How To Wire RJ45 Patch Panels For Home Phone Lines

You can create flexible, multi-line telephone wiring using Cat5 or Cat6 RJ45 patch panels. Here's some tips on how to wire RJ45 patch panels for telephone wiring.

Home networks are becoming more important and many people are adding structured wiring for high speed data lines in their existing homes or new construction to be able to transport large files such as video and backups quickly. While adding these new data lines it's a good time to rewire your outdated home telephone wiring too!

It's common to use a 66 block or 110 block for analog phone lines but it seemed a bit complicated to do what I wanted. You can create a simple switch board to help you manage multiple analog phone lines using t he same RJ45 patch panels you're using for your Cat6 data lines.

You can have multiple lines per room and easily change which lines go to which rooms. You can have as many or as few incoming phone lines as you need but for this tutorial I'm going to assume there are 4 incoming phone lines. Let's say one main house voice line, 1 line for a home office plus 1 fax line and another line for an older kid's room.

I spent half this past weekend trying to find info on how to do what I wanted without much luck. After I figured out how best to wire telephones using Cat6 patch panels I decided to post it here so I don't forget and incase anyone else finds it useful.

If you don't have a need to regularly switch around your phone lines have a look at my posts on how to wire a 66 block and how to wire a residential 110 block. If you want something very simple use a Leviton Phone Distribution Panel which was very quick and easy to install.
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