I’m having some trouble in this office. I am not an IT person, except for what I’ve picked up over the years. Here’s my issue:
I have an ethernet switch in our copy room. Connecting to this is the wall jack, one printer, and the fax machine. The fax machine won’t work though.
I have the printer in slot 1, and the fax machine in slot 2. Slot 2 lights up with network connectivity. Slot two then goes to a router which the fax machine plugs into. The router has two lines in it, but only line 1 is hooked up.
However, even though Slot 2 in the switch lights up, Line 1 in the fax machine does not light up. Now the thing is, I KNOW I somehow made this work, because we alternate using Line 1 for our postage machine too. When I need to download funds into the postage machine I remove the fax machine hookup and insert the postage machine hookup. Download funds, and switch back. And I did that less than a week ago.
I have a Cat5 cable from the switch to the router, and a regular cable, like a phone jack cable, from the router to the fax machine.
Please help!
Is there something else I could be missing? Do I actually need the router? Maybe the router is broken?
I am doing that, too. I was hoping I could fix it first. I just HATE how shit works and then stops working suddenly. Aargh! Smash!
ETA: Oh, and thank you.
IT Guy here.
My postage machine is an Ethernet device using CAT6 cable to a Dell Switch.
Most (maybe all) fax machines I have seen require RJ11 (phone cable) plugged into at least the PBX. Are you sure it was plugged into the switch?
The cable you are using for the fax what size is it? As compared a cable from one of the office PCs.
This is making my head hurt - the fax is plugged into a router with a normal phone cord and it used to work? The only way I could imagine this to work is if someone got really freaky with VLANs and mashed a phone system into a LAN.
It makes my head hurt, too. Let’s see - the box actually says “Cisco Analog Telephone Adaptor”, so I am sorry, it’s not a router.
This line really confuses me: “Most (maybe all) fax machines I have seen require RJ11 (phone cable) plugged into at least the PBX”. Actually, I get it all but the PBX part.
Ok, we also have VOIP phones, which is probably what’s making all of this so difficult. As for the cord that hooks into the router…hang on, maybe i can get some photos.
This is connected to the wall jack (to the rest of the network), the ethernet printer, and the analog telephone adapter (i.e RJ11 analog phone line to VOIP phone system). Your Fax machine connects via RJ11 to the analog telephone adapter.
You also have a postage stamp machine that connects via RJ11 (to the analog telephone adapter). You pull the fax machine connection from the telephone adapter and plug in the postage stamp machine.
If this still works, then the analog telephone adapter is fine. Check the cable for the Fax machine at both ends. Try swapping the cable with the one for the postage stamp machine. Power off and power on the fax machine, too.
Ok, this is a device for using ordinary phones or faxes on a VoIP network.
Stick an ordinary telephone on one of the two phone sockets at the back of the device. You should get a dial tone. If not, then either this device is misbehaving, or there was some other change in the VoIP settings.
RJ11 - is plain old telephone. You can look at it, it has (usually) 6 tiny wire prongs in the socket, is narrower across than network cable.
RJ45 - ethernet network. 8 wires/pins/prongs in socket. Wider, fatter plug than telephone. It should be obvious which is which when side by side.
The Cisco box has ethernet and phone into it. As mentioned above, if you take an ordinary home telephone and plug it into the phone port (RJ11) you should get a dial tone. If not, that is your problem. A fax is just a telephone-modem type device, it needs to be able to get a dial tone and call the other end.
Other thoughts:
Some faxes are also ethernet printers. Are you plugging the phone line (RJ11) into a socket that is for phone, or a socket for ethernet to use this as a printer?
It seems the black wire is the ethernet between the Cisco box and the netgear router/switch. It appears to be live (I see link on the netgear). There seems to be a port/socket on the cisco box between the two wires -
Is the cisco box like a VoIP phone, with ethernet in and out? * Maybe try the other port if it too is ethernet. Plug the black cable into the middle port. (I assume the grey is the RJ11 phone cable to the fax or postal meter)
or maybe that’s the second phone port, try putting the grey cable or a regular phone into it. It’s possible one port is a live phone and the other is not enabled?
My voip phone has a wire coming into it from the wall, and another going out to my computer; that way I don’t need 2 wall sockets for every office. But!!! I can’t reverse those wires, in my case power comes from the ethernet cable (Power-Over-Ethernet). AFAIK it will only do VoIP on the one port.
If so, then scroll down to the bottom - there are 2 phone ports on the back. I suspect they only activated one port as a valid phone number, the other could be dead.
That’s the bunny, md2000. And yes, I know they only activated one line - Line 1. It SHOULD work! I downloaded the freakin postage money on it less than a week ago.
I tried switching out the cords. I even tried different kinds of cords. I’m fairly tech-savvy* for an amateur, but I haven’t been trained in this sort of stuff and if the “connect slot a to cord B” thing doesn’t work for no earthly reason, I don’t know what else to do.
*Meaning I am not afraid to try things and experiment and don’t get easily frustrated. After all, what else is it when you aren’t trained?
I’ll try some of your suggestions. At this point I’ve nearly given up. I called our IT department for help, maybe they need to do something on their end, or maybe they can help me. FRUSTRATED!!!
Basic question, but have you rebooted it, power off and on?
If you have an old plain-old-phone, you can verify if the telephone line works, dial tone, dial etc.
(Be careful, some old office phones with the buttons down the side are special digital phones, don’t work with regular line).
This is why I like the audio on a fax, so you can hear what it’s doing. (Especially if the number is wrong and each time it dials, you hear “Hello? Hello??!! Who the &%$ is this?” - over and over.)
If the port does not give you a dial tone but the cisco is properly connecting to the netgear, the problem is one for IT. It could be something as simple as the VoIP device at the other end (SIP Server, whatever) is down, but you think they’d notice that.
I’ve rebooted it numerous times, with different cords.
I don’t have a normal phone here in the office. I don’t even have a normal computer; that is, one that’s not imaged and doesn’t require Citrix, but that’s a different rant.
The fax has an audio and when you try to fax things it just beeps app. 27 times and then tells you “Busy/no line”. Well DUH. I knew that, you stupid machine. :smack:
I have already accidentally-on-purpose taken down the phones this morning (VOIP) and had to call the IT department who apparently needed to do something to fix that from their end. That was far more urgent than the fax, though.
This is our super-busy season, so it’s possible IT did not notice as they are few and far between.
Is the phone cord to the fax plugged into the LINE jack on the fax machine? I’ve made the goof of connecting it to the PHONE jack myself a few times.
Failing that, it is possible that the phone cord that you were sharing between the postage meter and the fax has simply gone bad.
Once you get it sorted out, I’d advise getting a two-way phone line splitterso the postage meter and fax can stay plugged into the VOIP adapter all the time. Just be sure you don’t get a 2-line splitter as the “L2” connection will be dead.
Ok, i think I will get this splitter. I actually went looking for one at Staples when I set it up, but they had NO idea what I was talking about and looked at me like I had three heads.
I just went and doublechecked, and it’s definitely hooked up into the LINE thing.
I actually wasn’t sharing a cord. Let me try to use the postage machine cord on the fax machine.
Ok, I switched cords to the cord that worked last week - nothing. Could it be that the analog telephone adapter went bad? If so I shall kick it until it is dead. IT’S OUR BUSIEST SEASON OF THE YEAR, does it not know this?