Enough power through lines to support multiple phones/rings?

Posts: 2

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Greetings. Set up my Vonage last night for the first time. Love it.
Question, however (and some background):
I don't seem to have enough "power" through my pre-existing traditional phone jacks to get all of my phones to ring and/or work properly.
Here's the background: I placed a splitter onto the Vonage device. One line leads to a traditional cordless phone (with has a typical power supply base), the other line leads into a wall jack. If I go to the other two jacks in the apartment, and connect a single phone to them, they work. However, when I have all four devices hooked in (that's the cordless phone, a line to a wall jack, plus two additional phones, each in it's own pre-existing wall jack), then only one phone rings, and barely at at. It barely lets one small flutter of one or two bell dings). If I remove the extra two phones from the system, then the wireless phone rings just fine. Is this a power distribution problem? Not enough juice in the line(s) to support so many phones? Any way to amp this up? Open to suggestions, and thanks in advance. ...It wouldn't matter if I only wanted one phone, but I have a lot of old-fashioned extensions phones (candle-stick variety) that I like to use. All in working order.

Posts: 81 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 02, 2006 Posts: 81

Welcome to the revolution!

What you need to do is start couting up your REN numbers on your phones. Most phones have a sticker or a label on them that has a REN number. Some phone are 1...some are 0.3. The reason your adding up all your REN numbers is because most vonage phone adapters can only handle REN of 5. Above that it can't power the ringer.

I've found that some of the newer phones even have a REN of 0.0. So you might consider replacing some old phones with newer ones. Or even look at expandable phone system.

Good luck!

Posts: 37 · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 3:16 pm Post subject:

It sounds like you live in an apartment. Have you disconnected your inside wiring from the phone company properly?

Posts: 1123 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 1123

I DO NOT recommend connecting to house wiring if you live in an apartment. The reason is because people tend to get PO'd if they see you in the box outside, and if some enterprising phone tech comes out to fix someone else's phone, they may just plug yours back in. That'd be bad. Now, what you can do, is find the central jack in your unit that comes in from the box outside. Typically, it's the one located most centrally, for me it's the one in my kitchen. You can disconnect there. Rather than that, I just bought a cordless set and run that, and don't even bother with the house wiring.

Posts: 4751 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4751

Bryce,

What adapter are you using and what firmware is it running? The RTP300 and WRTP54G adapters had ringing issues with firmware prior to 55, I believe. Current firmware is 60.

Posts: 2 · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 5:17 pm Post subject: Answer to Steve from Bryce...

Steve, thanks for asking. Naturally I haven't a clue (at the moment). I'll check as soon as I'm home again, and even update the firmware if it seems appropriate, and post again by Monday, if not before. Thanks to everyone for the continuing help/posts. The information, and variety of responses are useful to me.