Shouldn't just wiring RNG and TIP to house wiring work?

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 06, 2006 Posts: 8

OK, I've been reading about getting my ADT alarm to work with my Vonage. I understand that the RNG and TIP lines were originally connected to the phone company, then the R-1 and T-1 distributed to the rest of the house.
Now, let's say I don't have any phones in my house at all. Isn't that no different than connecting to the wiring coming out of my Vonage router to the RNG and TIP lines? The R-1 and T-1 don't really have to be connected to anything to work.
I've seen where possibly I need to swap the RNG and TIP connectors in the box since using just a regular phone cord to connect the Vonage router to the house wiring reverses the normal polarity, which most phones don't care about, but the alarm will.

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

If you mean can you just plug the Vonage box into a house jack and have the alarm work properly, the answer is no. The reason is that the alarm is designed to automatically cut the house phones loose during an alarm situation. If your Vonage box is plugged into the house wiring, that would cut the alarm box loose from the Vonage service during an alarm. It's just the opposite of what you want.

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 06, 2006 Posts: 8

No, I mean by rewiring the connections in the box to orient the output of the alarm to be part of the house wiring.

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

Yes, that should work. However, if you should plug phones into the house wiring as well, they won't be disconnected during alarms.

Strictly aside from connection details, you should be aware that some alarms simply won't work with Vonage. It's not clear to me why that is, but apparently it's so.

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 06, 2006 Posts: 8

I guess the "smart" thing to do would be to move the RJ31X jack up to where my Vonage router is, use Cat5e cable to extend that line out of the alarm, and wire it properly.

Does anyone have an actual wiring diagram as to what connects to what? I'd rather go at it that way. I mean, I ASSUME it's

2 - wires, Red and Green, out of the Vonage router to that connector, those two going into the alarm to the RING and TIP, then the R-1 and T-1 going back out to that connector, and then that pair to the house wiring.

I guess I'm just not sure which is red and which is green out of the router, unless that's listed on there.

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

I'm not sure there's a clear standard on that. My alarm guy ran red/green from phone service at the demarc to the alarm panel and yellow/black back to the demarc to connect with the house wiring.

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 06, 2006 Posts: 8

I actually talked to a local alarm technician and he gave me some useful information.

The TIP should be the green, and be positive. T-1 should be the yellow, and also be positive. Check with voltmeter. That helped a ton.

Add this to what you just said, and all the info is there. Thanks.

Posts: 94 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Sep 15, 2006 Posts: 94

You really have two issues here:

1) Alarm systems are intended to "take over" the phone line (i.e., disconnect any other devices currently on the phone line) when it needs to make a call. This is what the various alarm phone jacks do. I presume that you could have your alarm system take over the phone line coming out of the Vonage box, in the same way that it takes over a land-line phone line.

2) However, alarm systems talk over phone lines as modems. This is the bigger problem -- many (if not a high percentage) of modems (including fax machines, alarm systems, Tivo's) have difficulty connecting over Voip lines like Vonage. The way Voip works is based on voice communication, and the modem signals don't get handled very well. Some people have no problems, and many other people have a lot of problems. It's difficult to determine if you have problems, and difficult to fix.