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I'm planning to rewire the networking in my home with Cat5e or Cat6 throughout. The wiring will go to a central patch panel, where my router and main switch will be located.

One issue, though, is that I'm a bit of a collector and I have a few legacy analog telephones (rotary dial) which I intend to keep...and I may add more. They work just fine with my VoIP box. Rather than run two separate sets of wiring, one of which (analog telephone) may not be of much value to a future purchaser, what I'd like to do is to run Cat 5e/6 to RJ-45 jacks throughout...and then use an adapter to connect the RJ-11 telephone plugs to the RJ-45 jacks. The jacks will all be identified and I will use the patch panel to segregate the analog telephone lines from the data lines.

Can anyone recommend a suitable adapter to use? I've tried an online search, but I haven't found anything which stands out yet. I suppose I can roll my own, but a suitable prefab solution would be preferable. Thanks for any suggestions.

ehbowen
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    Obligatory Western Electric "old phone" note - if it *has* an RJ11 it's not *that* old. The phone in a relative's house is "an old rotary" and it is direct-rired with 4-wire round cord to screw terminals. Still works fine. Patched in a jack at some point for a modem/answering machine. – Ecnerwal Dec 24 '20 at 03:56

4 Answers4

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They plug right in

If you wire the blue pair (4,5) for phone service (or the blue and green (3,6) pairs for fancy two-line phones.)

No adapter is needed.

I do it at work all the time (my employer's employer's employer uses 24 port Cat5e patch panels as voice patch with a 25 pair cat3 run to them. One pair to each jack and one spare pair. I don't know why they do it that way, but they do. Anyway, an RJ11 or RJ12 plugs right in, no fuss, no muss, connects fine if the pairs are connected - which might be one reason you are not finding an adapter "that stands out." Any such adapter is a scam, unless it's doing something like breaking out 4 single line or two double line RJ11's (RJ14, technically) from one RJ45.

Ecnerwal
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  • For some reason I thought an RJ11 would be a bit loose in an RJ45, but I have both in front of me - and seems to work just fine. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Dec 24 '20 at 03:40
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    Every phone at [redacted large retail business which depends on the phones working] is plugged into an RJ45 jack with an RJ11 patch cord. For further inscrutable reasons they make us patch the panel with ethernet patch cords even for the phone lines, but the phone end of the system is RJ-11 cords/plugs, and every port in the place is an RJ45. It works, reliably, or they'd have us do it some other way. – Ecnerwal Dec 24 '20 at 03:51
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    sometimes it works, sometimes it breaks the socket. – Jasen Dec 24 '20 at 12:41
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I'm sure there are some suitable adapters out there. The traditional way to do this is to actually put RJ11 jacks on where you need them. If someone later wants to change things around, they replace the jacks, without having to run new cable because they will see it is Cat 5e or Cat 6.

In the really olden days, you might even pull a single 4 pair Cat 3 cable and use one pair (or two) for phone on one jack and two pairs for network, since older Ethernet only needed 2 pairs of wire. But that (a) won't work any more and (b) even if it did, the big cost is the labor, not the cable.

Or you could cheat a bit with one of these: enter image description here

or as @Ecnerwal noted, you may be able to just plug an RJ11 cable in and find it works just fine. If it gets a good signal and it isn't loose then no adapters needed.

manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
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  • I considered this, but I'd like to have the flexibility to relocate the analog telephone extensions without having to change the jacks and jack plates out. – ehbowen Dec 24 '20 at 03:26
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    If you really want to do the wire sharing thing, It will still work, but only at 100Mbit. I would not suggest it, but virtually all gigabit hardware will fall back to 100 Mbit if connected on a two-pair scheme. – Ecnerwal Dec 24 '20 at 13:43
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When I want to have the option of using the same wiring for either phones or data, I install cat6 (or cat 5e) in the wall, with RJ45 jacks on the wall in every room, and the I buy patch cables with RJ11 on one end and RJ45 on the other to connect between the wall jack and the phone. This way you don't need bulky adapters and can standardize the wiring and ports attached to the building. If you use a Cat6 (or Cat5e) rated central patch panel, you can use identical cables on the other end as well. (See comment by Ecnerwal but I think this is a good enough approach that it deserves it's own answer).

bigchief
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Some RJ45 sockets are compatible with RJ11 some are not.

For the sockets that are compatible with RJ1 shims are available to widen the RJ11 so that it is not loose in the wider socket these are optional, I do not know where to buy them.

The sockets that are not compatible with RJ11 will be damaged by inserting an RJ11 and no longer work with RJ45. if the RJ11 does not go in easily stop, you will damage the socket.

Jasen
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