Ports & Connectors (continued...)

RJ Connectors
The RJ connector is used for communication devices. If you live in North America and have a jack on your wall that your phone connects to, that's an RJ-11 connector. Now, the RJ-11 connector or port doesn't have 11 pins or 11 holes. As a matter of fact, it only connects 4 or 6 wires.

You may have an RJ-11 connector on the back of your computer if you have an internal modem. This is to hook a phone line up allowing communication with other computers and access to the Internet and the World Wide Web.

If you see two RJ-11 connectors side by side, it means that you can hook the phone line to your computer using the one jack, and then an extension phone can be plugged into the other jack. A lot of modems today allow for fax and voice capabilities. This means that you can fax from your computer, it can double as an answering machine that records messages and voice mail, and, if you have speakers and a microphone, you can even use it as a speakerphone.

An RJ-45 connector looks much like the RJ-11, only larger. It connects 8 wires and is used for network ethernet connections. If you see and RJ-45 connector or port on the back of your computer then there's two possibilities; Your computer is hooked up to a network or intranet, or, you have cable hookup to the Internet and the World Wide Web. The latter uses an RJ-45 connection between the cable modem and the network interface adapter (which is the same adapter you would be using for a network connection).

As you can see, the RJ connector is designated as RJ-x. But the 'x' doesn't tell you the number of connectors that the port has like other ports. At one time, I thought it might designate the size of the jack. The RJ-45 is larger than the RJ-11, but the RJ-12 is smaller (this is the connector between your phone and the handset), so I guess that doesn't hold water either. At this point, I become disinterested... If you know the answer, let me know and I might change this paragraph. But mainly what you need to know is, the RJ-11 connects 4 or 6 wires, is used on modems and telephones, and is smaller than the RJ-45 which is used for ethernet connections to network interface cards.