I want to move my TV and DVR. I rearranged my room and the current position is no longer conducive to comfortable viewing. But I have UVerse, and the DVR is connected to a cord that the installer stapled to the baseboard and there is no extra length at all. It is a thin-ish round black cord that connects with one of those clear phone-jack clips. I obviously need some sort of an extension, but I don’t know what the cord is called in order to look for it or ask for it. And I can’t locate the manual for a clue. So can anyone help me from looking stupid and tell me what to ask for? And where would be the best place to find one?
It sounds to me like you are talking about an ethernet cable.
ETA: You can get them at any computer store, Best Buy, Radio Shack, etc.
So the connectors on those both look like outies, so I’d need a coupler also?
Yes, or just buy a longer cable.
Yep.
And, of course, you can get cables in different standard lengths, so measure your needs before going to the store, Maybe go longer than your current needs to account for future moves.
you could buy a cable for the extra distance and a coupler. you could also buy a cable long enough for the new distance and not use the cable stapled to the baseboard. one cable is better than two joined.
So I’ve got lots of stuff in the boxes in the garage that my son and daughter left (why is Mom’s house the permanent repository for excess stuff?) that looks like the right cable. Is it safe to just plug it together and try?
Yes.
It’s almost impossible to hurt Ethernet inputs.
And humanity has been moving away from the concept of “plugs that are physically but not electrically compatible” for many decades now. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cable that would fit in an Ethernet jack that is not an Ethernet cable.
Hah, clearly you don’t work with jacks in college student rooms. I sometimes can’t believe the shape the jacks end up. Sometimes I think they just stick screwdrivers into them and twist.
To be pedantic - an RJ-11 phone plug will fit an RJ-45 ethernet jack just fine, besides being narrower and only having 4 contacts. It was designed that way - that’s why the 2 center conductors of the cat 5 cabling scheme are unused - there was a plan at one point that you could share the jack between ethernet & POTS based on which cable you plugged in.
Yeah.
I meant electrically.
I used to install Uverse, and we would commonly bring the Uverse signal into the room containing the RG (Uverse router, called the “residential gateway”) was on one pair, and send VOIP dial tone back out on another pair, plus sending out ethernet on two other pairs. We’d send out the ethernet to feed a computer or a set-top-box.
A few customers kept their POTS instead of getting VOIP (or had two VOIP and 1 POTS lines), and we’d strip off the POTS prior to the RG. Every once in a big while we might send the POTS on a different pair in the same cat 5 cable to the RG location, to feed a phone there, but that was rare.
The thing that made the “ethernet only on pairs 1/2 and 3/6, to coexist with POTS” plan pointless was the FCC’s regulatory ruling that VOIP cannot be taxed and regulated like POTS. Everyone immediately starting trying to go to VOIP like rats deserting a sinking ship. ROFL
It was a good idea, it just was made pointless by the regulation.
Or get what is called an extensionr cable, which has an ‘outie’ on one end and an ‘innie’ on the other. But they’re not very common, so you may have to order it online. (You could probably get a much longer cable for the same price.)