Vonage hardwiring to the house problems

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 01, 2005 Posts: 2

I know that there have been several post like this one, but none of them have fully helped me yet...

We moved into a new house recently with no phone service hooked up to the best of our knowledge. We quickly purchased vonage and subsequently hooked it into a wall jack to activate the other jacks in the house. The other jacks worked fine (I received and made a call this morning) until this afternoon. Suddenly, the phones are not working throughout the residence. When I wire directly to the the rtp300, I am able to get a get a signal and make and receive phone calls. I've plugged different phones into outlets all over the house, with no luck. The only difference is that one phone gets a tone that sounds like there is a phone off of the line, even when there are no other phones hooked up. One phone is just silent.
One post mentions that the outside phone line meant for the phone company was unplugged and therefore exposed to the rain. I did water the yard today, and wonder if maybe it would have affected the jacks in the residence. I would have no idea how to fix that.
Another post states that there is a box on the outside of the house where the phone company lines can be hooked and unhooked. I have not been able to find this box as of yet. Since it is a new house, could the local phone company have come over and hooked up the wires, thus affecting the jacks through the house. If so, where might I find these wires on a new Beazer home? Would they possibly be somewhere other than on the side of the house? Any assistance would be of great help. Thanks

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

cidfergi,

Welcome to the forum. I'm sorry to hear that you are having issues with your hardwiring. Let me get some details straight.

1. You moved into a new home.
2. As far as you know, there is no connection to the outside Telco.
3. Once you connected the rtp300 to a jack, it was working with all the phones in your home.
4. All of a sudden, now it does not work.

I am in a fairly new townhouse built in 2002 and it has a NIU (Network Interface Unit) from SBC and it's a gray box roughly 4" x 6". It is clearly labeled as an NIU. You can see a picture of it on this post:

vonage-forum.com/ftopic9073.html" target="_blank">http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic9073.html

It is either at the sides or on the back of the home.

Would you be willing to do some investigating for us. First, can you see if your phones are connected to a central location? That is, do you see a control panel that has all the phone wires leading to it from all your jacks?

If you do not see a control panel or patch panel, then you want to open up one of the jacks to see if there are two sets of bundled wires connected to it.

Lastly, I have seen on earlier posts that water and moisture seems to affect the wiring but that usually only happens if the wires are exposed. My question to you is can you find the phone wire that goes to the outside of your home? Is it just dangling out there?

Mine leaves my home through the basement out the back.

Check to make sure that the wires are not exposed. Tape them up or in your case, you might want to pull it back into the home so that it cannot be affected by moisture in any way.

I hope this helps, mundy5

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 01, 2005 Posts: 2

Well, I actually had located the dangling wire yesterday and kind of figured it was the one. I talked to the electricians that wired the house today and verified. They advised me I was right and also how to deactivate it by locating the bundle you were speaking of. It is in a front closet. I appreciate your help. We'll see if it works.

Quick update.....I located the wires, but it doesn't say phone or mid on the main phone line from the side of the house. So....at the moment, all I know is that there are several blue cat 5 cables and one white one which I assume is the phone cord. Any suggestions from here?

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

cidfergi wrote:

So....at the moment, all I know is that there are several blue cat 5 cables and one white one which I assume is the phone cord. Any suggestions from here?

I would think that the several blue cat5 cables are the cables going to your phone jacks while the white one is the incoming. You can double check it by looking at the color of the dangling wire. It should be white. You want to disconnect the white cable from the patch panel.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 07, 2005 Posts: 6

I also moved into new house, had vonage working through the entire house until just recently (worked for 6 months). If the exterioir CAT 5 did get wet, which mine did, are you suggesting it shorted out the home phone jacks? How to repair? I will pull line from outside into the basement, but then what? Thanks for any help

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

richerich,

Do you know where that outside cable leads to? Does it go to a patch panel or to the first jack in your house? Can you disconnect it from your home altogether either by disconnecting it from the patch panel or from the first jack, so that even if it gets wet, it doesn't affect anything? Then you don't even have to pull it into the home. You can just leave it dangling out there since it has been disconnected from inside the home.

There is also another post that could suggest the new firmware might have affected the rtp300 if that is your router. This new firmware might have reset the voltage level or other settings so that is also a very real possibility.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 07, 2005 Posts: 6

Mundy
I would suspect it goes to the patch panel, i will check out tonight. I don't have the router you mentioned, but i have seen other posts having issues with the router i do have. My plan tonight is to either pull in the outside CAT 5 or disconnect from the patch panel (or both), and then reboot everything and see what happens. I'm doubting this is the fix i need but its worth a shot. Thanks for your input.

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

richerich,

I agree with you that this is a doubtful solution and that a firmware upgrade might have unsettled a previously functioning set of settings. You might have to give CS a call and ask them to downgrade your firmware if it was recently upgraded or you might need to have your voltage increased etc.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 07, 2005 Posts: 6

Mundy-
Will CS now if they have recently sent me a firmware upgrade? I ask because I can pretty much pinpoint a 12 hour window that my system failed out on me, and if they did push anything to me during that time, i would suspect thats the problem. thanks again!

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

I cannot speak for CS but I have read in earlier posts that people have had these things done by CS for them. It's worth a try.