Thought I’d written something here about this already, but I guess not. I ordered (and have received) all the stuff I need to start redoing the phone lines in the house. There’s a lot of complete crap in places – lines that are run to jacks with telephone *cord* (like what you use to plug your phone into the wall) instead of proper cable, places where there’s three splices in a row on the same line for no reason.. it’s no wonder our phones are noisy, though some of that really is the fault of the lines coming in. So I picked up a butt set for testing, a 66 block and two 110 blocks (one 110 will have the phone drops and incoming lines, the other will be a bridge, and the 66 will link the permanent house wiring with the telco lines and whole house DSL filter – overkill, but it’ll be clean when it’s done), whole house DSL filter, punchdown tool, and a probe amplifier for the later inevitable “oh crap which wire is this one” moments. Plus a couple adapters for hooking up to test things. All in all, quite a lot of equipment, and good quality. Photos of the stuff, plus the beginning of the project (namely, the “before” shots) available in the gallery.
I’m hoping I can pick up the plywood this weekend and mount it to the wall, and I can start Phase I – installing the new equipment, having the NID and protector moved over, and reterminating all the existing wires to the new blocks. Then Phase II will happen right after the data network lines are run throughout the house, since I’ll be using the same CAT5e cable for phones and data. Extra benefit is that the telecom network as-is won’t go down, just the jacks will be phased out as new ones come into use.