Re: Moving my BT phones sockets into a patch panel

["rb_ziggy" <richard.boreham@xxxxxxx>]

We also patched in the phone lines into a panel.  I looked around
for phone specific patch panels and seem to recall that there were
some available but they seemed to be rather more commercial than we
needed (i.e. something like 24 odd connectors just for the phone
which was more than we needed). Not to mention they also seemed to
be a lot more expensive than standard cat5/RJ45 panels

In the end, we just used a standard cat 5 patch panel or rather the
left over part of our main ones. It worked as follows. We took the
main live phone lead from the master box and patched it into a
socket on the panel in the normal way. (Can't remember the pin
mappings but I seem to remember using Keith Doxey's site as a
reference to the phone wiring!) We then daisy chained wiring from
this patch socket across the back of the panel to five further
adjacent sockets. This gave us six 'live' sockets.  These can then
be used at any port in the house by patching from these sockets to
the appropriate port socket.  We limited it to six sockets because
of the REN limitations.  We repeated the process for a second phone
line.  These two banks lie at the 'spare' end of the patch panel so
as not to confuse them with the star wiring around the house! So
with the expedience of using an additional 12 sockets on the patch
panel we have fully patchable phones at very little/no additional
cost.

One word of warning... I reterminated our phones with the standard
RJ45 connectors so we just plug the phone into the socket without
those horrible adaptors.  However, I was warned not to plug in
ethernet equipment into phone patched sockets because (I understand)
the phone voltage is some 50v which is enough to damage the ethernet
equipment.  I'm not actually sure this is true but didn't feel like
testing it out!  Consequently, I only patch phones in where they
will be connected and don't leave any 'lying' around live without a
phone plugged in.

It works very well but I have to confess that I'm not sure whether
this is the 'legit' way to do it.

Regards

Richard