So I got to thinking last night "hmmmmm I dont use the phones, and phones use four wires, and ethernet only uses 2 pair (4 wires folks) ------ ah hah!"  That thought was this - I will disconnect the phones at the junction box and wire the living room to the office and make a patch cable ala - Alltel.  It sounded perfect, but little did I know it could be better.  I got home from work today and decided to give things a try.  I went outside to the junction box and discovered that the contractors (whom are at this point my best friends even though I dont know them) laid CAT-5 cable throughout the house for the phone jacks! 

"Woo-Hoo!!"

So, This means I can keep the phones, send power from the office down one pair, and have ethernet in all the rooms where there is a phone jack!  (Cat-5 has 4 pairs, or 8 wires...remember....ethernet uses 2 pair).  Well, I got to thinking and the junction box was a long way away from the office and I could potentially run two jacks to the office...which would leave one room out.  Nope!!  I quickly realized I could put a 5 port linksys switch in the phone box (after removing some of thier builky stuff out of there - after all, I only need to use wire-nuts right?  Well I'm going to so dont answer that one.  So - I used my rj45 crimpers and walla!  I ran power down one pair from the office, and powered up the switch with no problems.  Then I tested my uplink connection to the main router - victory!!  Woo Hoo!! OK, so now I'm just trying to figure out if I want to spend the money and put the nice face plates in, or leave the ethernet comming out like you will see with the following pictures.

Enjoy.

And - Here is the switch in its final position.

 

Myron