What wiring to use?- new, potential customer here.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: May 11, 2004 Posts: 2

Hi,

I'm thinking of going with Vonage, but I have 1 wiring question. We will be using Vonage as a second phone line, keeping our local tele. co on the primary. This being the case, I will need to run a wire from near the modem/router about 150 feet (inside mostly, some outside) to the other side of the house where the base to the cordless phone(s) are. I can not move the base, nor the router/modem. Nor can I use the wiring in the house already for the regular phone, this will not be an option in the forseeable future.

My question is, what kind of wire should I buy? My line of thinking is to by something stronger than 'flat telephone wire found at Radio Shack', but I'm not sure what to get, nor where to get it.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Jeff

Posts: 183 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: May 05, 2004 Posts: 183

Minimum for code these days is CAT3 wire, but you can likely find CAT5 wire for less money (it's better, but cheaper these days because it's way more popular than CAT3 as it's also used for computer networks).

Anyway, either CAT3 or CAT5 meets the regulatory requirements for gauge, protection, and has the twist you need for noise rejection. Use the blue/blue-white pair.

Posts: 188 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Mar 07, 2004 Posts: 188

You may already be wired. Open one of your phone jacks. If there are 2 pairs of wires and your jack is only using 1 pair then you can use the other pair for Vonage. Just go out and buy 2 phone jack recepticals from your local hardware store. They are cheap. Then install them. Red and Green = 1 pair. Black and Yellow= 2nd pair. Hope that is not too complicated. Also, before plugging your MTA in, insure that there is no voltage on the phone line.

Posts: 35 · Posted: Mon May 10, 2004 9:26 pm Post subject:

Perhaps you could check to see if your home is wired with two-pair (4 conductor) cable. In general, if you only have one phone line, and traditional wiring, it uses the red and green wires. The yellow and black wires are available for a second line.

Two caveats:
#1 It's possible that since the yellow and black wires aren't usually expected to be used, they may not be connected between where you have the line and where you want the line. They probably are, but you never know if the original wirer (or an armchair telephone electrician) messed it up.

#2 Some older homes (back in the days of leasing your telephones from the phone company) have a "wall wart" transformer that is connected to the yellow and black wires. Way, way back when, this transformer was used to power the little light that lit up the dial on the phone, and may have supplied power for other things in the old phones. If you ever see a little gray wall wart wired into your yellow and black wires, unplug it, you don't need it... and they have been known to occasionally cause fires.

So, measure the voltage on your yellow/black wires to make sure there is no power (always good practice anyway when plugging Vonage into anything) and then, it will probably work, unless someone forgot to connect the wires somewhere.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: May 11, 2004 Posts: 2

Thanks guys for all the replies...at this point, none of us are too swift with the telephone wires to go messing around, so I think I'll lay some cat5 cable. I have to run a cat5 cable to that room (the same route) for something else, so I'll just run two now. Smile

Thanks
Jeff