I just moved into a new house and it's wired for ethernet. There's a junction box that has a "Bridged Telecom Module TM-8" in it. My cable modem's phone jack is plugged into the "Line In" on that box and their are 8 slots all running to various ports in the house. All the jacks in the house are RJ45. Is there a way to plug my old phones into these jacks or do I need to upgrade to phones that use this connection?
2 Answers
You can plug standard "square" RJ14 cables into a RJ45 jack, as long as the port is wired to your phone line. It should click in. You need to figure out which ports are wired where.
As emddudley said, it should plug right in. Just make sure you get the wiring correct. Plugging a phone into a jack wired for ethernet probably won't be a problem. Plugging a network device into a jack wired into the phone system is bad. Phones ring by having a voltage sent down the line, enough to ring a physical bell on old rotary phones. Network cards don't like getting this sent to them, and may release their magic smoke.