Small switch as a splitter

[Fleetwood]

Hi all,

 

I've been asked to come up with a temporary solution to have a phone and PC in a room with no data points (I arrived at the school long after the building updates/data points had been installed) for today.

 

I immediately thought of a splitter, as the Head's office next door to this room has one (well, one in his room and one on the patch panel) but it seems we've got nowhere local that sell them. I've just remembered that I've got a small switch at home (not sure how many ports but enough, though it's only a cheap-o one so it's not something you'd have running the backbone if you see what I mean) - in theory, if I connected the PC and Phone to the switch (port 1 & 2,) then put another cable in port 3 from the switch to the free single data point in the Head's office next door, would that work?

 

Probably being dimwitted, but this is my first time dealing with this scenario.

 

Thanks!

Edited July 10, 2013 by Fleetwood

[tmcd35]

Depends on the phone system. If they are IP phones, then yes that will work. If they are standard digital phones, then no they won't work through a switch. I'm surprised they work through a splitter - bet then I don't know which wires are actually used by the phones.

[plexer]

If the room has no data points where are you going to plug anything in?

 

Ben

[sted]

cheap wifi card?

[Fleetwood]

@tmcd35 It's a VoIP system. I've got two phones running off the splitter in the Head's office next door, both working fine and can make/receive phone calls.

@plexer - the Head's office is right next door with a free single data point close by the wall, so I was going to drill through and use that to connect the switch.

@sted - No WiFi on site, for some bizzare reason.

[plexer]

Do the VOIP phones not have an inbuilt switch?

 

Ben

[Fleetwood]

All the phones connect to a VoIP Switch in the comms cabinet.

 

I seem to have the phone bit sorted, just need to now know if I connected 2 PC's to my small switch, then a cable from the switch to the data point would work?

[sted]

i think @plexer meant a lot of the cisco voip phones ive seen have a 10/100 "pass through" socket on so you can effectively run the pcs lan from the phone

[Fleetwood]

Oh I see, sorry @plexer! Just checked and there's a RJ45 port labelled 'PC' - Never touched VoIP kit before so I wasn't remotely aware of that, thank you! Would you say it's efficient enough to use for a temporary solution? Edited July 10, 2013 by Fleetwood

[sted]

Oh I see, sorry @plexer! Just checked and there's a RJ45 port labelled 'PC' - Never touched VoIP kit before so I wasn't remotely aware of that, thank you! Would you say it's efficient enough to use for a temporary solution?

 

tbh its fine as a permanant solutuion ive found

[ChrisH]

I use the pass through in some offices with only one connection, it's fine as long as you don't need a gig link or anything.

[Fleetwood]

Well, tried the PC port on the phone but it wasn't able to make any connection. Would this theory below work?

 

[crc-ict]

Well, tried the PC port on the phone but it wasn't able to make any connection. Would this theory below work?

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]19411[/ATTACH]

 

Yes, that should work. Although performance will be throttled as the maximum speed of the uplink to the main switch is shared between the PCs on your small switch.

[Fleetwood]

Lovely. Yeah, I figured it wouldn't be efficient but it'll do for a temporary solution I guess.

Thank you all!

[plexer]

It depends tbh, the switch in the comms room that all your phones connect to is that connected directly to your voip pbx or are there connections to servers/switches as well.

 

If your voip installation has been setup to be on it's own network separate to the rest of your infrastructure then using the switch as you've described will probably mean that you pc will work but your phone won't the opposite of what you found when you tried to use the inbuilt switch in the phone.

 

The reason why the physical spliiter would work in this setup is that at the comms room end you can physical patch the phone over to the voip switch and the pc into the main infrastructure.

 

Ben

[Fleetwood]

The VoIP switch is connected to a big 'server' box (labelled 'Voice Server') undeneath it (that's about as far as my expertise goes with VoIP.. sorry!)

 

Interestingly I did originally try plugging the Head's phone and PC into a splitter, then sending the cables from the splitter in the Comms Cab to the main switch and VoIP switch but they both refused to work that way. Tried swapping them around the jacks on the splitter, didn't do anything either. As soon as I put two identical devices (2 phones or 2PCs) to the same destination, it all works fine. Slightly confused, but never mind

[round2it]

we have a maxmisr phone system and using splitters did not work for us.

[ChrisH]

If the PC is not working through the phone then it will be down to the VLAN settings on your switch. The port will need to be in both VLANs so this usually means tagged in the Voice VLAN and untagged in the VLAN for the computer. That is how ours are all setup, you may also need some configuration on your DHCP server as well.