We recently moved into a house where there is cat5e wiring running from a telephone jack in each room, to the rear of the house near the phone junction box and electrical box. The wires are literally just hanging out of a sealed exit point in the siding of the house, not running into a box of any kind.
I wanted to set up a new wired network connection from an upstairs bedroom to the living room. New wiring installation is virtually out of the question, thanks to insulation, fire blocks all over the place, and the fact that the wife and I both don't want to mess up the drywall in our new home. So I have chosen to repurpose two of the cat5e wiring runs into one connection, by splicing the two appropriate wires together out back. I wired up a cat5e jack using punchdown connectors both in the living room and in the upstairs office, and just hand-spliced the wires together out back and tried to weatherproof them by passing the splice into a weatherproof cable box and securing them with strong electrical tape. They are untwisted for about 3-4 inches and are sharply angled at the splice point. I know it's not optimal but I wanted to at least see if what I was after was even possible given the unknowns of the wiring, etc.
Upon testing, I can get a solid connection over the line, so I know I've done the wiring correctly (used T568A due to the fact that these are originally phone lines and might be again one day). However, tests show that my download speed from my computer, connected to the router upstairs, to a laptop in the living room is only around 23 mbps, so I'm barely even getting fast ethernet speeds. I'm hardly expecting gigabit, with run lengths and connections like this, but what can I do at this point to increase throughput? There are factors I know I can control (how the splicing is done out back) but I don't know how much of a difference that will make. Then there are some variables like proximity to 110V lines in the walls, and quality of cable (it's all UTP) that are either unknowns or out of my control. I do know that the wires out back are fairly brittle, due to weathering, which is part of the reason I didn't want to poke around with those much. Does anything stand out as a glaring issue to anyone experienced with cat5/6 networking?
Best Answer
If you are running telephone and ethernet on the same cable then it is most likely interference from the telephone pair. POTS (Plain Old Telephone Sockets) have a constant voltage of 50V and ring at 75V with an engaged voltage of 35V.
It will not be the electrical 110V causing interference because your switch cancels the noise out because it if grounded(negative) to your home installation(on which your switch runs and knows about this frequency so it can eliminate is successfully).
Why will it pick up noise from the telephone voltage? Because the power is coming from outside your house on a separate ground loop that has a unique frequency resonance which is not the same as your houses' frequency(not talking about 50hz/60hz - But electromagnetic radiation). This will cause the switch to suffer packet loss because it cannot successfully XOR noise that is generated from the phone lines voltage frequency.
To solve this problem in order of cheapest to most expensive:
Please Note:
Some distribution boxes have a lightning protector or surge protector installed that link in the actual earth(also called ground) but earth is used in UK, Some parts of EU and ZA(not sure about USA) to detect appliance fault and gives lightning a short path to the earth. Usually the earth bar is connected to a rod that goes into the ground outside the house or bound to the incoming phase shield which is earthed at the main power box. When I talk about ground I mean the actual negative(-) wire of an appliance or analog / digital circuit.
NEVER TRY TO GROUND(NEGATIVE) THE TELEPHONE TO YOUR HOME GROUND OR A GROUND LOOP ISOLATOR
As it seems the OP grounded his telephone but it is most likely earthing the cable not actual negative.
Doing this can cause damage to the telephone network costing you thousands dollars and/or cause death or serious bodily injury from electrical shock. Remember that the ground of your home has a different impedance than ground from the telephone network and can result in 110V electrical shock! That is why it is illegal to rewire telephone sockets in many countries. For your own safety.