Question for the cable termination gurus here

Jessie.slimer

Jessie.slimer

BIT Beta Team
Aug 23, 2019
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I have been fighting an intermittent internet dropout from my AT&T dsl for some time now. They have been coming by the house and checking everything, but it's always working when they come out. They can see a lot of errors on the line from their central office, but it seems like the lines coming into my house are testing OK. At least they say they are.

To rule out possible bad connections inside my house, I'm going to replace the existing cat5e cable going from the AT&T service box outside my house to the modem. 3 wire pairs are unused, and one pair is connected to a cat5e/RJ45 wall keystone in the office where the modem is. Then there is a phone cable with RJ11 ends plugged into that RJ45 keystone and the other end plugs directly into the RJ11 port of the modem. All cabling and jacks appear to be at least a decade or two old. There may be corrosion.

I'd like to eliminate the keystone jack and terminate a pair of wires on some new cat6 directly into an RJ11 and plug it directly into the modem. Is this even possible? I've never worked with RJ11.
 
CAT6 is overkill. You've got a DSL service so 100 MB cable is even overkill. If it were me, I'd use 5E and leave it at that. Much easier to work with and just terminating a pair into an RJ11 would be a snap with either. Plugging an RJ11 into an RJ45 jack can present problems and I'd suspect that as my first thing and make my own cable with an RJ45 on one end and an RJ11 on the other end.
 
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99% of the phone lines going from the central office to the home is 1 pair twisted phone line.
Very seldom do you find cat 5 going in to the DSL modem.

It would not hurt to replace the line coming into the house with new phone line,
and make a RJ-45 to RJ-11 cable like already suggested.
Or I would replace the jack with a RJ11 jack and use a regular cable.

Save the Cat5 for the digital side going to your computer.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
CAT6 is overkill. You've got a DSL service so 100 MB cable is even overkill. If it were me, I'd use 5E and leave it at that. Much easier to work with and just terminating a pair into an RJ11 would be a snap with either. Plugging an RJ11 into an RJ45 jack can present problems and I'd suspect that as my first thing and make my own cable with an RJ45 on one end and an RJ11 on the other end.
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I have a lot of cat6 already and no cat5 so I'm not worried about wasting it. I'd rather not buy any cat5 or phone cable if possible. But if you are saying termination would be possible with only cat5, that may be the way I have to go.
 
If cat6 (23 gauge) into RJ11 is not possible, maybe I will just run new cat6, which I have plenty of, into a new RJ45 jack, then I would only have to buy a 10 foot section or so of cat5 to make a RJ45 on one end, RJ11 on the other end.
 
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Rakin said:
DSL is on its way out. If the lines from the dslam at the CO to your house are clean and have no faults I would try to get ahold of broadband support or bboc or have a technician do it and have them look at your atm pathway and specifically the capacity of the ridgeback/redback router you are assigned to. Then maybe ask to have your circuit assigned to a different redback router and atm pathway.

And then at your house I would put the modem in bridge mode and put your pppoe authentication on your own private router.

The cat5 wire on your house is probably fine. May look for hard kinks and if it is in a rg45 jack then it needs to be an rg11. Most likely you have a 6pin rg11 jack, they look similar to rg45. Then make sure no filters are plugged in and use a twisted rg11 data cord.


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Click to expand...

Rj not rg.


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Jessie.slimer said:
I would give my left nut for broadband service. But until they run some cable out into the boonies or Starlink materializes, I'm stuck with my crappy DSL. :(
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I understand your frustration. I work for at&t and have been working on dsl since pretty much the beginning. Besides being old outdated technology with old equipment the biggest issue is the trunks and support for it just arnt their anymore. Everything is getting pulled and consolidated. Trying the things I mentioned is your best chance at getting it to run better then what you have been experiencing. If the line is getting errors between the CO and your house then the local techs need to address that.


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Rakin said:
I understand your frustration. I work for at&t and have been working on dsl since pretty much the beginning. Besides being old outdated technology with old equipment the biggest issue is the trunks and support for it just arnt their anymore. Everything is getting pulled and consolidated. Trying the things I mentioned is your best chance at getting it to run better then what you have been experiencing. If the line is getting errors between the CO and your house then the local techs need to address that.


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I appreciate it. I'll definitely look into it. Crap internet is one of the sacrifices I made choosing to live where I do.
 
Jessie.slimer said:
I appreciate it. I'll definitely look into it. Crap internet is one of the sacrifices I made choosing to live where I do.
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Might look into cellular. I’ve recently purchased a net gear cellular modem for 130 off Amazon then added a SIM card for a tablet to my unlimited plan. I did it that way because you can’t get hotspots on the unlimited plans. And so far it’s working but I use it for a backup anyway


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Rakin said:
Might look into cellular. I’ve recently purchased a net gear cellular modem for 130 off Amazon then added a SIM card for a tablet to my unlimited plan. I did it that way because you can’t get hotspots on the unlimited plans. And so far it’s working but I use it for a backup anyway


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That may be my backup plan if Starlink does not work out, especially if we get 5G out by me. I have clear line of site to the cell tower in our closest nearby town.
 
Jessie.slimer said:
That may be my backup plan if Starlink does not work out, especially if we get 5G out by me. I have clear line of site to the cell tower in our closest nearby town.
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I haven’t seen any 5g modems as of yet. And I don’t think real 5g will be in many rural areas either. It just doesn’t go far so it’s more for high density areas


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@Rakin
Have you tried OpenVPN or any inbound network on a Cellular network. If So in detail how did you get the DDNS to work
 
SouthernYankee said:
@Rakin
Have you tried OpenVPN or any inbound network on a Cellular network. If So in detail how did you get the DDNS to work
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I haven’t set up vpn on my cellular yet. Although I will soon. I do get an ipv4 ip on it and it’s been staying the same so far. I have IPSec vpn set up for the primary wan1. The cellular is set up on wan2 as failover. It kicks in fast enough that I don’t even notice while streaming or normal use. The cellular modem does have some vpn settings on it but I have it in bridge mode anyway because I do everything with a unifi usg4pro.


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Jessie.slimer said:
I would give my left nut for broadband service. But until they run some cable out into the boonies or Starlink materializes, I'm stuck with my crappy DSL. :(
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Unsure if cellular wifi is an option (such as Cradlepoint or Vergizon 4g/5g cell wifi). Have had customers use them in a pinch (during construction or delay of incoming broadband connections). Not too shabby for their purpose.
 
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Holbs said:
Unsure if cellular wifi is an option (such as Cradlepoint or Vergizon 4g/5g cell wifi). Have had customers use them in a pinch (during construction or delay of incoming broadband connections). Not too shabby for their purpose.
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I could put up with DSL if it was reliable. It has been for years up until a few months ago. I'm not quite ready for cellular yet. My phones on the Verizon network are only a little faster than my home internet, but they are rock solid reliable.
 
Just for the hell of it log in to your modem and check out the stats. Look at all the line stat numbers and look at the errors and code violations. Then reset it and keep an eye on it. If you need I can tell you how good or bad the link between your modem and the local dslam is. Then you can kind of determine if it is a line issue or a transport issue. Heck I could even run a test on it for you.


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On a side note; with the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. Tmobile will be offering wireless 5G internet service to compete against the cable companies. Just like they do now with their cell service.
 
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