Hard Wiring Question

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 08, 2006 Posts: 4

I'm thinking about getting Vonage, but before I do, I wanted to be sure that I'm going to be able to get what I want out of the service. I'd like to have the Vonage service running through my internal phone jacks in my house. The only problem that I'm seeing so far is that I have to keep my existing land line from SBC because that is what my DSL line is connected to. THe DSL line is coming in on the LINE 1 of my house. THe Blue/Blue White pair. I have re-wired my house in the last year and ran cat5 to ever room in the house. In my garage, I have a my main phone service coming into a 110 - block where i've punched down the wire for the phone jacks in each room. If I want to hardwire my house, should i rewire all the jacks to a pair of wires other than the blue/white? Is the hardwire installation as simple as connecting the phone adapter to my broadband connection and then running the output into a phone jack.. thus activating all my other lines in my house? Thanks for any input.

Posts: 10 · Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 8:01 pm Post subject:

It should be that easy. Of course, I won't get my Vonage until tomorrow. (8 days after initiating the service)

But, yes. You should be able to plug your phone adapter into any phone jack and have Vonage. You must disconnect your POTS line for the phone block and be independent of your LL.

Good Luck
Steve

Posts: 10 · Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 8:03 pm Post subject:

OOPS. After rereading what I just wrote and your original post. I think I am really WRONG!

Disregard what I said.

1000 apologies...the 12 hr days at work are killer.
Steve

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

Daviscomp,

It sounds as if you know what you're doing, so the answer to questions like "should I rewire all the jacks to a pair of wires other than the blue/white" comes down to a matter of choice for you and to what you're trying to accomplish. My personal choice would be to leave all of my jacks with standard wiring, which puts the blue/white on the central pins of an RJ11 and either the orange/white or the green/white on the outside pair, depending on the standard you used.

Assuming that you want all your phones to connect to your Vonage service using the central pair (line 1), and that the DSL will be used only to provide your broadband service, I'd simply move the DSL feed to line two (and perhaps feeding only 1 jack). That would open up line 1- the blue/white pair- for the Vonage phones. Once you've done that, the answer to your last question is yes. All you would need to do is to plug the Vonage adapter into one jack, and it would energize all of the other jacks in the house.

All this assumes that you aren't trying to service an alarm system with your Vonage phone. That complicates things a bit, but we can talk about it if you need to do that.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 08, 2006 Posts: 4

Thanks for the replies. I think what I'm going to do is keep the lines wired to the blue/blue striped. I can remember what color the other available pair in the wall is. What i did when i rewired was run a single cat5 to each room, then split off the 4 pairs of wire as follows .. 2 pair to ethernet jack and 1 pair to the rj11 phone jack and the other pair is just sitting there unused. In order to use the blue pair for my Vonage, I'll just make sure that i completely isolate my LL coming from the box from the block which all my internal jacks are patched onto. Basically im going to directly connect the wire coming from my main phone box into my DSL modem to give me my broadband service.

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

That should work fine. Alternately, you could use that extra pair to service the DSL modem and retain the blue/white for Vonage phone service there in the room where the modem resides. Presumably the Vonage adapter will reside there as well (?), and you need a jack to plug it into to activate the phone wiring.

Posts: 17 · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 12:14 am Post subject:

From what I understand, you've "home run" every Cat 5 in your house from each room to your punchdown. This can work easily without having to rewire everything. The blue pair coming into your house from your telco for your DSL, simply continue that run ONLY on the blue pair to the jack where your modem and ideally, Vonage adaptor are (perhaps at the same location of your punchdown?). Then, run the phone output of your Vonage adaptor back through the unused pair (probably brown), back to your punchdown. Connect this pair to the rest of the blue pairs for the rest of your house. I deal with structured wiring often, and having a home run system makes things so much easier to work with.

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

That will work, of course, but why use the blue/white to run the DSL, but separated from the rest of the blue/white, then a brown/white back to the junction box to tie in with the rest of the blue/white? Why not simply use the brown/white to service the DSL and the blue/white to return from the Vonage box to the rest of the blue/white?

Posts: 17 · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 10:54 pm Post subject:

Yeah, that would make more sense... I think I had two thoughts going through my mind while writing; one thinking that the DSL Modem and Voip adaptor would reside in the punchdown area, the other would be in a separate location... That, and I was probably tired when I wrote it... Sleepy