Other phones in house do not work

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: May 16, 2006 Posts: 9

taylor2767 wrote:

http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic13917.html

This may answer some of the questions you have about DSL. It appears the your DSL is only wired to the jack you currently getting Vonage service on. Your options appear to be.

1.have your dsl provider come out and re-wire all your phone jacks or
2.install a punchdown board to wire all phone jacks to enable them to use Vonage.

I'm not an expert but I don;t know if it's worth it.

Do you live in the US?

I don't know if you're familiar with how the phone lines work here, but there's one line coming off the pole and into the house telephone box. The various jacks are wired from that one entry point.

I don't think you can pick and choose what line does what.

Therefore, DSL should be available at any jack in the house. When we got DSL, they didn't ask us which phone jack did we want it at. I'm fairly certain I can get DSL at any jack...Not with Vonage though.

Thanks again!

RIck

Posts: 400 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: May 05, 2005 Posts: 400

For sh@#s and giggles see if you have DSL in other jacks. If they can split DSL and phone service on the same line you never know. Do you have a 2 jack splitter on the jack with DSL?

Posts: 73 · Posted: Wed May 17, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject:

They can split DSL off onto a specific jack. I was one of the first people to get DSL when BellSouth started offering it here in Raleigh, NC and they didn't use filters back then. They split the DSL off onto its own phone jack, and therefore there's no need for filters. You can still get this done, but the phone company usually has a hefty installation charge for this. You get a free install with the filters because they don't have to send anyone out to do any wiring or any other kind of work. With the filter situation you have DSL on EVERY phone jack in your house. The filters are used to filter out the DSL signal so you don't hear noise on the phone line when you're trying to talk. You have to have a filter on every jack that has a phone connected to it or you'll hear "static". You connect your DSL modem to whichever phone jack is nearest your PC, and then connect the modem with an ethernet cable either to a router or directly to your PC.

First off, the Vonage adapter has ONE working phone jack on it, and you're supposed to plug ONE phone DIRECTLY into that jack. There are actually 3 jacks on most of the adapters. Phone 1, phone 2, and ethernet. The ethernet jack connects to your DSL or cable modem, and your telephone connects to phone 1. The phone 2 jack is generally used for a fax line if you've signed up for a fax number from Vonage. Vonage does NOT state in any of their advertising or on their web site that their service will work throughout your entire house. EVERYTHING I've seen from Vonage states that you plug the Vonage adapter into your DSL or cable modem with ethernet, and then you plug *A* phone into the adapter. Nowhere does it state that it works throughout your entire house, and it never has. To get working phones in more than one room, most people go the route of buying a cordless phone that has one base unit that supports more than one handset. They connect the base unit to the Vonage adapter and place the handsets around the house.

It IS possible to have Vonage working on all of the phone jacks in your house (I do), BUT Vonage does NOT officially support this and will not provide you with any help on this. The only way to get this working properly (as I stated earlier) is go out outside your house to the Network Interface Device (NID) that is attached to your house. It's a small (usually grey) box, and everyone has one somewhere. Most of them are on the outside (mine is next to my electric meter and cable TV line), but a few are occasionally located inside (maybe in a utility/storage room that's only accessable from an outside door, or sometimes in a basement). The NID is where the outside wiring (line coming from the pole) connects to your inside wiring (phone jacks). The NID can legally be opened by you at any time without any notification to or approval from the phone company. When you open it you will see a modular cord plugged into a jack, just like a phone cord plugged into a jack inside your house. If you unplug this it will completely disconnect your inside wiring from your outside wiring. If you do this and then connect the phone port on your Vonage adapter to any one of the phone jacks in your house, you will have Vonage service on every other jack in your house. The ethernet cable would also be connected from your Vonage adapter to your cable or DSL modem.

The only problem with this (with your current setup) is that if you disconnect at the NID it will also cut off your DSL service. In order to have Vonage on all the jacks in your house AND use your DSL service at the same time you'll have to have your phone company come out and rewire your DSL service so it has its own line and its own NID seperate from the other wiring in your house...and that's not cheap. I remember the install for my DSL to have its own NID & line was $300. That was probably at least 6 years ago, and they didn't offer free installs or any other way of doing it back then. They can and will still do this, but you have to ask for it...and I'm sure it still costs a pretty penny for them to do it. You could also do it yourself if you're knowledgable on telephone wiring. They didn't have Vonage back then...and I don't have DSL anymore. I've since moved and now have a cable modem.

The reason you need to disconnect at the NID is because there is power on the phone line, whether you have telephone service or not. The phone jack on the Vonage adapter also has power on it. Hook the two together and while it doesn't ALWAYS happen it's possible to zap something because there's power coming out of both. Telephones, fax machines, modems, etc do not have power coming out of their jacks.