You have always had standard phone service from Verizon or whoever. The wires go from the street into a phone connector attached to the outside of the house, and from there they go into the house and through the walls, with jacks in various rooms.
Now, you’re switching to a VOIP system, where they bring in a router and modem, and you connect a single phone to that modem. The rest of the phones are expected to connect via handsets that connect wirelessly to the main connected phone. However, you would prefer to have your main phone somewhere other than the place where the modem is. So the question is:
Can you run a phone wire from the modem to the phone jack in that same room, and then connect other phones to phone jacks in other rooms? The idea being that while these phone jacks are no longer operative in that their connection to the outside is no longer providing service, they are still internally connected to each other. So in theory, you should be able to use them to hook up one phone to another and so on.
You should go outside to your NID (the phone company box outside), open it up, remove the internal extension phone wires from under the screws to the phone company’s outside line and twist them together under a wire nut. Reason being that the power over the phone lines can fry your VOIP box. Even if you don’t have a dial tone now you don’t want some phone company repairman briefly connecting your line and killing your device.
Otherwise should work ok, not sure how many extensions most VOIP boxes can ring, but one definitely works.
Yes, that is exactly what I do. I ran the wire out of the cable modem into an old wall jack, and plug the main phone set into another wall jack. They do have to be connected together obviously. And disconnect the main wire that comes from the telephone pole just in case.
[QUOTE=GaryM]
My box has a RJ-45 from inside that plugs into a receptacle connected to the phone companies lines. If yours is like that, just unplug the plug.
[/QUOTE]
Just so the nits are appropriately picked, a normal demarc has one RJ11 plug/jack pair per line on 6P2C connectors. (6 possible positions, 2 connections) Not by coincidence, this is a standard phone plug, so you can plug in a phone at the demarc to test if a problem is the line or the inside wiring. This has been a standard design for a good 30+ years. Of course, if you’ve never had a reason to need your demarc changed, you may have the old carbon block type with no plugs.
RJ45 is a name popularly misapplied to an 8P8C connector wired in a T568A or T568B configuration, and not necessarily for data. The old Merlin Legend PBX systems used T568B wiring for the ATL hybrid phones.
Another RJ that you may run across in home phone wiring is the RJ31X, which lets alarm systems seize the line and drop any existing traffic.
Thanks a lot, guys. This has all been very helpful.
This is the system I have, and every time I’ve had a phone issue the Verizon people have told me to test it in this exact manner.
In light of that, do I still need to remove the wiring and twist together under a wire nut, as someone suggested earlier? Or can I just unclip the external line from the external phone jack?
I disconnected the POTS line on the outside box and hooked up the VOIP modem to the phone plug in that room.
But …
I also made a crossover phone cable for the connection. I cut a regular cord and reversed connected the red and green wires (leaving the black and yellow unconnected).
This would ensure proper connectivity if I ever plugged in a device that cared about polarity. (Most don’t.)
Note that VOIP boxes aren’t designed to drive the ringers for more than 1 or 2 phones. I have one “real” phone and one cordless phone base. (And a lot of receivers.) RTFM.
Highlighting this comment for reinforcement - the VOIP socket is not intended to drive a house full of phones - multiple line driven phones may not work.
[QUOTE=Fotheringay-Phipps]
In light of that, do I still need to remove the wiring and twist together under a wire nut, as someone suggested earlier? Or can I just unclip the external line from the external phone jack?
[/QUOTE]
Just unplug the test connection. No need to undo the existing wiring, and someone will hate you in the future if you kink everything up under some wire nut. Might even be you as there always seems to be one wire that doesn’t quite touch in the twisted bundle and makes static.
I opened the case and there are 6 connections in the box. (I’ve opened it in the past, but didn’t remember this.) I unplugged all of them. But why are there so many? (I have two phone lines in the house.)
OK, well I had to wait until the long phone wires came, but they came a couple of days ago and I set it up as above.
No problems at all, including with the multiple ringers. I have phone jacks at 5 locations in my house; with the one now being used for intake that’s 4 attached to phones (or in one case a fax). All seem to be working fine.
Many cordless phones now come with multiple handsets, which means you often don’t need to use the house wiring. If you can put the base unit near the VOIP device, you can put the satellite handsets wherever you like.
I use the house wiring in my VOIP setup, but it’s because the cable modem is in one corner of the house but I want the base unit answering machine in the complete opposite corner. So I use the house wiring to connect the VOIP and phone base units, but the handsets all connect wirelessly to the base unit.
I do have a phone setup with a couple of extra handsets (and I bought another, to replace the phone that used to connect to the jack now being used for intake).
But some of my phone locations are mounted on walls, and the handsets I have can’t be placed that way. Plus, I also have the fax machine.
I once made two POTS phones communicate by adding a 9-volt battery into the mix. Even added a button to activate a buzzer at the other end, to tell the other person to pick up. It was neat for about 15 minutes, then technology made it look silly. I still have the wire somewhere - it was neat, once.
Quiz time, eh? AFAIK, RJ32X is very similar, but essentially obsolete, with the main difference being in where it’s wired in. Think the only time I’ve actually seen one is to insert an automatic dialer in line with one phone on a line to provide a sort of “hotline” setup.
This was in a school science laboratory back in the era of electromechanical 1A2 key systems - the phone in the lab had the automatic dialer function to campus security, but the phone in the lab manager’s office did not have autodial even thought it was on the same line. Now, it’s getting almost hard to find a phone that doesn’t have autodial abilities, often with buttons dedicated for fire and police with red flame and blue shield icons, so the RJ32X function is mostly a historical curiosity.
I was curious. The pinout is the same, save that apparently one connects to the phone company line and the other to R and T of an internal phone. My reference is at work, but I believe the terminals are R+ T+ vs. R T.