Using home wiring

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 20, 2009 Posts: 1

I am having a problem with getting vonage to all my phone jacks. I have disconnected my house from the line coming in, and I have hooked up the box to the phone jack. After I turned on the phones and they were getting a dial tone. Then when I turned them on again, they would get a busy signal, without me even dialing anything.

Any Ideas?

Posts: 1178 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1178

that's usually an indication that you have a short somewhere. check your phone jacks by unscrewing them and visually check that the wires are properly connected to the terminal screws.

Posts: 343 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Dec 04, 2005 Posts: 343

Also make sure that the phone cord you are using to connect your Vonage device to the house wiring only has two pins in the connectors. If there are 4, something connected to your wiring may be shorting the two lines together.

Posts: 38 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Jan 24, 2009 Posts: 38

Your phone adapter is can only push sufficent voltage for short distance - I would think a whole house would be a problem for your phone adapter.

It takes 90v dc to make the phone ring and I beleave it always has around 54v for the dial tone - even if my specs are not quite exact the fact remains to many active extensions or to much distance between your adapter and the phone will burn out your adapter.

You might consider dividing up your house wiring so you do not overlasd the adapter - Remeber there are no fuses it it that can be replaced or reset - It is done deal when you burn it up.

Cheers

I was aware of the load on my small apartment wiring but I over looked the outside gate being tied in to the existing phone system, even though it was not connected to a ATT hard line.

Posts: 293 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 22, 2006 Posts: 293

Over in the Hard wiring section of the forum, there has been discussion on home wiring. Typically, your Vonage adapters should not have difficulty pushing to all the extensions in the house.

I agree with mundy5 that this is more likely a short. Not being able to push enough through would result in a dead phone.

The limitation that will come to play on whole house wiring would center more around the REN. The vonage adapters do not have the same Ring Equivilency that comes from the POTS systems. So having too high total REN will play havoc with ringers/caller id/call waiting features.

Posts: 109 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jun 21, 2005 Posts: 109

outerfire wrote:

Typically, your Vonage adapters should not have difficulty pushing to all the extensions in the house.

the only problem i have run into was my caller id on my direct tv DVR would not work until i moved the adapter (from my computer room phone jack) to the phone jack that the DVR was plugged into via a 2 way splitter.

Posts: 1178 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1178

I think different rules apply with DVRs and/or alarms etc. outerfire was talking about regular phones. I personally have 4 phones connected and except for the pulse phone that looks circa '60s all 3 phones ring with no issues and callerid has not been a problem either. I think the REN is too high for my pulse phone.