Earlier today, I added a couple phones here. From an existing jack, I ran 20 feet of Cat3 twisted pair to a jack for one of these, and another 20 feet tothis hard-wired beauty. Did I forget to mention that I collect and use antique phones?
This has made my DSL *very * unstable. It’ll stay up for a couple minutes, then the modem decides it needs a re-sync. And again, and again… Old phones aren’t a “new” thing here - my newest phone is a late 60’s red desk phone - the one touch-tone phone in the whole place - so I’m not sure why today’s addition iw being such a problem.
The wierd thing is that there’s a proper wired DSL splitter down at the demarc, so anything going on with the phones (other than something drastic like a dead short or ground on the line) ought to be isolated from the DSL. Disconnecting this new wiring lets the DSL go back to its normal stable self. For voice use, there’s absolutely no apparent problem with the wiring. The “new” rotary phones dial out, ring and have good voice quality.
WAG. Maybe the DSL phone-line filters aren’t adequate for the interference of a dial phone.
Too many telephones loading of the lines maybe? Try unplugging your touch tone phones leaving the dial phones connected and see if that relieves the problem.
I would vote for this one. Just last week, one of our troubleshooters was telling me about a dialup customer at the end of a long loop, who had 9 or 10 extensions in his house and barn. They walked around the property, unplugging phones one at a time. Each time, the download speed went up. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn DSL has the same resistance issues.
On each phone there should be a REN or “ringer equivilent number”, I think you want to keep this under 2.
Also if you are using microfilters, I would recomend only using one at the point of entry. Have your phone ‘network’ filtered through this single microfilter, and have your DSL line run dedicated to your DSL modem. If you can’t do that entirely, do it as much as you can, perhaps using that setup and a 2nd microfilter in the computer room to spilt it between the phone and DSL modem.
Also make sure you use that phone cord that came with the DSL modem, not a regular flat phone cord - yes it makes a difference.
If that fails, consider moving the DSL modem to the point of entry and use a Cat 5 or wireless to send the interent to the computer.
There’s not a single microfilter here - the line is split at the demarc with a DSL splitter.
I had to sneak into the wire closet just to install the splitter - there’s no way I’d be able to get in again and set up active hardware. Plus, the inside wire is all two-line - I can only assume and hope it’s at least as good as Cat3 - IOW, it’s plain old phone wire. Not enough wires or cats for LAN.
I could understand the phones causing problems if the DSL went down when the phones were used, but just sitting there is enough.
As for REN, used to be that 5 ringers was the max. Have they really gotten that cheap with ringing power now?
Bumping, in case anyone else wants to have a crack at this.
I tried disconnecting the new rotary phones from the new wiring, and the DSL is still skittish.
The new wire is Cat 3, so it should be twisted pair, and it should be fairly immune to picking up RF or other interference. As before, the phones work perfectly, so it would appear to be free of shorts or grounds. And, this wiring is separate from what feeds the DSL modem.
Would putting a “microfilter” in line with the new wiring where it’s connected to the existing wiring be of any use?
WAG: re-do the connection where you added the two new phones, in case it’s a wiring/contact issue.
WAG #2, with kludge: the splitter may be just marginal at filtering the DSL frequency from the audio frequency. DSL like any alternating signal can echo back from an unterminated pair (the pairs are ‘open’ at the telephone end when they are on hook). Since it’s difficult to get into the wiring closet, can you get a cheap filter at Radio Shack and put it before the two phones?
Stab at wiring diagram:
PC—DSL------------------------------DSL Port,Splitter--------incoming line---------------phone company
Phone—audio-------X-----F2-------Audio port,Splitter
Phone2–audio-------X
Phone3–audio-------X
(X is connection point where the extensions meet, and F2 is the second filter or splitter)
The second filter, F2, would go anywhere between the X and the splitter, with the DSL port unused and the voice port connected to the X side.
One last post to report success. I picked up a filter at the local Shack and plugged it into the voice jack, then plugged that new extension into it. (It’s an apartment, so I can’t readily do any proper hard wiring and running wires inside walls.) The DSL has been trouble-free for two days now.
Only thing I can think of is that by blind luck, that new extension formed a bridge tap of just the right characteristics to confuse the DSL modem, and the filter killed whatever parasitic inductance or capacitance.
I have an old dial black phone, in working order, regular phone jack as I recall.
And I had it in use in my last house.
I get my internet from the phone company, high speed in case that means something.
Now, I don’t really have any idea what y’all were talking about there, (microfilters, parasitic inductance, Cat3, IOW----eeeek) but you now got me wondering.
Does this mean I can, or, I cannot pull it out and plug it into a jack without creating problems ( which I clearly lack the skill set to address) ?
DSL is a totally different animal than a dial-up modem, so it shouldn’t matter. But, if you plug it in and you suddenly can’t connect to the internet, or your speeds drop, or you egetting discaoonected, the old phone may be something you want to look at.
But it will be nothing that unplugging it won’t fix.
