10baseT was introduced back in 1990 to take advantage of existing twisted pair (thus the T) telephone wiring. My MCSE study guide says it was introduced to take adavantage of "extra installed pairs". Now does this mean extra installed pairs confined to one jacket? I don't think so. Previous to 1990 my customers didn't ask for an extra cat 3 run to be installed in an outlet in case some new data wiring scheme might be invented one day. Back then I was pulling coax or using baluns with existing spare pairs. Later I converted those "unused pairs" to 10 baseT. Siemon came out with a slew of modular y adapters for just this purpose. They still offer them. You can split for one voice/one data or one voice/token ring or two 10baseT. They officially only meet cat 3 standards but work just fine on cat5 and cat5e up to 100mbps. I know cause I use them a lot when circumstances dictate it and I have the equipment to test and verify the speed.

Twisted pair was invented to prevent crosstalk between the seperate wires. Logically you would have to conclude that splitting cat 5 would be less troublesome than splitting cat 3 considering that it has more twists per inch.

My point is this. Using what you have including splitting pairs has been done for a long time. It works and when it is the only choice you have it is a good thing it works.

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"Old phone guys never die, they just get locked in some closet with an old phone system and forgotten about"

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