Patching in the Phones

The telco installer had naturally followed the T-568A wiring convention, which I had also chosen, so I didn't have to do any color code conversion when it came time to terminate one of the CAT5e cables from the demarc at the Leviton 47609-EMP Telephone Patching Expansion Board I had chosen for phone line patching.

Figure 11 shows a detail of the demarc CAT5e cable terminated to the Leviton board and also how both normal "data" patch (blue) and RJ11/RJ12 "phone" (beige) cables can be used for phone patching with this board.

TIP: Don't assume that the wiring order for 8 position punch-down blocks is always the same. Always follow the color-coding instructions supplied with the patch panel!

Figure 11: Phone patch panel detail

(click image to enlarge)

Figure 12 is an expanded view showing the somewhat messy, but effective, system of patch cables between the Leviton board and the RJ45 patch panel that I had terminated all my "phone" runs into. I chose to install some of my DSL filters here instead of at the other end, which required the use of RJ11/12 cables for those patches. The larger beige box is a combo DSL filter / Y jack supplying an unfiltered connection to my DSL modem and filtered connection for my office phone line.

Figure 12: Phone patching
(click image to enlarge)

The nice thing about this system is that my "phone" lines can always be switched over to data use since they're CAT5e from end-to-end. I don't know if I'll ever switch over to IP phones and a mini VoIP PBX, but at least I can!