No dial tone after hard wiring - quad wired home

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 4

I am trying to hard wire my house and have no previous experience with this. I followed the hard wiring guide that was posted in this forum. Everything went smoothly until the moment I tried to actually connect to my home wiring. As soon as I plug in the phone cord to a telephone jack, Phone 1 light starts to blink once a second and I get no dial tone in any of my home's jacks. I do however get 'something' since it is not completely dead (there is kind of a ticking/clicking noise when I depress the hang up switch on the phone.

If I unplug the wire and then plug a phone directly into the PAP2 adapter, it works fine. I have quad wiring in my home so I dont know if that's an issue. I checked a few of the jacks and it seems as though the red and green wires are hooked up to the center two prongs in the jack and the yellow black are hooked up to the two outer prongs next to the red and green prongs (if that makes any sense).

Also it appears as if the wiring does go on to each jack as there are a total of 2 sets of quad wires coming into to each jack (one coming in and one going out.)

Prior to dissconnecting my phone lines coming into the house, I tested that line 2 was dead and not being used.

Lastly, the reason I need to get this hard wired is because I have TIVO in a completely seperate room and am trying to avoid running wires.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 4

I'm having the same exact problem as you. I just posted it, and need it for my TiVo as well.

See my post in the Vonage forum labeled: "No dial tone or rings heard when calls are made?"

Hopefully, we'll get a response for one of your posts.

Mark

Posts: 55 · Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:29 pm Post subject:

hey mod, i'll give a try at it - but the best way to understand why it's not working is know how it's wired. I think I can help you based on what you posted.

First and foremost- can you plug a phone in now to the wall to get phone service that's not Vonage? If so, you need to disconnect that immediately.

Looks like you're in a series configuration - the lines are all run together, one after another. This means a disconnection in any of the jacks from the two wires will equate to a disconnection everywhere and a bad connection can mean problems - like clicking noises.

You have a 4 conductor cable with the 4 "standard" colors for standard telco wiring: black, red, green, yellow (the other standard is cat 3/5 twisted pair that's 4 pairs). You can use the red/green wires for your middle prongs, just make sure the red and green for both quads for each jack are wired together. I'd check other jacks - make sure the colors from each quads are wired together. Normally, you'll see both the reds on the screw for the jack and both the greens - this is the easiest way to make a connection to the jack and have the signal carry on on the "out" quad.

Do you have 2 quads outside at the telco box? If so, you need to just join the wires for each color together (red to red, green to green) , but keep it off the terminals for the telephone service.

BTW, how did you check line 2???

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 4

Thanks for the reply.

No outside phone service is coming in the house, I double checked that in all jacks before plugging the PAP2 in.

I would not think the problem is a break in the series because all the jacks in the house worked fine when using the traditional phone service. A break in the series would mean that the jacks would not work regardless of whether it was Vonage or the phone company, wouldn't it?

The box outside has two test lines (line one and line two as marked on the box) with standard telephone plugs which I am assuming connect the house to the telephone company. All I did was unplug both of those lines. I tested them by hooking a phone driectly to each one (i.e. at the point where my house wiring meets the phone company's). Line one had a signal coming through, line 2 did not.

Posts: 55 · Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 2:28 pm Post subject:

Alright...

If it's a connection problem, then yes, you'd have problems even on regular phone service.

By unplugging the jack on the box outside, that will disable all that and leave the wiring alone. The only thing I can think of is you've either got a short somewhere inside the house that the PAP2 can't overcome but the telco voltage can, or there's so much wire the PAP2 can't run your whole house. It issue may not be your wiring connections so much as the amount of wire to power all the jacks.

Vonage tech support can up the voltage coming out of the router. Trying giving them a call and see if that helps.

We can try disconnecting the quads one at a time to see how far down the lines your can run as well. You'll need to know what order the jacks are in starting from the one where your router is. You can separate the quads, and hookup each pair one at time on the jack - unless you know which quad is from the one from the other room. I would expect you could get 1 or 2 jacks running like this.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 4

Ok so I called Vonage and they made me go through all the normal checklist stuff before they upped the voltage. The good news is that now the phone 1 light on the PAP2 adapter stays on solid, bad news is that there still is no dial tone on any of my home's jacks.

I did however try something new, I added a splitter (not sure if that's the correct name, but it's the thing that plugs into your jack and gives you two jacks) to the jack and plugged the PAP2 into one and a phone into the other. Basically, the same thing happens, I get no dial tone from the phone, just a faint clicking noise when I depress the hang up switch. One difference though is that once (out of about 30 tries) I did get a busy signal from the phone.

Seems to me that it's not a voltage issue as there is no distance that the signal has to be sent with the splitter. Anyone got any ideas?

Posts: 1179 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1179

modmouse wrote:

If I unplug the wire and then plug a phone directly into the PAP2 adapter, it works fine. I have quad wiring in my home so I dont know if that's an issue. I checked a few of the jacks and it seems as though the red and green wires are hooked up to the center two prongs in the jack and the yellow black are hooked up to the two outer prongs next to the red and green prongs (if that makes any sense).

Also it appears as if the wiring does go on to each jack as there are a total of 2 sets of quad wires coming into to each jack (one coming in and one going out.)

