What kind of cable is this?
What kind of cable is this?
Hey, I'm trying to turn my phone line into ethernet cables but don't know how yet. I heard you need cat 5 or better cables for fast speeds. But when I look in the closet box, I see a weird cable with six wires inside. It has orange stripes on white wire, blue stripes on white, green stripes on white, and more like that. The text says FT4 but no catX names. Does anyone know what this is? Can it be turned into ethernet? If so, what speeds can I expect?
No. Do not use old phone wires for network connections because that only causes more issues. Just a quick note: the phone and cables have different colors, but unfortunately problems are getting worse due to fake or substandard ones. Ethernet cables or other types don't even work well with older telephone cables, no matter how good they look. My suggestion is to update your post with details about your setup so we can help.
That's great! I'll get those extra details soon. Can you tell me what that specific cable is called? Does it have a special name, like being a "cat" type of thing?
Just don't. Using your brain and even your wallet brings you more issues instead of fixing them.
It's hard to tell if there is more damage further up the cable. All you can see right now is that it uses 24 gauge wire. CSA was an old standard used in Canada before people switched over to what the US uses. Maybe I'm wrong, or perhaps it's just cat3 phone cable. The wires don't look twisted, but they could be any four-wire setup for phones and low-voltage things like thermostats. You might get up to 10mbps if you are lucky. If you really need more speed, there are special boxes that use a kind of DSL over your house's phone lines. It has been a while since I checked those units out though; if I recall correctly, they were slow and expensive back then.
Those wires are called THHN. They are just plain 24-gauge stranded wire that isn't thick and carries little power, usually because the voltage was low and the capacity wasn't high. Back when I wrote this, they were common for POTS (plain old telephone service) doorbells or buzzers, plus those old mechanical or mercury-activated thermostats from a long time ago... Perfect for low-voltage household current, but you can't use them to send digital signals like real ethernet cable ever.