I have some cat5e wires in my home that were meant to be for telephone lines so they have the rj11 type plug at the wall. I'd like to see if I can use these for ethernet by using a rj11 to rj45 adapter. Does such a thing exist? I can't seem to find anything but rj45 to rj11 adapters. Thanks for any help you can give.

That won’t work, wiring is different, see below. Also, in many residential applications cat5e was used in a daisy chain format going from jack to jack as opposed to individual (home) runs. If the jack you wish to use is a home run then you could use it for data transmission but you’d need to rewire both ends using new termination plates.

Are they actually Cat 5 cables, or are they cat 3? If they are Cat 5 you can put a new end on them and use them.

How many cat 5 drops are you trying to get? I had two places in my old house that I wanted to be hardwired and not use wireless so instead of running new cable I bought an adaptor that used my power lines. It plugs into your power outlets and you plug a Cat5 from your router into one, then you put the others wherever you need an internet drop. It works surprisingly well.

This is what I used:

https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link...fix=power+to+&sr=8-3

Most phone wire is cat-3, which doesn't work for anything over 10 megabit ethernet.

If the wire is cat-5 then you could use an rj-11 to rj-45 adapter as long as pins 1,2,3, and 6 lined up properly from the adapter through the phone line. You will not be able to run more than 100 megabit over it though.

Gigabit and higher speeds use all 4 pair in a cat-5e cable or higher.

In other words, no, you probably can't use an adapter and if you could you wouldn't want to.

You'll need to reterminate both ends of the cat5 cable. At the central termination point (probably basement or a wiring closet where the other cables terminate (other cat5 and/or coax)) you will probably want to install a patch panel. At the other end you will want to install a female keystone jack.

This is what I did for my house at least. You'll want to ensure you use the same wire pattern on both ends though.

I'd change out the wall jack.

Pull the wall jack and check the wire label to be sure it is cat 5, then terminate with the RJ receptacle and note the on the wall plate what it is for future reference. Cat 5 is nice but it is just one link in the chain. Transmission rate defaults to the lowest rate.