cat5e voice/data confusion

[dangerfish]

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question but I've tried to figure it out on my own and just cant make sense of it. I am building on an addition to my house. I need 4 phone jacks (same number), three fax jacks (different from phone number), and 4 data connections. I was going to create a distribution hub in my garage to have all these lines terminate to. I will be having the builders run a phone line to this hub.

I have been finding alot of patch panels from Leviton that have connections for the phone but also RJ45 connections for data. Well, my dsl modem and router will be sitting right next to the patch panel so do I need a patch panel that has the data connections? I would assume that I could just run a phone line to the dsl modem and then use my routers 4 ports for distribution. Is that correct?

In general, I am just confused as to what I need to hook up to the main phone line that the builders will pull for me. I will gladly accept any advice or links to products that you think will work for me. Thanks in advance.

[seezar]

I have been finding alot of patch panels from Leviton that have connections for the phone but also RJ45 connections for data. Well, my dsl modem and router will be sitting right next to the patch panel so do I need a patch panel that has the data connections? I would assume that I could just run a phone line to the dsl modem and then use my routers 4 ports for distribution. Is that correct?

In general, I am just confused as to what I need to hook up to the main phone line that the builders will pull for me. I will gladly accept any advice or links to products that you think will work for me. Thanks in advance.

I just rewired my house for phone and ethernet (coax is run as well just not terminated yet).

Now, the questions is how are the builders running your phone lines? Are they running seperate runs for each jack back to a central location? That would be the best option.

What I did with my project was run multiple runs of cat5e to each location where they terminated to jacks in the walls. Some of the cat5e was specifically for phone and other was for data.

Then a run of cat5e was run from my NID (where the phone line comes into the house) and terminates onto a 66-block which is designed for telephone wiring. All the wiring in the house for phone terminates on this block. My DSL modem is in this same location so there is a line that runs to my DSL modem and my router sitting next to the modem connects to the modem.

Now for the cat5e that I used for data, I had those connections terminate on a RJ-45 patch panel. From that patch panel I could connect the connections to my switch that also has my router plugged into it.

Hope that explanation helps somewhat. It is only one of many ways to do it, I did leave out some of the detail which I'd be more than happy to go into if you would like.

Here is a picture of the setup:

http://www.seezar.com/pictures/wiring/wiring3.jpg