Wired and Wireless Home Network Setup

[mcs328]

My brother has a house that is supposed to be wired with network ports. So we decided yesterday to check it out. He has comcast, a cable modem and a wireless router. In total he has 7 network jacks in various rooms.

Behind a panel in his garage is what looks like a Unicom network switch. There are 8 expansion ports and 4 of them are taken by a blue network cable and marked to what room they belong to. We have 3 gray network cables that come down into the panel and loop back out the panel, so there's no terminating network jack for us to plug into the open expansion slots. We have one blue network jack that has its individual wires splayed out and punched in to the unicom network switch maked as telephone.

How do we get the wired network jacks up and running? Does the network cable go from the cable modem to the expansion ports? Or does the router? We have one network jack marked RF 31 on the unicom. Also on the unicom is open space that is marked with 8 indicators that look like 8 wires would need to be punched in.

What we've done so far is move the 4 blue network cables into the 4 open expansion ports on the router and that works fine. The router just dangles out of the panel. The set up by the builder looks like one of laziness. 3 network jacks that have 3 network cables attach but the other ends just loops in and out of the panel. There are no telephone jacks by I guess you can share the telephone jacks with the network jacks.

Does this make sense to anyone?

[Jeffbx]

Are you sure the unicom is a switch and not a patch panel?

[mcs328]

Are you sure the unicom is a switch and not a patch panel?

Hmm...maybe it's that. Still I'm clueless on how to proceed.

[Jeffbx]

Ckeck on the back. If it's open in the back & wires are punched down onto it, it's a patch panel. All that is is a termination point for all of the wires that are run throughout the house.

All you need is a short patch cable to connect each port on the patch panel to a port on your switch & your network is up & running. Just make sure you're only connecting up jacks that are actually wired into the panel (check on the back). No sense in connecting empty ports.

The telephone one may be for a phone connection that was never run, if there's nothing plugged into it.