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Is there anyway to be able to access the landline phone signal over Ethernet of a LAN as due to shoddy cabling in our house has only left us with 1 connector that still works when you plug your phone in. In the majority of rooms in the house there is a powerline adapter that is then connected to a switch. What I'm hoping to achieve is to be able to plug a handset into the switch in each room and be able to use it as if all the pre-existing wall ports worked. I'm not looking to go down the SIP route as we currently have an amazing deal with our telecoms company where we get free calls to normal numbers if they're under an hour long.

TechKno
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    Like regular phone -> ethernet cable -> telephone connection? I hightly doubt that. IP phone -> ethernet cable -> VoIP to landline gateway -> telephone connection maybe, but not sure how to create that gateway / if those devices can be bought for private use. BTW: my internet contract includes free phone calls, as long as they aren't longer than 24h per day ;) And I haven't made a single call. Don't even have a handset, because of unlimited phone calls from my cellphone contract - landline and mobile + 2GB mobile traffic for ~$22 (Germany). What are you paying your phone company? – CodeManX Sep 05 '15 at 12:34
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    Regular phones use twisted pairs, so it will also work via Cat5 (or higher) cables. But of course it won't work through switches and you probably won't be able to use that cable for anything else. In theory you could combine PSTN and Ethernet on one Cat5, since PSTN uses 1 twisted pair and 100Mbps Ethernet uses 2 twisted pairs (and there are 4 twisted pairs in Cat5 cables). But I cannot say if it would work in practice since PSTN is powered and probably causes a lot of interference. – alesc Sep 05 '15 at 12:38
  • Related, but opposite: [Running Ethernet over two phone lines](http://superuser.com/q/699973/53590) – user Sep 05 '15 at 12:44
  • @alesc "Regular phones use twisted pairs" are you sure about that? The accepted answer to the question I linked to above seems to suggest the opposite being the case (telephone wiring being similar to Cat 3, *except* it isn't twisted). – user Sep 05 '15 at 13:08
  • @MichaelKjörling: yes, PSTN uses twisted pairs, although it is not common to use it for in-house wiring and for the wire from the outlet to the phone. But the wire *to the house* is actually an UTP cable. See [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_1_cable) and [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair#Unshielded_twisted_pair_.28UTP.29). – alesc Sep 05 '15 at 16:39

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Is there anyway to be able to access the landline phone signal over Ethernet of a LAN ... What I'm hoping to achieve is to be able to plug a handset into the switch in each room and be able to use it ...

No; as described, what you propose is not possible.

Any experiments you perform are at your own risk, at risk of damaging any equipment or cabling involved.

You might be able to use standard Ethernet (Cat 5 or Cat 6) cabling to carry telephone or audio-frequency signals, such as between wall outlet and phone or between phone and handset. This isn't what Ethernet cabling is optimized to do, so how well this works is anyone's guess. However, even if it works, it will not be Ethernet.

Since your Ethernet equipment, including switches, assume that what is being carried over the cables is Ethernet, with the specific electrical and protocol properties of Ethernet, what you are proposing won't work. At best, it just won't work; more likely is that the equipment may be damaged.

Just use the proper equipment for each job. It will work much better.

user
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