I want to wire my house so I can use all phone ports

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 22, 2003 Posts: 3

Has anyone used the Cisco ATA 186 to wire their house and use all phone jacks like with a pots line? If anyone has and can share the "deets" it would be greatly appreciated.

Posts: 24 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Aug 05, 2003 Posts: 24

This is easy to do.

1) Disconnect the line from the telco going into your house at the junction box outside your house.

2) MAKE SURE YOU DO STEP 1. IF you skip step 1 you will burn out the Cisco ATA.

3) Run a standard phone cord from your Cisco ATA to a phone wall jack. If needed, use a 2 line adapter (Radio shack) so that you can continue to use the phone that was going to the wall jack (If any)

Thats it.

If you need to reconnect the Telco for any reason, be sure to UNPLUG THE ATA first.

Posts: 36 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Aug 15, 2003 Posts: 36

I am a new customer and want to connect the ATA to the existing wiring too. Are you sure that a standard phone line connecting the ATA to the house wiring is correct? My tests (using a radio shack phone line tester) indicate that a standard phone wire will reverse the polarity of the phone lines. I don't know whether this would cause any damage or not. Appears to me that you would want to make your own phone cable where pin 1=black, pin 2=red, pin 3=green, and pin 4=yellow on both ends of the phone cord. Is my analysis correct?

Posts: 24 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Aug 05, 2003 Posts: 24

Phone lines in a house are all wired in parallel. The standard wiring for the ATA is to use a standard phone cord from the ATA to the PHONE. When you connect a phone to the wall jack this is the same. If A=B and B=C then A=C rule applies. The best answer is that myself and a numbr of other users have plugged the ATA directly into a wall jack to provide the Vonage phone service to all other jacks in the house (Assuming a single phone line). Remember YOU MUST DISCONNECT THE OUTLINE LINE FROM THE TELCO FIRST !!!!!!!!!!!

Posts: 24 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Aug 05, 2003 Posts: 24

If you want to, you can make your own Phone cable to keep the Red/Green from being reversed. Most of todays phones do not really care if they are reversed.

Posts: 36 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Aug 15, 2003 Posts: 36

Apparently phone cords are not in parallel. On 1 end, pin 1=black, pin 2=red, pin 3= green, pin 4=yellow; on the other end, pin 1=yellow, pin 2=green, pin 3=red, pin 4=black. Pins 2 and 3 make up the primary line; pins 1 and 4 make up the second line. In effect, the phone cord reverses the polarity. So it looks like that you would need a phone wire where each wire goes to the same pin on the other end to maintain proper polarity. I agree with you that just plugging a standard phone line in the wall seems to work fine. Has Cisco or Vonage addressed the polarity issue?

Posts: 24 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Aug 05, 2003 Posts: 24

Learn something new every day. In all my years I just assumed that it was a s all the same straight thru. But the bottom line is IT WORKS...

I have not heard of a problem if you reverse the REG/GREEN or BLACK/YELLOW pair, but just to be safe, you might just want to switch the wires to follow the correct colors.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: 1061053509 Posts: 4

I just wired up a 66 Block to allow me to use my Vonage phone with all of the house wiring, but I can switch back to landlines as easily as moving a wire pair. I had no problems at all. I ran a daisy chain along the incoming feed side of the block and then pushed out outgoing side to each wirepair for the house. All in all, about 30 minutes worth of work and I just tested a FAX from each line in the house to make sure it was working well.

":Dave

Guest

If you unplug your telco outside at the box, wouldn't you need to plug your DSL modem/router into the newly-unplugged line?

Posts: 40 · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2003 2:43 pm Post subject:

That's the beauty of using a 66 block. (and why they're used in almost all commercial buildings)

Think of a 66 block as a telephone patch panel.

You arrange the "sources" down one side -- e.g. DSL provider, POTS, ATA.

You place the "extensions" on the other side.

Then you can cross-connect different services to different extensions whenever you feel like it -- or when Vonage is down Sad

-- with minimal fuss.

For example, if you decide to move your DSL modem from the basement to your study, you'd simply re-patch your 66 block to send the DSL signal ONLY to your study, and you'd then patch basement extension to the ATA (assuming you wanted phone service down there).

I keep my "bare-bones backup" Verizon POTS line patched to one normally-unused extension -- complete with an answering machine announcing my Vonage # -- while I keep my ATA patched to my other 5 extensions.

A 66 block is a wonderful item to get all of your house wiring squared-away for a minimal investment.