Convert home phone wiring to Ethernet?

[rdfact]

Can a home telephone network be converted to Ethernet?
My house is about 18 years old and is wired for telephone. There are 3 rooms with phone jacks. I removed the wall plates and found Cat5e wiring, 4 pairs of wires, 8 wires total. Some web searching shows this can handle gigabit Ethernet.

Here?s the phone lines coming into my house. Two sets of wires for 2 phone lines. The top line has the blue and orange connected. The bottom is just blue. Three phone jacks downstairs have only the blue wires connected. The upstairs has just orange. No jacks downstairs use orange.
I have no desire for wired telephones and phone service.
My thought was to disconnect the phone company side then connect all like color wires together outside. Then convert the wall jacks to Ethernet ports using all 8 wires.
Would that work?

[ldsnet]

As long as it's shielded, you should be able to crimp an RJ-45 onto the cable, provided you have enough slack in the walls.
Cat5e runs 100mb really well, gigabit may have issues if not properly shielded.

[rdfact]

Convert home phone wiring to Ethernet?

There is plenty of spare wire behind the wall plates to use.
My primary desire is to connect the upstairs to a specific downstairs outlet where my cable modem and router are. Upstairs and downstairs seem to be 2 separate runs of Cat5e.

[MFortie]

Data cabling needs to be homeruns (one cable per outlet); analog voice doesn’t and is typically daisy chained.

[rdfact]

Convert home phone wiring to Ethernet?

Looks like I have hybrid wiring based on this site. Downstairs is daisy chained and upstairs is hub and spoke.

https://www.hardwiredhome.com/how-to-convert-phone-lines-to-ethernet/

[67Cuda]

Something else to consider here. I haven't bought these yet, but they fit the bill for what I might need them for.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MQG6T61/?coliid=I3RR94F0GPP4XN&colid=26LQHGHFS9Z3I&psc=1&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it

[Marauder2003]

Ethernet needs 8 wires. Home phone line is 4 wires.

[SkyHawk]

Ethernet needs 8 wires. Home phone line is 4 wires.

Actually only 4 are needed for Ethernet

The problem with using home phone wiring is going to be speed - you are not going to be able to do much more than a few Mb and probably no more than 10Mb if the run is short enough.

Bottom line, don't do it.

That said, it looks like OP has ethernet cable in the photo, and he also says it is ethernet. So yes it can be used for ethernet and perhaps up to 1Gb, and each run can even be split into two ethernet jacks since only two pair are needed for an ethernet connection.

[ibanezfoo]

It might be possible but you’d need to tone them out first. Sometimes jacks are daisy chained to other jacks. That will not work. Cat5e will do 1gig connections just fine if it’s quality cable with solid connections on the jacks. Each individual jack needs to be terminated wherever your patch panel is and be connected to your network switch separately. You absolutely cannot just connect all the same colored wires together. You might be able to connect one room straight to another if you put ends on them and use a proper coupler in your junction box. Back in the day you’d need to wire them in crossover but most NICs now are auto mtx.

[G.O.D.]

Another thought. Cat 5 can be used for 2 separate Devices. I use RJ45 Spitters for 6 Camera using 3 Cables.

[Jongage]

You can but it will be very speed limited.
Ethernet only needs 4 wires or 2 pair to make the connection

[Old4eyes]

10 meg and 100 meg ethernet uses two pair of the four pairs in an RJ45.
Gig Ethernet uses all 4 pairs.

Byte the bullet, put in the correct grade of cable for your needs.

At work we put in Cat5 to the offices and it sufficed for Gig Ethernet. For longer runs and higher speeds we used fiber, both muti mode and single mode.

[Helpful_Cub]

Something else to consider here. I haven't bought these yet, but they fit the bill for what I might need them for.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MQG6T61...v_ov_lig_dp_it

I forgot about the TV cabling in the house. This may work for the run from my office computer to the router. I'm always cringey at the thought of it being over wifi.