My house was built in 1999 and they used CAT3 to a central location in the ceiling where essentially each of the 8 wires (4 pairs) were twisted together to join them together - Very nasty. I purchased Leviton Cat5/6 distribution panel with patch cables from HomeDepot, separated the CAT3 twisted pairs and punched them all down to the distribution panel. Likewise, I went through the house and replaced all the phone jacks with CAT5 wall plates. From the distribution panel, I can now route hardwire phone, ethernet data, or loconet to any room in the house. If you can get under your house, it would be very easy to install new video and data cabling and a media distribution panel. By the by, CAT3 can carry 100MB and likely 1GB around the house although CAT5E and above is certainly preferred. Dwayne
Hmm... House was built in 1998. No network wiring. Standard TV cable coax to 3 rooms (including both of the rooms in question). Standard 4-wire telephone to both rooms. Only using one line. House is on a slab. Retrofitting the house with Cat 5 all over the place would be nice, but not easy, and certainly out of the train budget. I *could* wire the LocoNet up to the second pair of telephone wires, I suppose. Better would either be WiFi (I've got good coverage of the whole house) or just waiting until we get the second computer for the den. At the rate I'm going, the layout won't be ready for JMRI until the computer budget is full anyway.
If you need to split out a pair or two, do it on a splitter plugged into the jack and plugged into the patch port on the distribution panel so you never compromise the cable. Dwayne
