Question about using existing home wiring.

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 09, 2004 Posts: 10

I had my number ported today. I disconnected the telco at the box and hooked up my voice terminal to one of the existing phone jacks. Everything is working great, all the phones in the house work, even Tivo likes it. My question is, can I use a duplex jack to hook up the voice terminal and a telephone to one of the outlets? , or will this mess things up. I figured I'd better ask before I end up frying anything.

Posts: 18 · Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2004 9:43 am Post subject:

can I use a duplex jack to hook up the voice terminal and a telephone to one of the outlets?

I have done this on my setup & it works fine.[/quote]

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 09, 2004 Posts: 10

I did not work for me. No dial tone on any of the phones when I plugged in the phone and the VT to the duplex jack then into the wall jack. Any suggestions on what might be the problem?

Posts: 18 · Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2004 1:06 pm Post subject:

I had run into a problem when I thought that all the internal wiring was disconnected. My house is quite old & it seems that the prior occupant had two different entry points into the house for the phone line. Once I disconnected the second it worked fine. Instead of the duplex device, try just a plain 1>2 splitter.

wolves01 wrote:

I did not work for me. No dial tone on any of the phones when I plugged in the phone and the VT to the duplex jack then into the wall jack. Any suggestions on what might be the problem?

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 09, 2004 Posts: 10

Thanks for the help Marsh, but I am a little confused. Whats a 1>2 splitter? Here's what I tried to use http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1051806206612&type=product&productCategoryId=cat08275
Is there a different way to do this?
Thanks again

Posts: 18 · Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2004 2:49 pm Post subject:

That is the product I am talking about. I am using duplex jacks at a few outlets.

I have the tel. line from the Moto going into my computer modem. I then put a duplex on the out from the modem. This gives me a phone next to the computer and a line going to the room jack that gives the rest of the house phone service.

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 09, 2004 Posts: 10

Sounds like I need to split it before it gets to the wall jack then.
Thanks for all your help!

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 26, 2004 Posts: 1

i have a phone and one jack in the room with my ATA. I can plug the ATA into the phone and it works - Or I can plug the ATA into the jack and all the phones in the house work. I can't seem to get them to both work. I have tried plugging the phone in one port of the motorolla ATA and the house into the other one. Only one will work. I have tried a splitter I had left over from a TiVO in every combination I could think of and I can't get both the phone lit up and the jack. Help!

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 09, 2004 Posts: 10

I did get mine to work. It turns out the splitter I was using was no good. Try plugging both the ATA and phone you want to use into the duplex splitter, then plug the splitter into the wall jack. Every phone in the house works as well as the one that shares the splitter with the ATA. Hope this helps

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 03, 2004 Posts: 20

There are two different kinds of splitters. One (the one you want, I think), just takes the single pair of wires and hooks op two RJ11 jacks to it in parallel. There's another kind that takes the four wires that come out of a single wall jack and hooks one pair to one RJ11 and the other pair to the other jack. This is used frequently when a house has two lines.

I've spent hours with the wrong type splitter trying to figure out why nothing worked. I've even seen them packaged wrong at places like Radio Shack. There's no obvious way to tell them apart.

You approach ought to work. It did for me.