home wiring and dead jacks

Posts: 109 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jun 21, 2005 Posts: 109

open the wall-plate/ jacks for the 2 jacks that were on the sceond phone line.... you will probable see that the orange/orange-white pair is hooked up to the red/green... remove the orange pair and hook up the blue pair to the red/green..... you want to get to the point where all the phone jacks in you house have the blue pair hooked up to the red/green

Posts: 73 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 19, 2006 Posts: 73

I thought that was the way that I had it in my house! They were all that way and the upstairs doesn't work. I'll go double check since it's been months since I've looked but that's the way I recall them being before Vonage.

Posts: 1178 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1178

if your recollection is correct, then all your jacks will be connected to line 1 but you said that 7 years ago, you had a 2nd line installed which means some of your jacks must be connected to the 2nd line not the 1st. I would suggest double checking the wiring on your jacks so that they would be consistent.

Posts: 73 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 19, 2006 Posts: 73

a-dhold wrote:

open the wall-plate/ jacks for the 2 jacks that were on the sceond phone line.... you will probable see that the orange/orange-white pair is hooked up to the red/green... remove the orange pair and hook up the blue pair to the red/green..... you want to get to the point where all the phone jacks in you house have the blue pair hooked up to the red/green

Ok, I can say with confidence that firstly - each of my jacks has wires going in not out. Secondly the blues and blue whites are hooked up to the red/greens. The oranges have been disconnected.
when I added the second line I exchanged my single jack outlet for a double jack into the room with the computer - I did not take out line 1 and put in line 2 instead. I had both lines running to the room and this room only. the others had their orange wires remain unconnected.

Does this help at all?
Thanks for trying.

Posts: 1178 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1178

got it. then there is a disconnect somewhere in your home that is creating this 2nd circuit.

Posts: 73 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 19, 2006 Posts: 73

Ok, so if there is a disconnect somewhere, why did I have good service through all the jacks in the house prior to switching to Vonage?

Posts: 1178 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1178

my guess is that the disconnect occured at the NIU since that's the only change in your internal wiring unless you also changed all your jack wiring.

would it be possible for you to post some close up pictures of your NIU wiring?

Posts: 109 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jun 21, 2005 Posts: 109

another test to try...

at the network interface...

hook the blue to the orange and the blue/white to the orange/white

that way we will have vonage on both line 1 and line 2 just incase you missed one jack that was wired to line 2. if any of the jacks are dead open up the plate and use the orange pair if the blue pair is hooked up or if the orange pair is hooked up use the blue pair.

what we are trying to do here is put vonage on the blue pair (line 1) and the orange pair (line 2) so if any of the wiring is broken we can use the other pair to feed that phone jack

Posts: 73 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 19, 2006 Posts: 73

mundy5 wrote:

my guess is that the disconnect occured at the NIU since that's the only change in your internal wiring unless you also changed all your jack wiring.

would it be possible for you to post some close up pictures of your NIU wiring?

for now the weather is bad and I don't want to go out in the sleet to take a close up picture of my NIU. I will have to wait another few days at least to finish this adventure.

Would any of my jacks work if everything was disconnected at the NIU?
I would assume that it's an all or nothing thing out there.

Posts: 1178 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1178

if your jacks are connected sequentially, no. Since I am assuming that you are connecting your vonage router to one of the jacks, it will send a signal to the next jack in sequence and so on until it gets to the NIU which then shorts the circuit out. However, if your sequence is interrupted, all jacks that are later in the sequence will be disconnected and therefore, no signal will get to them.

Again, you will need to look at your jacks and if there are 2 sets of solid blue wire and 2 sets of white with blue stripe wires, then you have a sequential connection.

The picture can wait. Please check your jacks (i.e. more than one) to see if there are 2 sets of solid blue wires and 2 sets of white with blue stripes etc. At least let's figure out how your house is wired. If there are only 1 solid blue and 1 white with blue striped wire on all your jacks, then we have a home run pattern and you will need to look for a junction box (a central location where all your wires connect to most likely a bridge or a 110 block).