Prior to dissconnecting my phone lines coming into the house, I tested that line 2 was dead and not being used.

Lastly, the reason I need to get this hard wired is because I have TIVO in a completely seperate room and am trying to avoid running wires.

Anyone have any suggestions?

modmouse, I have a couple of questions.

1. You said in your original post that you checked a few of your jacks. Though this is helpful, why didn't you open up all the jacks?

2. regarding the NIU outside your home. You said that there were two lines coming in from the telco. What color wires are connected to each pair of terminal screws? Is the red/green pair connected to line 1 and the yellow/black pair connected to line 2? The reason why I ask this is because most likely, the previous owner had 2 lines coming into the house which means some jacks are connected to line 1 and others are connected to line 2.

I don't know why you still have a signal from line 1. Did you not discontinue your land line service yet? Are you transfering your old number?

Are you trying to use Vonage on line 2 and keep your land line on line 1? Because if you disconnect both lines from the NIU, you will no longer have land line service to your home?

If you don't want land line service to your home, then your goal is to make sure that all the jacks in your home have the exact same setup (i.e. all red wires connected to the red screw, all green wires connected to the green screw, etc). This should be the case for all your jacks. Please check to make sure this is the case.

Now plug in the Vonage adapter to one of the jacks and it should light up all the jacks in your home.

Hope this helps.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 4

Thanks for your reply. In answer to your questions...

1. There are a few jacks that are located in tought to get a tplaces due to large furniture such as desks and entertainment centers being in front of them. I figured that if all the jacks worked prior and since they were wired in series then they must all be wired the same. Maybe that was a bad assumption.

2. Below is a picture of the NIU. It appears are if the black/yellow wires are actually line one. Though the thing that confuses me are the green and yellow wires on the line one side along with the black and yellow. I don't understand that. Got any suggestions?

I have no signal whatsoever at all in any way shape or form coming into the house from the telco. I triple checked all jacks after disco threes time during a 24 hour period. The only signal I get from any line one at this point is the line one of the PAP2 unit.

I am not trying to use Vonage on line 2. Just trying to get it to work with my home jacks on line one.

Here is a picture of the NIU. Note: I reconnected the jacks so that you could get a better view of the wiring.

Posts: 1179 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1179

modmouse,

thank you for taking the picture. I need to clarify a few things with you.

Correct me if I am wrong but here is what I can see.

1. I see two Quad four wires coming up the line 2 side from the bottom.

2. I see a solid blue/blue-white striped pair on the line 2 side but I cannot see where it goes. It looks like it comes to the middle of the NIU and then it's out of view. Can you tell where it goes? Is it the larger diameter wire coming up the line 1 side? It looks that way upon close inspection.

3. I see a bunch of wires coming up the middle between lines 1 & 2. I see one white wire and two black wires but there could be more.

4. I see one large diameter white wire coming up the side of line 1. I am pretty sure that this line is your cat5 which has 4 pairs of wires and has the solid blue/blue-white striped pair.

If your initial assumption is that your phone jacks are wired in sequence, your NIU would not have been connected this way. You would have only 1 pair coming into your house and the signal distributing to all the other jacks. From what I can see, it looks like there are several lines coming out of your NIU into the home which means you have multiple circuits coming into your house and not one simple circuit.

On the line 2 side, here are the wires that I can see connected to the terminals though I am sure there are more that are out of view from the picture.

Starting from top screw to bottom screw:

Top - 2 green and 1 blue-white stripe
Mid Top - 2 green and 2 red
Mid Bottom - 1 solid blue, maybe 2 red
Bottom - maybe 4 red?

One the line 1 side:

Top - 2 yellow
Mid Top - 2 yellow
Mid Bottom - 2 black
Bottom - 2 black

I also see 2 green and a red wire on line 1 on the left side of the screws but I cannot see where they go from there.

These are what I can see but I cannot see behind these wires and I cannot see behind some of the obstacles. I see at least 3 quad wires coming out of the NIU and a cat5e 4 pair wire. Can you confirm this?

In addition, can you confirm where these wires enter the home? Do they all go to the same place?

I suspect that your home was rewired a number of times but it's only a guess. They certainly didn't do a good job of keeping it simple.

Please confirm with me exactly how its been connected.

What I can see is that the top two terminal screws are connected together so that's why you see green wires connected to the top 2 screws and red wires connected to the bottom 2 screws, which are connected together. Likewise, the same setup on the line 1 side.

You are correct in suspecting that line 2 was used as the primary line. It appears that way. Perhaps line 1 was not working properly.

Anyway, confirm my comments and we'll go from there.

Posts: 164 · Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 8:08 pm Post subject:

This is only a guess but is it possible that the jack or jacks are on one line and the Vonage ATA is on the other? I guessing that the ATA is also plugged into a jack, maybe try another jack. Apparently there were two lines and certain jacks may be either line. Is it possible that the jacks are wired incorrectly? This may have been asked.

Maybe tying the two lines together will produce results. No harm if both lines are dead otherwise.

Is it possible to actually trace the wires usually by following them visually in the basement?

What you need is a telephone repairman handset with prongs on the red and green wires. You can use an old telephone and place wires on the terminals until you might get dial tone.