RJ11 - Telephone Cable Termination

Phone cable generally contains two pairs of wires, for two phone lines. The first pair is green and red; the second is black and yellow. This set of colors is standardized for stranded wires (where each "wire" consists of about 20 little tiny wires that stick in your fingers and hurt like hell if you aren't careful.) For solid wires, the colors defined below for Ethernet are used; pair 1 is White/Blue+Blue, pair 2 is White/Orange+Orange.



This is the wiring for the plug side of an RJ-11 connector. The diagram is shown with the "hook" - the little thing you press on to get the plug out - underneath. RJ-11 sockets always have the colors indicated on the terminals.

Note that the connector on the other end of an RJ-11 connector is wired in reverse order. That is, if you stretch the cable out flat, the Black wire stays on the left all the way to the other end, including through the connector with the hook oriented down also. Also note that the RJ-11 connector has six terminals on it. Only the middle 4 are normally used. Line 1 is the center pair: red and green.