Wiring my apt for Vonage

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 01, 2004 Posts: 6

Hi,

I just sent hooked up one phone to the Linksys router sent by Vonage and the phone is working fine. I would like to have all the phone jacks in my apt "vonaged" so I can use the phones in the other rooms too, and also have my Tivo (in the other room) be able to make its daily calls through vonage. I live in an apartment community and I could not understand the wiring of my cable box at all - did not seem to conform to instructions that I had come across in the vonage site !!! I had my building maintenance guy come in and asked him to make sure the telephone wiring was disconnected. He opened up the cable box and undid what looked like three fuses and he says that this should ensure that the phone lines to the apartment are dead.

Is that right? I read somewhere that connecting my router to the phone jack in the wall without ensuring that the telephone wiring was completely disconnected could fry it.....

Any input anybody?
Thanks

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 9:27 pm Post subject:

this site is the gold standard. I've never even looked at it, but it gets passed around all the time. not sure if it applies to an apt though.

http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html

Posts: 70 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 17, 2004 Posts: 70

I kicked around doing this when I bought a house last July & got moved in. But with the 3 phone limit, I decided it made more sense to sell off all my old phones on eBay & buy a single Vtech base with 4 handsets. Cost was under $200 & now I have 4 cordless phones that work flawlessly with Vonage & have tons of features, including speaker phone, LND, headset jack, etc., on each handset.

Posts: 6 · Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:31 am Post subject:

I have to say the cordless 2.4GHz phone systems really do make the most sense to use with Vonage. I actually do have the vonage box hooked up to the whole house xfer box in my utility room so it feeds the entire house, but I only have two phones plugged into any outlet - a corded phone in the kitchen and my 2.4GHz base station which then connects to the other three cordlesses that run off it. Its a phenominal way to go!

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 01, 2004 Posts: 6

Unfortunately.

- the "michigantelephonesite" while wonderful does not seem applicable to an apartment.

- The base with multiple cordless will not solve my problem, as I need to hook up tivo into the wall jack in my living room to make its calls, so I do have to have the apartment wired!

Posts: 70 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 17, 2004 Posts: 70

tvvandy wrote:

- The base with multiple cordless will not solve my problem, as I need to hook up tivo into the wall jack in my living room to make its calls, so I do have to have the apartment wired!

My Vtech cordless base has a jack on it to plug in other devices. I actually have a corded phone in there.

Also, just a warning, many devices have problems using the regular Vonage line, something to do with the data compression used. I use a dedicated Vonage fax line for credit card transactions, faxing in & out & the obscure modem use. I guess this compression is different or eliminated on their fax/data lines. On the Motorola router there are 2 phone jacks, line 1 & line 2. Line 2 is the fax/data line.

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 30, 2004 Posts: 20

tvvandy wrote:

Unfortunately.

- the "michigantelephonesite" while wonderful does not seem applicable to an apartment.

- The base with multiple cordless will not solve my problem, as I need to hook up tivo into the wall jack in my living room to make its calls, so I do have to have the apartment wired!

Did you have a regular telephone company "land line" active in your apt before you signed up with Vonage?
If so, is that line still active (before the maint. guy came and "disconnected" your phone line)?

If you answered yes to both of those questions, and you have not yet told your telco to disconnect your account... then you should be able to see if your apt jacks are truely disconnected by plugging in a regular phone into your jacks... listen for lack of dial-tone.

If you answered no to either of those questions, or if you already told your telco to disconnect your account, you won't really be able to tell if the jacks in your apt are truely disconnect. If this is the case, you should go with the cordless phones idea.

In either case, wiring your apt is risky at best, since you don't really have great control over the line coming in to the building from the telco. If you wire up your apt, and someone plugs your apt back into the telco lines from the street, you may damage your equipment.

To stay safe, I'd go with the cordless phones. Follow the above guy's recommendation for Tivo... but like he said, many people have had problems getting Tivo to work over Vonage. You may have to have a single telco landline in your apt for just the basic cost per month... somewhere usually between 15-20 bucks. *OR* if you have a Tivo Series 2, you can connect it to your highspeed internet connection to do it's daily calls.

Good Luck!

Posts: 426 · Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 4:25 pm Post subject:

No dial tone may not be all there is to worry about.

Some telephone companies still put voltage on the line, even if no
dial tone. The voltage can fry your Vonage box.

Just a thought.

Posts: 37 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Dec 29, 2004 Posts: 37

AirJunky wrote:

I kicked around doing this when I bought a house last July & got moved in. But with the 3 phone limit,

Just an FYI. The ATA has a 3 REN limit (Ringer Equivalence Number). You can get the REN from the bottom of your device. I am currently using the wiring in my house (disconnected from the POTS) to connect all of my rooms to the PAP2. Just for an example, I have two Vtech phones and each has a REN of 0.1B (the B is the frequency range.) The largest REN device I have is the answering machine with a REN of 1.0. If you are interested in more info on this:

http://www.affordablephones.net/theringer.htm

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 01, 2004 Posts: 6

Leaving the wiring alone...

got a Network adapter and connected it to my Tivo. In about 5 minutes, Tivo was able to make its calls using the broadband connection.

I guess I can live with the phones being in one bedroom!

Thanks all for your input!!