You have a new computer; the fastest modem and hundreds of megabytes of ram, yet the modem only connects to the Internet at dog-slow speeds. Having the latest computer equipment does indeed make surfing the web more enjoyable. But there are other things you can do to improve the connection speeds that don't involve replacing your computer hardware. Upgrading the home's telephone cable can make a noticeable improvement in the data transfer rate between the modem and the Internet.
For 99% of the homes in North America, the cable in the wall is old and weary. In fact, it's not even up to the job we ask it to do on a daily basis. While some things get better with age, telephone cable pretty much stays the same. It's not that the telephone cable in the walls is getting weaker, the world of telecommunications is getting more demanding. When you see a street being dug up and a monster-sized spool of wire being feed into the ground like a giant rotor-rooter, that cable is not good ole-fashioned copper, it's fiber optic. While most homes are not quite ready for fiber optic cable, your home is due for an upgrade of the old telephone cable.
Recently the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States adopted new rules for installing telephone cable in new homes. On January 20, 2000 (effective six months later), the FCC adopted Rule 99-405 that mandates the elimination of traditional phone cable. The Commission's new rules requires that copper inside wiring be, at a minimum, solid, 24 gauge or thicker, twisted pairs, marked to indicate compliance with the electrical specifications for Category 3, as defined in the ANSI/EIA/TIA Building Wiring Standards.
The FCC concluded that "with the exponential increase in the installation of additional telephone lines to accommodate Internet, fax and voice traffic, the Commission recognized the need to establish minimum quality standards for telephone inside wiring to ensure consumer access to advanced broadband services." If homes are built or retrofitted with traditional telephone cable, the commission believes that connection to "advanced broadband services, as well as traditional voice band services, the deployment of these services could be hampered."
While the FCC mandated the installation of Cat. 3 cable in all new homes, the better Cat 5. and Cat5e have replaced Cat. 3. Category 5 cable differs from traditional phone cable in many ways. First, there are four pairs of wires under the outer sheath of cable. Each pair of copper wires can carry one phone line or line of service from the phone company to every telephone jack in the home. Each pair of copper wires are twisted around the other and all four pairs are then gently twisted around the other pairs. This twisting action prevents noise from entering the cable and deteriorating the quality of the data or voice. An example of noise leaking into a wire most have experienced is a ham or CB radio operator's voice coming over a pair of speakers. Electrical noises from within the home are leaking onto your existing cable right now. You may not be able to hear it during a voice phone call, but your modem can sense it and has to deal with it as it tries to maintain the connection to the Internet.
In many homes it's easy to pull out the old cable while pulling through the new cable. You will need to remove the phone jack and possibly the existing phone box in the wall. During the original installation, some installers were required to staple the cable to a wall stud before it entered the box. After cutting off the wires to the existing terminal, attach some new Cat 5 cable to the end of the old wire with some electrical tape. Have someone pull the old cable from the basement, attic, or next junction box. As you pull out the old cable the new cable will be feed through.
In most homes, the telephone cable is installed in a "daisy-chain" fashion. This is where the cable is wired from one jack to the next, then onto another jack. Today when cables are installed in smart homes, all the cables are run to the same location in a "Home-Run" fashion. You will need a device that will take all these incoming cables and terminate them into a hub or punch-down block. Smarthome has many types of distribution panels on our web site.
If you need some help with the project or want to go to the next level, check out our best book on the subject; Structured Wiring Design Manual. This book explains how to make a complete phone wiring system plus much more. While your pulling cable for improved phone service, this book will help you set up a computer network so that some day, all your home's computers can share one connection to the Internet.
