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Your home comes with a Leviton Structured Media System. The system consists of a distribution panel in your basement, modular wall outlets in your living space and the house wiring between them. There is also a 3" wide cable chase between the attic and basement for cable routing if you need to run additional wiring in the future.
You can purchase additional Leviton Structured Media System components at Home Depot.
Your distribution panel and wall outlets have two types of jacks.
 RJ45 jacks are for computer, digital cable TV or telephone connections. You use Category 5e (CAT 5e) cable to connect computer or digital cable TV to these jacks. A standard telephone connector, which is smaller, plugs into the center of the RJ45 jack.
 F-Type jacks are for basic cable TV connections and other analog video applications. You use RG-6/U (coaxial) cable to connect analog video equipment to these jacks.
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Wall Outlets
You connect your computer, TV or telephone equipment to the cable coming from your distribution panel using the wall outlets in your living space.
There are three types of wall outlets, UNIVERSAL, MEDIA and DATA/VOICE;
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UNIVERSAL |
DATA/VOICE |
MEDIA |
The DATA/VOICE outlets are generally installed near a computer or phone and UNIVERSAL outlets are generally installed near a TV.
When it was built, your home had at least;
- three (3) UNIVERSAL wall outlets and
- two (2) DATA / VOICE wall outlets.
However, additional outlets may have been installed when it was built. |
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Distribution Panel
The media distribution panel is where the UNIVERSAL, DATA/VOICE and MEDIA outlets in your living space meets the data, voice and video services that come into your home. [Read More...]
- Suppose you want to connect one wall jack in your den to the Verizon telephone network and the other to the internet.
The distribution panel allows you to connect any wall jack to any telephone, data or video service.
- Suppose you want to connect the TIVO in your family room to the TV in your bedroom.
The distribution panel allows you to connect any wall jack to any other wall jack.
Here's a picture that illustrates the basic idea;
Your distribution panel comes pre-configured for a minimum of;
- twelve (12) voice/data jacks.
- twelve (12) analog video jacks.
- four (4) telephone lines with nineteen (19) telephone jacks.
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The Great Island Network represents, in many ways, the state-of-the-art in home networking. Comcast provides analog and digital television service, digital music and internet access. Verizon provides digital television service, internet access and digital telephone service via it's FIOS network.
Verizon also provides plain old telephone service (POTS) and digital subscriber line (DSL) internet service.
Direct-TV service can also be incorporated into your home network but requires a design review prior to installation.
The first thing you need to know is where your responsibility ends and where the service provider's begins. This is called the demarcation point. You are responsible for everything you own from the demarcation point in, including your house wiring.
The demarcation point for your telephone is the Verizon side of the Network Interface Device (NID) attached to the outside of your house. [Read More...]
The demarcation point for your ethernet network is the Comcast Optical Network Unit (ONU).
The second thing you need to know is that troubleshooting is a process of elimination. The first step in troubleshooting is to determine the extent of the problem.
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Is the problem isolated to your home or is it affecting the whole neighborhood?
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Is the problem isolated to a single service like basic cable TV?
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Is the problem isolated to a single device like one PC?
Once you've isolated the problem to a single device or service, you can start troubleshooting.
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