RJ45 here for phones (and data of cource). All patched down in a rack using patch panels. Ports can be used for phones or wired network as wished. I am pretty sure this is the specified commercial method so there is absolutely nothing to worry if you are doing it this way.

Something that I am very surprised that nobody has mentioned are IP (VOIP) phones which are now standard in commercial (with analog gateways or direct VOIP) and I often see them in houses as well. Wiring for RJ45 will accommodate them easily


Gman, I am not 100% sure but I think the industry standard you are talking about has changed some time ago.

Could you cite a bit more detail as to how it has changed?

You mean the standard of calling a two-wire connection an RJ11, a four-wire connection an RJ14, and a six-wire connection an RJ25? The standard is still in place, but we generally call all of the RJ11s.

Do you instead mean that the use of the jack that will accept a plug with up to six wires has been supplanted by use of the eight-pin jack? Officially, meaning the standard has changed, as opposed to what this thread is about, meaning unofficial practices?

I am talking about the official standard by TIA/ANSI which specifies what and how to wire for structured cabling. This is the ANSI/TIA-568 standard and it is now in its C revision.

TIA-568-C suite of standards breakdown:

TIA-568-C.0 Generic Telecommunications Cabling for Customer Premises
TIA-568-C.1 Commercial Building Telecommunication Cabling Standards – Part 1 General Requirements
TIA-568-C.2 Balanced Twisted-Pair Telecommunications Cabling and Components Standard (release date: TBA)
TIA-568-C.3 Optical Fiber Cabling Components Standard

The TIA568C is mainly for commercial and is also generic. There is a specific standard for residential, the ANSI/TIA-570-C.


Maybe Gman did not have these in mind when he posted about industry standards but if you are looking for the appropriate standards on how and what to wire for structured cabling, data and communications then the ones I posted above are the ones to follow.

Ernie, you are opening a huge can of worms here and it is not probably not appropriate for this thread. Are there any official standards for the residential market? Even if we list some (e.g TIA570B and the labelling standard TIA606B) do you think they are followed even in the huge resi $1m+ projects? The resi market is very young and unorganized in terms of official guidelines and so it is very difficult to distinguish between official standards, common practices and company practices.

So are you guys doing this for commercial as well? Most business keep their old phone system due to cost constraints and most systems require landing the wires to a 66 block. You wouldn't go out of the patch panel to a 66 would you? We typically will provide the patch equipment for data and leave the phones to be punched down by the phone guys which we don't touch usually. We would run the wires to a 66 block but the phone system comes with it's own preconfigured 66 block and doing our own can be redundant and take up too much space.

I'd like to know why it would be any less reliable than an RJ11- once the plug is inserted, it's just there. Not like it's constantly being removed/reinserted.

I really can't cite a specific ANCI standard. I was taught by a Bell guy that RJ11 jacks are to be used for analog telephone lines. Of course the cat5 is there if the customer wants to change up to ip phones.

It makes sense to me and I really don't want any phone calls over a telephone jack. I'm too busy taking calls about HDMI problems lately. Lol

OK we do it "right" and install RJ45 for the network and RJ11 for the phones.

The customer can STILL plug the phone into the RJ45. So simply providing RJ11 jacks doesn't make it fool proof.

There are also any number of phone systems the use RJ45 jacks for the phones. If you only have RJ11 then those systems are ruled out.

Since the system cannot be fool proof I still vote for the versatility of using RJ45 everywhere.

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Regards the CAT5, CAT6 labels on the jack - that depends. I have some that have no label and some that are label GIGAMAX (or something like that). Granted most of them I've seen have CATx but not all.

Yes, but you can't plug an ethernet cable into an RJ11

In a commercial environment? It's remarkable what people can do especially if the jack is installed in office furniture above the desktop. I'm not arguing against using RJ45's for the phone as I think it makes more sense but some people have had negative experiences and I'm glad to hear everyone's opinions.

Right, but this error doesn't expose equipment to phone battery and ring tone, while the other approach does. So in terms of errors, it's better to have a situation where a non-damaging error can occur.


If you can set up the wire so that there is no sideways force, then yeah, it should not matter. How often do you see a phone wire coming straight out from a jack? Hanging down, tightened slightly to the side, both put force where there is no side wall to stop it. And I'm sure there's a maximum spec for the allowable width of an RJ11 jack, and an RJ45 jack is quite a bit wider.

Now there is an interesting question. With the advent of POE these RJ45 jacks can have a good deal of power on them.

Wonder how that would affect phones that were plugged in?