Hi all, I’m trying to run a Ethernet cable to my home office in a house built in the 60s. This connection is unlabeled and I’m not sure what it is. Can I somehow replace it with an Ethernet cable? I’m new to all of this and did some poking around in the sub but I’m not really sure what I’m looking at or what I’m in for. I don’t have any coaxial cables that I can utilize (unless they are hidden behind a wall? Any easy way to find those?). Thank you.
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25 pair Cat3 wire typically used on business RJ66 blocks for distributing phones. This case it looks like the possible main feed into the room for several lines. I would recommend replacement to a Cat 6 ethernet wire if at all possible. This will not work for internet purposes are any decent speeds.
4 hours, is what it is. Possibly more.
It is a “RAT’S NEST” of cat 3 wiring old “pots” wires and wall jack. If the wires in the wall are cat5 you can still use them for Ethernet. But I doubt it.
This is cat5. Convert it by toning the other end and putting a switch and plugging into your router
Wrong. Just… so wrong.
That’s a x.2600 wiring harness. With a little effort it can work for communication
Rat5e
It’s a poor wall paintjob
Haha I agree! One of the many projects I need to fix from the previous owners.
rat king
A rip it all out and start again from scratch job.
Old Bell System/AT&T phone wiring and any technician that worked for them would have been fired making that mess. They would never use electrical tape. They would use crimp splices that had an insulating “goo” in them. This looks like an amateur job.
The old Western Electric Princess and Trimline phones would use the black/yellow pair in the jack to be used with a “wall wart” transformer that plugged into an AC outlet to power the dial/touch tone lamps on those phones. When the later models of those phones were converted to LEDs for the dial/touch tone illumination, the black/yellow pair in the jack could be used for a two line phone that used one jack for both lines.
A rats nest.
It looks like a 25-pair phone cable. You could use it to carry Ethernet if the other end is in a useful location.
That looks like your soon shore to re-wire.
Years of neglect.
Looks very much like CAT3 Cable, 25 Pair, UTP.
Little high on that pair count, look again. 😉
Other pairs might still be hidden in the wall.
This isn’t an office building, and nobody “hid extra pairs in the wall” for good reason. This wiring is a very specific technique used to quickly feed phone pairs in new SFH and apartment buildings of a certain era when the minor CAPEX advantage of a single shared cable over home runs was sold to developers as a cost cutting measure (or just done anyway to pad wallets when home runs were specified).
You’re definitely right that it uses standard 25-pair color code, but it’s just a six pair residential run here: white from blue to slate, and red-blue.