"Hardwiring" DSL throughout my entire house

Theoretically, that second phone line could be utilized as "long reach Ethernet," but the equipment for that is priced out of the range of the average consumer.

You're a lot better off going with wireless.

Oh, yeah, you could also create a DSL bridge between two jacks. But you'd have to buy a piece of equipment for each end, and the result would be slower than wireless.

Just thinking loud: Why would he need long reach equipment? Doesn't plain vanilla 10baseT Ethernet have a reach of about 100m? Shouldn't that be enough for a normal sized house?

Sounded like the house is wired with standard phone cable. You need Cat 3 cable or better to run 10BaseT.

Oh, I thought it only makes a difference to the reach, and not even a dramatic one (factor two or so). Thanks, I just learned something.

Forget the phone sockets in each room.
You need to wire a router into the modem that takes the main DSL input into the house.
Then wire new ethernet sockets from the router to each of the rooms.
So you'll need a router with 8 ports or more. Go for 16 so you'll have a couple spare.
So it's DSL wall socket to DSL modem to 16 port router then lots and lots of wiring to the individual room sockets from the router.
This is going to be a major pain in the arse.
I know because I did this to a friend's farm.
So don't go there.

Do this instead : DSL wall socket to DSL modem to wireless router. Fit all PCs and laptops with wireless PCI cards or wireless PCMCIA cards. Don't use the USB wirelss adapters because they're rubbish.

This way there's no wiring and you can add as many PCs as you like. The wireless access point (router eg Netgear DG834PN) will take care of them all for you. And it'll have a couple of wired ethernet sockets on the back for local use in the same room if you have a visitor who is still in the wired ethernet dark ages :wink: