet port. Now getting ~100 Mbps on her system. And that's WiFi to the range extender and ethernet cable to the computer. That's great but the ethernet cable running through everything is not a long term solution.

Based on a previous thread

Looking to replace phone jacks with ethernet connections

I suspect that the cabling already exists for me to have a direct ethernet connection from my router (it has a open port), directly to her system. Adjacent to her computer is a telephone jack and adjacent to the router there is what used to be a telephone jack that CenturyLink converted to 2 RJ45 jacks when we had their service. (Went back to Comcast after CenturyLink for 2+ years.)

The previous thread noted above referred to a low-voltage panel but I do not have one in the garage but I do have a 'Network Service' box on the outside of the house. (Can't get to it now because of overgrown shrubs but have someone coming to trim later this week - at least he said he was.) I think this box was used for standard telephone wiring.

Is that the low-voltage panel?

Is it as simple as rewiring the laundry room receptacle from telephone to RJ45 and plugging an ethernet cable from router to wall and then another from laundry room wall to wife's computer?

Do I need to do anything inside the exterior box?

Thanks,

[Engine12]

Any idea what speeds you’re getting with the mesh ?

[Malsua]

Originally Posted by scout2028

Is it as simple as rewiring the laundry room receptacle from telephone to RJ45 and plugging an ethernet cable from router to wall and then another from laundry room wall to wife's computer?


Thanks,

That's not going to work. There are two reasons. The first being that phone wire is not ethernet cable. Ethernet cable is "Twisted pairs", and the reason they are twisted is because of electrical interference. Cat 3, cat 5, cat 5e, cat6 etc is essentially defined by the number of twists per inch. Phone cable usually has zero.

The second reason is that phone wires are joined all throughout the structure. The wires at any plug will have continuity at all plugs. Even if they used twisted pair drops throughout the structure(and they may have), there are a bunch of open ends which will act like antennae. That is no good. If it were to work, I suspect it would drop to the lowest possible speed the NIC can negotiate too.

The easiest solution in your case is powerline ethernet adapters. You can find these at Best Buy or online. You plugs these into an outlet, plug the ethernet cable from the computer to one and the router to a different one. They auto negotiate and provide a hybrid solution.

They use the electricity of your house to transmit the signal from one to the other. They work, I've installed them in a number of places over the years where WIFI signal was weak.

There are some considerations. First, they must be plugged into the wall. Plugging them into a surge strip will yield mixed results. It may or may not work, or if it works, it may be slow. Some surge strips clip noise out of the electric and this will affect the communication. It probably won't work at all if plugged into a UPS. They should be plugged straight into a wall outlet for best results. As long as the outlets are on the same electrical panel, there should be no issue at all.

One final note, the cost is related to the available bandwidth they provide. The cheapest ones will probably be plenty for most people. The more expensive ones also have a plug, so you aren't losing the wall outlet.

One at best buy is: "NETGEAR - Powerline 2000 + Extra Outlet" That's a pretty good one. I apparently can't embed a link, but go to best buy and search for that. There are others, see what they have.

[garrykolb]

I second the suggestion for a mesh router. I have a Juniper, same layout as a Lantana. I have a three node eero mesh router with the main in the living room, another in the laundry room and a third in the front bedroom. Each has two Ethernet ports. I have a slammed WiFi signal everywhere in the house as well as all around the house outside. No wiring needed.

[WesMan]

Look into Power Line Network.