How to Convert Phone Jack to Ethernet? | An Easy Guide to Converting a Phone Jack to an Ethernet

Yes, it is possible to turn your convert phone jack to ethernet in your home. Even if you move to you a new house you may find phone jacks that are not needed for you at all. Turning them into ethernet can help you with a fast internet connection.

You don’t need to be a tech wizard to turn a phone jack into an ethernet port. 

At first, you need to unscrew the phone jack to see what kind of wire is there. There is a high chance you will find CAT5, CAT 5e, or CAT6. The wires are labeled with what kind of wire they are. 

If you find a CAT 5 or 6 then you won’t have any problem. If it’s lower than that, you need to replace the whole cable with CAT6 which is going to be harder. 

If you are looking for CAT6, then here is a worth looking into.

Now you need to replace the phone plug on your wall plate with an ethernet plug. 

Sometimes there might be compatibility issues depending on which wall plate is present. So if you have problems, then you need to go purchase a compatible wall plate for your ethernet plug. 

Check out the compatible wall plate for your ethernet plug if you’re interested.

You need to find the panel or box where the phone lines terminate. When you find the endpoint of the wires you need to put in an RJ45 plug. Before that strip all 8 wires from your CAT wite. You need to be careful here as these connections follow a specific pattern. 

For achieving your goal follow the pattern below for the RJ45 pinout connection. After you have done so, crimp it with a special crimper machine tightly. Plug it in with the main feed or a router with an internet connection. This main feed is from your internet provider.  

Now follow the same connection pattern for your room ethernet plug & the CAT wire. Take your time while doing so. Then use the crimper to crimp the connection tightly. 

After completing the ethernet connection, you need to test out the connection. Connect the ethernet plug with an ethernet cable to your laptop or desktop. If your device is connected to the internet, then congratulations, you are successful. 

If it is not, make sure to do a recheck on the CAT wire connection with the female ethernet plug. 

Phone jacks use the Registered Jack 11 or RJ-11. It is the pretty common modular connector that connects the handset to the telephone and plugs the telephone into the wall socket. This way the phone jack builds up a dial-up system. Using this system, home computers can connect to the internet.

No, you cannot. The fact is a standard outlet always bears high voltage, whereas the phone itself is a low-voltage device. The far you can do is utilize the phone cable to pull in the power cable. But you must not try to turn the phone jack into an electrical outlet. 

The simplest answer is no. Category 3 cables use the RJ-11 connection usually offers 10Mb Ethernet. On the other hand, category 5, 5e, and 6 use the RJ-45 connection and provides up to 10Gb Ethernet. Therefore obviously, the Cat 3 cable cannot deliver faster internet speed, and practically you cannot convert the RJ-11 connection to RJ-45 one.

As landlines are becoming obsolete, there is no reason to keep your phone cable unused. Converting it into an ethernet cable is a fairly easy process. If you do have trouble you can always call up an electrician.