We're quoting a building that has Cat5E phone cabling and no data cabling. Does anyone have experience with splitting the Cat5E to carry both voice and data?
Regards, Edwin Humphries, Managing Director
Eh? Cat5E IS data cable....unless you mean "they" used Cat5E cable then hooked it up to the PBX/ISDN/PSTN etc....talk about a waste of $$$! Voice requires very basic cable, (if it were a car, it would be a combi van), whereas Ethernet has much higher requirements (say, Lexus standard...not quite European exotica).
There arn't any major electrical hassles; the voice shouldn't significantly interfere with 10/100Mbps Ethernet. Of course using standard single-pair voice on Cat5E as well as data, is certainly NOT standard. Standard Ethernet only uses 2 pair, and Cat5/5E has 4 pair, so "theoretically" you've got 2 pair "spare". In reality, you don't becuase those spare wires are often used for inline power etc.
Then there's the whole Austel approval mess you'll create if you wire your single-pair voice in with your Ethernet over Cat3/5/5E. Basically you can be fined, big time if it ever touches a public phone network (even with a PBX in between).
Just run a proper VoIP solution (H323 et al), go WiFi for your data, or rewire the office. I don't know how much cable is in the walls, but you MIGHT have enough the separate the voice and data into pysically separate Cat5E cable runs. As longs as one blue cable ONLY carries voice and another blue cable ONLY carries data, Austel approval wont be an issue.
HTH.
-- James (I used to be a data cabler in another life) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
