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Help please with RJ45 - RJ11 cable problem

AndyP

AndyP

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MIL’s residential home has some sort of weird (to me anyway) telelphony system. The Telephone has an RJ11 connection . T’other end of cable is RJ45. We need a longer cable, at least 10m so she does not need to get out of bed to answer the phone.

An off the shelf RJ45 to RJ11, male to male cable does not work.
Off the shelf RJ45 to RJ11 with the internal wires in the same order in both connectors, yellow, green, brown, white.
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Here is the shorter working cable, note the order of the wires, white, brown, green yellow on the RJ45 and yellow, green, brown, white on the Rj11
IMG_4751.jpeg
So what is this cable called and where on earth can I find one. The usual DIY sheds are clueless.
Upon recommendation we also tried a Cat 6 crossover adapter which also did not work.
 

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Ask me again 25 years ago.
My initial reaction was that you need a crossover cable, but you've tried that, and the Cat6 should be backward compatible. Have you tried a proper crossover cable, rather than an adapter?
Sorry I can't be of more help
S
PS Do you mean so she does NOT have to get out of bed, or are you deliberately trying to make life more difficult for her? LOL!
 
Oops, thanks Steve, now edited.
Yes we tried a crossover adapter without success and if a crossover cable exists ( we’ve heard this term before) I can’t find one
 
Thanks Greg and welcome to the Haven.
I am sure crimp tools must be available without having to buy 50 connectors. That will be my fallback if a cable can’t be found
 
If I hadn't had all my cabling kit stolen, I'd make one up for you.

Is there a French equivant of PC World? There must be cabling companies around, though I have had no need to find one. They are the people to talk to.

FYI, ordinary network cables are used to join a network via a hub or a router or a switch. You can network two PCs together directly, but that requires a crossover cable, it will probably have an X tag on it.

I can't remember the rest, it was all a very long time ago.
S
 
I’ve never come across a PC World equivalent, Boulanger, & Darty are the big electrical retailers but not IT specific, all Boulanger had was rj45 to rj11 without the crossover. LeroyMerlin, Castorama and Mr Bricolage were also a dead end.

I’ll get a crimp tool and as few connectors as possible.
 
I think I get where you're coming from, but could a cordless phone provide the not get out of bed solution?
 
Cordless phones are too small. Hand held ear/mouth piece wired to phone with large keys a must. The existing phone also has large keys for a few regularly used preprogrammed numbers.
 
AndyP said:
Thanks Greg and welcome to the Haven.
I am sure crimp tools must be available without having to buy 50 connectors. That will be my fallback if a cable can’t be found
Click to expand...
Yeah I’m only looking on Amazon, you can get a similar tool for 8.99 and 10 crimps for 4 quid. If the go this route make sure you get pass through plugs otherwise you have to get the cable tail length spot and are much more fiddly. With passthrough the tails are much longer than they need to be and the tool cuts them flush as you crimp.
 
It probably should be a cross over cable, if you think of a comms bus then the Tx will go to Rx and the Rx to Tx at each end but I would say the clue is in
AndyP said:
MIL’s residential home has some sort of weird (to me anyway) telelphony system.
Click to expand...

Have you ask about any details, it might be some form of VOIP system or a phone system on a LAN.
 
Spectric said:
It probably should be a cross over cable, if you think of a comms bus then the Tx will go to Rx and the Rx to Tx at each end but I would say the clue is in


Have you ask about any details, it might be some form of VOIP system or a phone system on a LAN.
Click to expand...
First thing we did. Their maintenance man was also less than well clued up suggesting cable could be bought from local diy sheds. All the available cables we were shown were not crossover. I have just seen this type of wiring described as reverse wired and I can find RJ11 to RJ 11 reverse wired but not RJ11 to RJ45.
Looks like I can get a crimping tool in store and a pack of two connectors. I’ll do that on Monday.
 
Mike said:
I think you might be overthinking this. Instead of looking for a single cable to replace the existing cable,
Click to expand...
That is potentially a good idea, just extend one end of the existing cable using as shown above and then any crossover that has been done in the RJ45 to RJ11 is as is.
 
Mike, thanks, that is a very good point and so obvious. I’ve already got sufficient cable though that just needs rewiring at one end. Will check out price of extension cable vs tool and connector. Although a new tool in the armoury has it’s own appeal of course.
 
