To amplify on what Fred's link is telling you. What you have in your picture is a protector that can support up to four telephone lines. Each line is two wires (tip and ring). So you haver two of the lines open and two of them closed. As Fred's document indicates, your voice circuit is usually on RED/GREEN if you are on the RED/GREEN/BLACK/YELLOW phone cable or the center two (BLUE/BLUE-WHITE) pair of your CAT-5. While TIP vs. RING technically is an issue, it's uncommon that you have any device these days that cares (getting them backwards used to result in certain old touchtone phones not being able to dial).

Note, while CAT 5 is nicer cable than regular phone wire, it's likely going to provide NOTHING to help your DSL problem (unless there is something wrong with your existing wiring, but then just replacing it with like cable would help, too). It's like putting high octane fuel in your car. Unless your car was experiencing detonation due to too low octane, upping the octane won't increase performance.

By the way, not explained in the document is the etymology of TIP and RING. This comes from the fact that telephone wires used to terminate at the switchboard where operators would make connections with plugs. These plugs were two conductors with one connecting to the tip of the plug (hence the TIP), an insulated gap, and the other to the shaft (the RING). Imagine a larger version of your portable stereo earbud plug. When you add a third conductor, then that third section is called the SLEEVE. So looking at your stereo headphone plug, you have TIP, separator, RING, separator, SLEEVE.

Sounds like whoever you talked to at the phone company is clueless. They need to send someone out. They cant expect people to set up the wiring for them. (edit)

There could be a loose wire in the utility box that could be causing your issues, they can check that when they come out and check over your wiring.

I suspect from what you are talking about that the "adapter" you are talking about is the DSL filter. It has nothing to do with making your DSL work. Your DSL will run to the modem just fine over Cat 5 or regular phone wire. That the adapter does is REMOVE the DSL signal so you don't hear it in your voice phones. The filter can take several forms. Sometimes it's just a device that plugs into a modular jack. In the case of my house, the protector actually has the filter built into it. You can either connect your wires to the ORANGE or BLUE terminals (I can't remember which one is which off the top of my head). One is the unfiltered line for the DSL modem, the others are post-filter for your voice phones.

Yep your right, I was thinking backwards. Its been a while since I looked at it. I have a CAT wire coming in from the utility box which is hardwired to an adapter that does phone line. I then run that phone line to my modem. The adapter is something like this. Not sure why they did it that way but oh well. Doubt they used all the CAT wires in the utility box. Now you got me curious, ill have to go look lol.

In any case, they need to set you up correctly at the utility box. THEN you can worry about running lines inside the house.

Huh? "Cat" is a reference to the specifications (category) of "twisted pair" telecommunications cables. Calling wire "CAT" doesn't mean anything unless you specify which category the wiring conforms to.

I suspect that they are trying to tell the original poster that his wiring is not twisted pair and that he should replace it with Cat-5. The question is how would they know that without coming out and inspecting his wiring. And which wiring are they talking about?

To help we would need to know more about how everything is wired - the modem, the filter, the phones - and the Ethernet wiring behind the modem.

I think we all know that this OP is talking about either Cat5 or Cat5e, but for DSL speeds, it doesn't usually matter even if you use Cat6, so just saying CAT is fine with me ;)

"the phone company is saying it is our in house wiring. They told me to get cat5"

1. The phone company probably didn't even specify the "e" because they were talking in more general terms.

2. As Ron said, the type of wire may not make that big of a difference, even if it is only regular telephone wire.

3. It is common now days to run Cat5e instead of telephone wire.

4. The method of running "CAT" wire is different than running telephone wire. Telephone wire was normally daisy-chained from outlet to outlet, and using anything from a quick twist and tape to splice it, to a bundle of wires in a loose wire nut. "CAT" wiring is done with individual runs to a central location, and much better connections.

5. I believe that what the telephone company is really trying to get the OP to do, is to run a new, undamaged/unspliced wire from the outside utility box, to the place where the modem will be plugged in. The reference by the phone company about Cat5 is a bit of a misconception because that is just what everybody uses now when they run direct lines instead of daisy-chained and spliced too many times, when it is more the direct line they are after.

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I suspect that the phone company came out and tested the speed at the outside utility box, and could plainly see what type of wire was going into the house. Since it was red/green black/yellow, they know what type of wire it is, and how that type of wire is normally run.

At the time I did my house, I used Cat 3.

Thanks Fred S that explained a lot. Now my questions are this: Can I run 2 lines from the NID (leave the phone line as-is and add the Cat5 just for the modem)? Currently the phone is plugged into a normal phone jack in the NID, and the cat5 for the modem would run from whatever that is in the picture. And if so, can I use all 4 pairs of wire? Our modem accepts ethernet, and it looks like the same plug. Will that help our speeds? Thanks!

DSL uses only one pair. You can run the whole thing (4 pairs) but only one is used. At the far end, it depends on what the DSL modem uses. Mine (a Netgear) uses an RG11 (regular 4-wire modular phone connection). At that end I used a 'standard' RG11 jack and connected two wires. I used Blue-White/White-Blue pair at both ends, both to T/R or Red/Green. Just be consistent on both ends.

I'm assuming all your phones in the house have filters installed? I used a single filter outdoors to provide filtering to all my indoor jacks. The DSL line was run separately and is used just for the modem, no other phones.

"Can I run 2 lines from the NID (leave the phone line as-is and add the Cat5 just for the modem)?"

What do you mean by "line"?

Two separate phone numbers, one for phone and the other for internet?

Or a separate cable run from the NID to the phone jack for plugging in the modem?

Either way can be done. One difference would be where you might need to put the filters.

"Currently the phone is plugged into a normal phone jack in the NID, and the cat5 for the modem would run from whatever that is in the picture."

If you are using the same phone number for both the phone and internet, all the wires go to the same place at some point in the outside box. A picture of the inside of the whole utility box might help.

"And if so, can I use all 4 pairs of wire?"

The DSL just uses the same two wires (one pair) as any other phone line actually uses to connect to the internet. Terminating the rest of the wires is not necessary on that side of the modem.

"Our modem accepts ethernet, and it looks like the same plug."

The plug that goes into the wall for the internet is a little smaller than the plugs for the Ethernet.