Phone Jacks for networking

Is it possabile to use a houses phonelines for a home network? Ive seen some network cables with only 4 wires in them, but not sure what speed they are.. just curious if it was possible without going wireless or running cat5/6 cables all over.

From a technical perspective it's theoretically possible, not sure that I would recommend it though. You'd probably need to find some special gadget or adapter to go between normal cat 5 cable and the phone jack. Additionally, I imagine it would be slower and less reliable than either wireless or cat 5. You might also disrupt phone calls or phone calls might disrupt your network.

Well its not a massive deal. Im in an apartment, dont have the landline phone service so the lines are just their. Was just a silly thought.

I've seen some articles on power line network adapters, you plug a gizmo in an AC plug and it has an ethernet plug, you get one for each computer.

Technically, wire is wire. So you could run Ethernet over silly old POTS wire. for 100baseT or slower, you only use four wires, and the POTS wiring often ran four pairs (eight wires) so you could run POTS and ethernet.

It would probably work over short distances and slow speeds. But POTS wiring doesn't have the proper internal twisting of pairs, so expect cross talk, retransmisions, etc.

You'd have to make sure the wiring wasn't hooked up to the POTS network. If it is, you can fry your equipment. Since it's an apartment, you probably wont have control over the wiring closet so it's probably not a good idea. Any phone tech arrives to hook-up somebody's phone happens to punch the wrong pair of wires down is going cook your gear. For that matter, you might not even be able to complete a circuit from one room to the next without access to that wiring closet.

Some phone wiring is Cat3 or better so you might actually get reasonable data rates if it's not run through conduit or kinked or coiled up anywhere. I cheated that way in an old house to get from a ground floor room to the basement (about 2 meters), but I was able to insure there could be no accidental hookups to the phone system.

If all you need to do is just get through the wall from one room to another and outlets are back to back in the wall and you definitely isolate them from the rest of the building, it can work, but it's not recommended.

the lan cable is rj45 it needs 5 lines to connection to communicate
but the phone lines is rj11 only 3cables is required..but rj45 is configured is 3 or 4 ways cross over roll over straight its customized as per the network requirement

No, this is not correct.

POTS telephone needs one pair, two wires. Most CAT3 has at least three pairs and often it has four. The spares are for second lines, backup in case one breaks, etc.

10baseT Ethernet uses four wires, two pairs.

I've never seen any networking cable that used five wires. Or five pairs.

Check your facts.

It's no wonder your only 10 reps are all in disagreement with something you've posted. Perhaps you should just listen for a long while and try to learn something before you speak? At least verify your facts before you start ranting.

I would splurge for the $60 wireless router and be done with it.

OK, I have to come in here and spread some knowledge around ( :

Cat 3 cable is commonly used for phone wire. Most often this uses either 1 or 2 pairs (2 or 4 wires). These are connected to RJ-11 jacks/plugs by default.

Cat 5, Cat 5e, and Cat 6 wire has 4 pairs of wires (8 total wires). This is your Ethernet capable wire and is connected to RJ-45 connectors.

The major difference beyond the wire count is the twists in the pairs. Cat3 cable has a certain certification for the number of times in an inch that the two wires twist over each other. This is significantly less than that of Cat 5/5e/6 cable. This is a MAJOR contributor to the limits of transmission speed and reliability.

Cat3 cable can only reliably transfer data at a 10 Mbps. This is due to a property known as cross talk. When data is transferred over wire it is done so using electrical signals. These signals create electro-magnetic fields. If these EM fields pass through another wire, the signal can "cross-talk" to the other pair. When this happens, data is corrupted and then must be dropped and retransmitted.

The twists in the wires (since each pair transmits in a + and - pairing) cancel out the EM fields with certain patterns. Cat 5/5e/6 cable has 4 pairs and each pair is twisted at different rates so that cross-talk is eliminated.

So, as E-Oreo said, it is TECHNICALLY possible for you to connect those wires. However, considering the wiring closed the phone lines run to, I really doubt it would work well if at all.