AndyP said:
Mike, thanks, that is a very good point and so obvious. I’ve already got sufficient cable though that just needs rewiring at one end. Will check out price of extension cable vs tool and connector. Although a new tool in the armoury has it’s own appeal of course.
Click to expand...
But how often will you use it ? I bought one ten years ago and used it just the once. An extension cable is, IMO, a no-brainer.
 
Yeah, Rog, I know. We are kicking ourselves for not thinking of using an extension lead earlier. It’s amazing how one can get so fixated on one solution. I’ve used telecom extensions leads in the past (with the old BT sockets). Had Mike not mentioned it I wonder how long, if ever, it would have taken me.

I’m either going to be left with a cable I can’t use or a tool that is unlikely to be used.
 
I rarely use those female-female adapters, but they're great when I need a temporary extension.
Recently, I have taken to wrapping insulating tap round to securely lock both cables in place (I don't trust the little plastic clips). It's inelegant and a bit sticky, but functional. Frog tape also works well, but it's pricey.

Like everyone else I think that's by far the best solution. They're really cheap; I have loads of them and am happy to post one if you need it. The length of the CAT 5 run shouldn't be an issue either, as the necessary bandwidth for the phone is only around 3kHz (not MHz).

I have all the tooling too - I find it extremely useful, as I can run a cable neatly, through small holes, behind skirtings, etc., and then put a plug on the far end as needed. Buy a decent crimp tool, not a cheap and nasty one, and you'll find you use it more than you expected.
 
Thanks for the kind offer EV, posting anything from UK to France is an expensive nightmare these days.

Now sorted, couldn’t find a long enough extension so bought tool and rj45 connectors. Pulled off the rj45 from the non crossover cable, trimmed off the exposed copper wires, arranged in right order in new connector and crimped which took about a minute.
And it works!
 
AndyP said:
Thanks for the kind offer EV, posting anything from UK to France is an expensive nightmare these days.

Now sorted, couldn’t find a long enough extension so bought tool and rj45 connectors. Pulled off the rj45 from the non crossover cable, trimmed off the exposed copper wires, arranged in right order in new connector and crimped which took about a minute.
And it works!
Click to expand...
Well done. Apparently, as I was told in all truth at the beginning of April, that if you get the wires round the wrong way then all the 1's go down one wire and the 0's another one.
 
AndyP said:
Thanks for the kind offer EV, posting anything from UK to France is an expensive nightmare these days.

Now sorted, couldn’t find a long enough extension so bought tool and rj45 connectors. Pulled off the rj45 from the non crossover cable, trimmed off the exposed copper wires, arranged in right order in new connector and crimped which took about a minute.
And it works!
Click to expand...
Good job, extensions will work but minimising joints is always the best solution.
 
Very good. I've got a couple, a good one and a very good one, but as Keano says, it's my job! 🤣

I've got a lovely tester too which is often needed because despite having terminated hundreds, if not thousands, I still fairly regularly don't notice when I've got one pair the wrong way round and it fails! Tester has pretty lights that tell you if you've done it right by twinkling in number order, which takes some of the monotony out of what can be a very boring job if you've got loads to do.

I also have a tone tester which helps at work and in my house (where there is a bundle of about 30 cat6 cables cable tied together as the come into the media cupboard) which helps to trace out which unused end I am trying to find in the cupboard, without needing to plug into the end of every one. It also means that if I have made a balls up of terminating an end then it doesn't matter because the tester will still send the tone down the cable so I can find the other end, then when I plug in I will see if it's wrong and fix it.
 
Oh mate! What goes on is a world of overly complicated technology for a domestic property! Think speakers in the ceiling/walls of every living space (and the master bath), ethernet ports flood wired to every room, CCTV coax cables to many rooms and various places outdoors, all of this converging back into the basement cupboard which then terminates them into various media switchers/amps/speaker systems which control the audio/lighting in all the rooms. There are then multiple radio tuners, CD changers, amps, video distributers etc in a rack.

All of this is FAR too complicated for what we need, and is now probably getting on for 20 years old, so I'm slowly working out how to replace it all with WiFi components that work with Alexa, and re-wiring the old (very expensive when new, and enterprise spec) Lutron lighting system to replace it with direct powered Phillips Hue (or similar), but this is difficult given the way the circuitry works and how physical circuits in different rooms are powered off the same Lutron computer module, meaning it isn't as simple as just moving the power cables for a room at a time, it needs careful planning, the time for which I simply don't have right now.
🤣
Meh!
 
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