From looking at your pictures, it looks as though you have cat5(ish) wires in the walls and a totally wacky termination at the jack.
You should put a tone generator on each plug and see if it is a single continuous run of wire from jack to jack in your house.
I'd be willing to bet that it is wired in such a way. This sort of topology would work fine for voice but not at all for data.
In such a case, you can probably replace each single "cat5" jacks with a pair of cat5 jacks and terminate each end properly. From there you can connect a switch to each port and get ethernet from one end of the service to the other.
This would be significantly less work than running new wires and give you marginally decent connectivity. It wouldn't be nearly as good as a traditional hub and spoke topology, but it would be much better than wireless...
Good luck!
(allow me to add: In no way is this acceptable work. If I were at a commercial site or if I had just paid someone to do that work, I would tell them to do it over again. Given that this is old work in a residential site, and given that a typical domestic situation's "data" budget is quite a bit smaller than even a small business, I'd be inclined to try to make it work before throwing in the towel and opening up the walls.)
If you just cut one end off a manufacture cable and then aligned the wires as you noted (brown, brown/white, green, green/white, blue, blue/white, orange, orange/white) you likely have a problem with the wire order.
There are two standards for cabling:
- T568A: green/white, green, orange/white, blue, blue/white, orange, brown/white, brown
- T568B: orange/white, orange, green/white, blue, blue/white, green, brown/white, brown
I would double check your manufactured end to ensure what the order is, and match that pattern on your re-terminated end.
As others mentioned, you can check your termination and cable with a cable tester. This should tell you if you have miss-wired or have a fault.
Also, if the cable you bought isn't using one of those standards... I wouldn't buy from them again.
Quick Edit
After seeing your comment, I realized that you transcribed the order you put them in, in reverse. Generally, you should read from the side without the clip from left to right.
Doing this would have read (orange/white orange, blue/white, blue, green/white, green, brown/white, brown). Compare to the T568B, and yes it's clear that your problem was with the wiring order.
Best Answer
There are two main tests for Ethernet Cable:
Continuity Testing. This checks that all pairs are connected in the correct order and that there is a continuous signal from one end of the cable to the other. You can buy these testers for peanuts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_tester
Cat5e Cable Analysers. These testers cost upwards of AU$1k and they test the exact electrical conductivity, interference etc of the cable and let you know if it falls in line with Cat5 specs. Assuming the cable is good, and the jacks are fine (check with the continuity tester), this device will tell you if there is too much interference or signal loss which can happen when: The cable gets old, something wears/eats away the shielding, the cable is coiled tighter than regulations, the cable runs parallel to power cables etc. http://www.flukenetworks.com/datacom-cabling/copper-testing/dtx-cableanalyzer-series
You can hire these testers, but it can be expensive. It'll be cheaper than re-cabling your whole office.
Don't forget that there are Ethernet Specifications which dictate how long your runs can be, how many hubs/switches etc. AFAIK a hub means that both cables plugged into the hub need to be shorter than the Ethernet Max Length, where as a switch stores and forwards the packet, so perhaps you can get the max length on both sides of the switch. With the prices of switches, there's never any reason to use a hub.