We just moved into a home that has a renovated basement and all of the receptacles have two CAT5 wires pulled to them (one for telephone and one for data) but none of the wires are labeled or terminated in RJ45 or RJ11 jacks. How do I test the wires to tell if they have data or phone signals?
Wiring – How to determine if CAT5 cable is wired for data or phone
data-wiringphone-wiringtesting
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Best Answer
Since they went to the trouble to wire a pair of CAT-5 cables at each receptacle, they likely wired them all back to a central patch panel in a closet or wall cabinet that looks something like this:
If that's the case, then none of the outlets are "live" and would need to be patched over to the appropriate service (data or phone). Unless they are patched to something, then they are not live. How to actually patch to phone or data varies depending on how the phone and internet service are wired to the wiring closet.
If they really just left the other ends dangling and unterminated, the best thing to do would be to terminate the to a patch panel like the one pictured (which is surprisingly easy with the right punch down tool)
If the jacks/wires are not labeled, you can trace (and test) them with a cable tester like this:
http://www.kleintools.com/catalog/cable-testers-accessories/vdv-scout-pro-tester-kit
this is just one example of a cable tester - there are lots of cable testers out there of varying quality, but this is moderately priced and works well for home use. There are cheaper testers that just use an array of LED's to show you the cable status, and there are (much) more expensive testers that will do a full cable qualification to certify that it will run at the rated speed. I've used this model and it works well for home use, one nice feature it has for cable tracing multiple cables is that it has several numbered terminators that you can plug into one end, then when you plug the meter into the other end, it will tell you which one it sees