home wiring problem

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 09, 2004 Posts: 3

I just began using Vonage. It works fine with a single phone connected directly to the router. However, when I disconnected the house from the incoming Verizon line and tried to connect the router to a phone jack, none of the other phones in the house had dial tones. After 45 min waiting for the tech support to answer, I was told that there is a problem with the wiring in my house and I must hire an electrician. I had been asured that this was simple to do since I had only a single incoming phone line and four phones in the house. Any suggestions?

Posts: 2135 · Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 12:27 am Post subject: Re: home wiring problem

larrys wrote:

...However, when I disconnected the house from the incoming Verizon line and tried to connect the router to a phone jack, none of the other phones in the house had dial tones...

Larrys, you might want to be a little more descriptive on "I disconnected the house from the incoming Verizon line and tried to connect the router to a phone jack"...

What did you do, exactly?

Are you SURE that the house did not have some power on the line?

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 09, 2004 Posts: 3

Hi,
I found the Verizon box outside on the house. I opened it and saw two connections. I then disconnected all the wires from both terminals. AT one time I had two telephone lines to the house, but one was disconnected years agao. Only line two was active since at that point my phone dial tone went dead. I taped all the ends of the wires and sealed the box. Then I plugged the router (Linksys) into a phone jack. I know the router was active since I have internet connectivity and can get a dial tone when I plug ap hone directly in the phoneport on the router. However, when I then plugged in a phone into a jack elsewhere in the house, I had no dial tone. I tried all house jacks to be certain.

Posts: 110 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Mar 06, 2004 Posts: 110

It is clear that this is NOT a Vonage problem at all -- they can't diagnose everyone's home wiring after all.

If you had two lines at one point, then you almost certainly still have two different phone runs going through the house, like I did -- and probably more than two. The solution is to splice all of those together to at the Verizon box outside your house.

You left all the wires disconnected and taped the ends of all of them. What is most likely happening is that the Vonage dial tone is being propagated down two of those wires into the network box outside and then POOF! they don't connect to the rest of your home wiring. In your case the phone jack that you've selected to use is probably a "home run" back to the box, with no other extensions connected to it. Older homes typically don't have this type of wiring, so I'm guessing you have a newer home as well, or you are using a phone jack that was relatively newly installed. Am I right?

You need to splice together the phone lines in your Verizon box with each other -- excluding, of course, the wires that used to provide the Verizon service. As for how you make sure you get the righ wires with each other... well.. use the colors and hope for the best. The fact that you disconnected everything already makes this a bit harder.

Let us know... or take a picture of the box and send it to me: plyons AT optonline.net (not sure if you can post JPGs here).

Posts: 2135 · Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 8:59 am Post subject:

plyons wrote:

...or take a picture of the box and send it to me: plyons AT optonline.net (not sure if you can post JPGs here).

Sure you can... just put [img]LINK GOES HERE[/img] around the link.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 09, 2004 Posts: 3

Hi,

I (I being John the electrician with me looking over his shoulder) finally solved the home wiring problem. It was as you said, that the Vonage signal was going to the outside box and stopping there. Once we identified the wires for the incoming telcom signal, we then spliced together all the wires from the various jacks in the house, plugged in the router to a jack and it worked!

Posts: 110 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Mar 06, 2004 Posts: 110

Great! Good to hear it. Enjoy your cheap phone bills!

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 13, 2004 Posts: 4

Are you sure you disconnected the PhoneCo from your network?

Posts: 110 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Mar 06, 2004 Posts: 110

Good point to make again, nolandline.

You could easily be up and running just fine and not realize that you actually reconnected to the Telco service. It might take days or weeks, but if some voltage (like a ringer signal) happens to come down that line, your ATA is going to get blown out.

Worth re-checking.