apartment punchdown block

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Jul 10, 2005 Posts: 2

I live in an apartment and have access to the 110 punchdown block in the laundry room. If I disconnect the phone co. wire, is it easy to connect back up when I leave? The wiring seems obvious enough. I bought the punch tool already. I'm not sure how to pull the wires out though.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 03, 2005 Posts: 4

hodgear wrote:

I live in an apartment and have access to the 110 punchdown block in the laundry room. If I disconnect the phone co. wire, is it easy to connect back up when I leave? The wiring seems obvious enough. I bought the punch tool already. I'm not sure how to pull the wires out though.

Hey dude, don't go that route. You will end up frying your connection when the Phone repair man goes on some random call, and sees those wires hanging free. He hooks them up to power, and you loose your router...

Just find the wire on the side inside your apartment.
One of the plates will have the wires you see in the punchdown outside, disconnect these, and tape/move them out of the way. now your whole apartment is its own network of phone jacks, plug your Vonage box into any outlet and your phone will work on any outlet, and you are the only one that can reconnect.

one easy way to find which wires are the ones from outside, is have a phone somewhere plugged in, remove the wires in another room, if you loose connection, thats the one, test all other rooms to verify that there isn't another entry point in the apartment.

If you are familiar with colors/wiring/etc for phone lines, it's a snap. Then when you move, you know exactly which one to hook back up, and your ready to go....

(Another route, if you have all cordless since your in an apartment, is just to plug the cordless base into the back of the Vonage box and have your phone anywhere in the house)...

Posts: 78 · Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 8:50 pm Post subject: Tagging out 110

To get the wires off simply pull. Be certain you're pulling the right ones though as 110 block is fairly dense and easy to confuse.

Next, punch a short stretch of wire to the empty posts that you just removed your pair from. Tie this to a tag that has your old phone number (Or current if you LNP'd it)

Next - clip and tie a bright orange tag to your pair stating that this is no longer part of {insert phone co name here} and should not be reconnected without express permission along with your current number and apt. number.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Jul 10, 2005 Posts: 2

oh I should have been more clear. The laundry room is in my apartment. I think it's just a 110 punchdown board in there. I was brave and went ahead and did this and it works great. I'll just punch it back in when I leave.

I'm sure this violates my lease. But I mean they have a nice punch board setup and the apartment even has a seperate cat5e network that runs along side the telephone cat5e. None of that network was terminated but that shouldn't be too bad. All I need is a tiny run of cat5e with an rj11 on the end so I can punch that in (no phone outlet in the laundry room). Now I can have the cable modem, Vonage, and router all in that one room away from the computer desk.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 31, 2005 Posts: 3

I live in an aparment that requires a phone line connection setup with the intercom system so that when visitors dial in, I can buzz them in using my phone line by pressing '9' on my handset. However, now that I have switched to Vonage, by plugging the phone adapter to the jack on the wall, the lines in other room aren't active. I'm guessing the outside connection needs to be disconnected in order to make a Vonage network within my condo. I'm not technical enough to play around with wires (punching, shorting, etc) on the board. Will my phone company be able to take care of disconnecting the outsides line if I call their technician? Also, if the outside line is disconnected will I be able to buzz visitors in using my Vonage phone?

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 15, 2005 Posts: 6

Wow, I'm surprised no one helped you with this question yet.
There's two possible scenarios that apply to you.

Scenario A (cut-in intercom)
This is how most apartments are setup
You'll know that you have a cut-in setup by thinking back to when you moved into your apartment. Did you have to give your building manager your phone # for the intercom to work?
If you did, then your intercom is not cut-in (Scroll down to Scenario B)
If you did not and your intercom just worked the second you plugged a phone into the jack, your intercom is a cut-in style.
In this case, my best advice for someone who isn't too technically savvy is to get a good cordless phone system with multiple extensions that don't require hardwiring. And leave an el cheapo landline attached to one of your phone jacks. That can now be your dedicated enterphone.
If you're totally wanting a hardwired solution, call a telephone repair man, you'll thank yourself in the end.

Scenario B (dial out intercom)
As mentioned above you'll know you have this setup if you had to give your building manager your phone number in order to get the intercom to work.
In this case your intercom will already be working through Vonage (if you ported your #) and aside from disconnecting the phone company's connection where it enters your apartment, you shouldn't have to make any other changes to the typical home installation.
If you didn't port yout number, just give your Vonage to your building manager and he/she will make the change for you.

Hope this helps..

Posts: 42 · Full Forum Member Joined: May 14, 2006 Posts: 42

trax27 wrote:

Scenario A (cut-in intercom)
This is how most apartments are setup
You'll know that you have a cut-in setup by thinking back to when you moved into your apartment. Did you have to give your building manager your phone # for the intercom to work?
If you did, then your intercom is not cut-in (Scroll down to Scenario B)
If you did not and your intercom just worked the second you plugged a phone into the jack, your intercom is a cut-in style.
In this case, my best advice for someone who isn't too technically savvy is to get a good cordless phone system with multiple extensions that don't require hardwiring. And leave an el cheapo landline attached to one of your phone jacks. That can now be your dedicated enterphone.
If you're totally wanting a hardwired solution, call a telephone repair man, you'll thank yourself in the end.

How about some hints for those of us who would like to get the intercom working with Vonage and without a cordless phone?

Thanks, Brendan

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 15, 2005 Posts: 6

bmccull wrote:

How about some hints for those of us who would like to get the intercom working with Vonage and without a cordless phone?

Thanks, Brendan

I specifically didn't mention how to do this with phones that aren't mobile because it was intended to be the simplest, risk-free solution. So my advice for those living in a large condo would still be to buy a cordless phone system that has multiple extensions.

However, having said that, if you live in a small condo my advice would be to just connect one phone to the condo jack (for enterphone) and another phone to your Vonage adapter for phone calls.

If you insist on wanting multiple extensions without getting a cordless phone, it is possible to get an adapter which takes your first line (usually the blue pair) to your second line (usually the orange pair). You could connect that to your Vonage adapter and then plug the output of that adapter into any phone jack, this would then send your Vonage throughout your apartment.
Then you'd just buy one of those adapters for each phone which you want to be on Vonage except instead of hooking the adapter to the phone, you'd hook it up to the jack and then plug the phone's cord into the adapter. Here's the order of both.

VONAGE--ADAPTER-------CORD--JACK
PHONE--CORD------ADAPTER--JACK

!!!!WARNING!!!!
DON'T TRY THE ABOVE IF YOU:
(A) HAVE MORE THAN ONE ACTIVE PHONE LINE
(B) YOU SUBSCRIBE TO ADSL OR A SIMILAR SERVICE

If you're comfortable with wiring you can accomplish the same thing by unscrewing the jack from the wall and switching the blue pair with the orange pair. You'd need to do this at the jack where the adapter is located and every jack where you want a phone attached to that adapter.

!!!!WARNING!!!!
DON'T TRY THIS IF YOU'RE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH TELEPHONE WIRING
YOU COULD EASILY DESTROY YOUR Vonage ADAPTER