I hope I've come to the right sub to ask this, and please feel welcome to point me elsewhere if there's some place more appropriate. I'm the "tech guy" at our school, and understand networking/routing *kind of* enough to hack my way through this challenge - but I'm in a pickle here, and hoping there's a straight-forward solution.
Here's the project: I am trying to connect phones to each classroom of the school via our ethernet ports. This has been straight-forward for a single line (I'll explain the topology shortly) - I've been able to both strip the terminating ethernet cable and splice it with an exposed/empty phone line successfully (this can only be done for phones direct to hub 3, as it's just a pure "raw wire" sequence), and I've also been able to route a single line to “switch” of sorts that can convert an ethernet connection to the Nortel phone "hub" (which is a black box to me, personally, but..it works).
However: I am struggling to do this for multiple lines. I am worried that this may not be possible, but that's why I'm asking here. It would be possible for *internet* lines simply using switches, but I tried a switch for multiple phone lines and it didn't work out.
Here's the topology: There are 3 hubs in the school (labelled 1, 2, and 3). Hub one is central, and hubs 2 and 3 are both separately connected to Hub 1. My pathway is from Hub 2, to Hub 1, to Hub 3 via the backbones. At hub three, I connect the line to an available port in the “Nortel switch” do-hickey and into the phone hub it goes to function with a dial-tone.
With a single line perfectly routed, the phone connects and functions. BUT I'm hoping there's a way to send ~10 phone signals through the backbone, into the Nortel switch, each being their own independent line. Is this possible? I thought using plain old switches would be plausible, but I'm either using them incorrectly, or it's just the wrong approach. Any suggestions would be VERY appreciated!
I do know that I could rig 4 lines using the backbone line by stripping the ethernet cable, but this seems kinda “hackjobby”, is not enough lines, and it feels like there may be a more proper/elegant solution.
Here are labeled pics of each hub, so you can see what I've rigged up so far:
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