Line 1 AND Line 2 to whole house wiring not working

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 13, 2005 Posts: 3

I've been a Vonage customer for almost 2 years now. I have a Moto 1005 adaptor. I run the output from Line 1 to my whole-house punch down panel. The house is new and has Cat 5 to all jacks. Using this methods I've been able to distribute Vonage to all jacks in the house.. now... I'm adding a Line 2. I thought this would be easy but apparently there is some trick I haven't been able to figure out.

The 2nd line is working on the TA. I can plug a phone into Line 2 on the back of the TA and it works, and Line 1 works in the rest of the house. But I want to have Line 1 and Line 2 (one is for me, the other for my girlfriend) to all jacks in the house. I figured this wouldn't be a problem with Cat 5. I also bought a 2-line phone.

If I connect the 2-line phone directly into the back of the TA, both lines work on the phone. The phone comes with two phone wires.. one with 4 conductors, one with 2 (the middle pair which I think is line 1). I plug the 2-wire cord into Line 1 on the TA and the line 1 jack on the back of the phone, then I plug the 4-wire cord into Line 2 on the TA and line 2 on the phone. Works like it should.

Now then I plugged the two wires from the back of the TA into a coupler and then into the wall jack I've been using for the last 2 years then I plugged the new 2-line phone into a jack using a 4-wire cord... and something is wrong, phone doesn't want to work properly. Then I tried clipping the outside conductors on one side of the coupler to make one side 4-wire and the other side 2-wire. I plugged the respective wires from the back of the TA into the coupler, then I plugged the coupler into the jack and still no joy. I also tried this with one side of the coupler clipped to "Line 1" pair and the other side "Line 2" pair (ie inside pair and outside pair) and still no joy.

What the heck am I doing wrong??? The Cat 5 coming from the jack I'm trying to use has all conductors punched down in the phone closet.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

This is what I was trying to do... doesn't work... If I substitute the 2-line phone where the Coupler is in this diagram the phone works, but I can't distribute it to the house wiring.

------------| ..........................................|------------|
Moto TA | Line 1 <--- 4-wire cord --> | 4 wires...|
...............|...........................................| Coupler..|--- 4-wires > Jack
...............| Line 2 <--- 2-wire cord --> | 2-wires....|
------------|...........................................|-------------|

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 13, 2005 Posts: 3

okay I managed to solve my problem after about 2.5 hours talking to five different vonage people, two in India with a 2-sec delay and garbled circuit and who generally dind't have a clue, I finally talked to Steve in NJ. The clue that I needed was that the "Line 2" output jack on the back of the TA uses the two interior conductors, not the outside conductors like a two line phone assumes. So what you need to do is make a custom cable. I took a strandard 4-wire phone cable and put a standard modular jack on one end. On the other end I stripped back several inches of insulation.. then I took the red and green pairs (traditionally Line 1) and crimped them into a modular jack on the two inside positions (just like it would normally be). Then I took the yellow and black and crimped them to a second modular jack, and put them on the inside two conductors. So now I have a "Y" cable with the bottom a normal 4-wire plug, and the top two are Red-Green on the inside pins, and yellow-black on the other inside pins. Put the Red-Green end into Line 1 on the TA and the Yellow-black end into Line 2 on the TA, and the 4-wire end into the jack in the wall that goes back to my phone punch down panel. Now all the jacks in my house have Line 1 on the inside pins and Line 2 on the outside pins just like it should be. It would have made it a lot easier if Vonage would mention the pin out of Line 2 somewhere. But hopefully this can help anyone else trying to do this and save you 2+ hours of time on the phone with vonage.

I'll go to the store tomorrow and get a modular "2 into 1" coupler, them make a short "crossover" cable switching the Y-B onto the center pins. The cluge I have is not very sturdy.

Hope this helped someone... good luck