atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring cat 3 or cat 6

you miss the point ,no one here is suggesting running Cat 3 for Data and certainly the question would be asked as to "what type of phone service "and if VOIP is the answer then cat5 would certainly be used

if we are doing dual drops as we usually do then a Cat3 for voice and Cat5 for data is all that necessary

if the customer decides to go VOIP at a future date then the cable to the back of his PC will be on the Cat5 data connection back to the switch

that's whats happened in every VOIP conversion Ive seen

I just talked about this with the telecom guys at my school. Their current standard is to run a cat 3 for voice, normally split out into two jacks, and at least one cat 6 cable for data. When they do end up switching to a voice over IP system, they will simply use the data cable, and run a cord from the phone to the PC. This seems to be what is done most of the time as it is.

...Their current standard is to run a cat 3 for voice, normally split out into two jacks...

I don't intend to get off topic too much, but what is the best way to connect two voice jacks in the same faceplace to one cable? I usually connect two pair to one jack and the other two pair to the other jack. Is this the best way?

-Nelson

that's what I do

blue /orange jack one

green /brown jack two

Same here.

Same here, I also use a blue jack on the first one and a green jack on the second one,So a year or two later I can just look at it and know what I did at that site.

What did they use here?

They will, so long as at least one end of the link allows you to manually set the speed to 10mb.

Otherwise, they auto-negotiate to 100mb, which doesn't work so well over cat3.

An IP phone which does not allow you to manually set the speed connected to an unmanaged switch (which also does not allow you to manually set the speed) will auto-negotiate to 100mb on cat3 and there isn't a thing you can do to fix it, other than replacing the switch.

At one time (ca 1994) there was equipment available which could use all 4 pairs of cat3 for 100mbps. (100VG-Anylan and 100BaseT4 were the specs).

It was never very popular, and I have never seen any of this equipment.

Incidentally, how do you all terminate cat5e on 66 blocks? I have done it two ways:

1)The usual way, as you would do with cat3 and lower: Untwist the cat5e all the way to the comb on the side of the block. This requires untwisting the cable for at least 2-3 inches. What a pain.

2)The cat5e way: Maintain the twists up to the terminals. This only requires untwisting the wire about an inch or so, but requires that you make sure you've got the 66 punch tool oriented correctly, as cut needs to be facing UP for white/blue and DOWN for blue/white and so on.

I find that method 2 is much quicker. It also has the advantage that the installation should comply with cat5e requirements if you used a cat5e 66 block.