four twisted pairs to RJ4

I'm trying to switch my landline from an old telco block to a Vonage modem. The line has four phones, each with its own cable to the demarc in the basement. I taped the red and green lines to the red and green lines of a cable to the modem. Nothing went through. The service at the modem jack is fine, so the trouble lies in the wiring.

What is the most effective way to connect four separate jackless pairs to a single RJ4 port? Would wire nuts work? I wanted to use the block, but I can't get the telco wires off it. (Besides, Verizon could repossess it at their pleasure.)

-:- When you're on the phone, you're nowhere.

--Ollie MacNoonan

Reply to
World's Largest Leprechaun
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World's Largest Leprechaun wrote: (snip)

I thought that all inside (basement included) wiring now belonged to the home owner, not the phone company. I could be wrong, but I thought that happened some years ago.

-- glen

Reply to
glen herrmannsfeldt

If you have a really old block in the US I think you can ask nationwide for your local phone company to come out and "identify the demarc and upgrade as needed to match current rules". At no cost. I did it with my local pool a few years ago. They came out hunted around the mess, found a reasonably decent physical point and put in a new block.

Once they identify and/or install the demarc, everything after that is yours.

If you have a single phone line in your house and it isn't wired really strange (you'd be amazed), you can tied the two pairs together on your side of the demarc.

I hope you're not getting your internet via DSL on said phone lines.

David Ross

Reply to
DLR

RJ4? Do you mean RJ45 like used in ethernet and other things? or RJ11, which is used for phone lines??

Probably the easiest thing to use is something like this.

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They sell a variant of these at Home Depot/Lowes and the like.

Wirenuts aren't suggested for phone wiring, the wire oxidizes too easily, and can cause cracklies on the line. Even so, taping the two together should have had some contact, you should have had something, even if it sounded bad. You do have to punch them down on the IDC blocks on the above phone bridge, but even a cheapo disposable plastic one will work after you try the wire with dykes afterwards.

I seriously doubt that the phone company would come into your premise and take anything. They wouldn't want it. Anything they put in they generally put in for the long haul, and never pull anything out again.

Reply to
Doug McIntyre

Here's how my Vonage cabling turned out. I couldn't find any cheap punchdown boards or splice connectors in the stores (New Jersey stores, even the big chain stores, run weak in variety) but I bought a couple of wall connectors. I attached them to the telco plank and hooked everything up to the terminals with what I hoped were sound connections. Still no dial tone.

After much experimenting along these lines, I turned my attention to the cable that ran along the walls from the old demarc to the Vonage device. I unplugged the connector at the Vonage end. It was fused.

I replaced it with a new twenty-foot cable with jacks at both ends. Now it works.

The old demarc still has two telco cables attached, and I could call out on the live one even after Verizon ceded my phone number to Vonage. Perhaps I still can. I'm not going to make the experiment.

You may wonder how I happen to have an old, active demarcation point inside my house. When I bought the house in 1989 it had one line, and I later added a second for data. When my children reached teen age I added two more. The old demarc had room for only two, so New Jersey Bell put a modern demarc box on the side of my house and ran the new lines through it. But the tech left the old lines entering and leaving the telco side of the box and running to the old demarc point!

My children got cell phones and I dropped the two new lines. We got cable internet service and I dropped the data line. This left only the original line--still using the old demarc point in my basement.

Thanks to all who responded. One of these days I'll have the house rewired for the 21st century!

-:- In any case, by the end of the Ordovician period the Oral- Aural Coral had developed a sophisticated culture which compares favorably with those of ancient Sumeria, medieval Wales, and Texas.

--Melanogaster J. Spigot, Ph.D., "On the Neurobiology and Endocrinology of Some Prehistoric Coelenterates"

Reply to
First There Is No Colonel, The

It's common practice in this computerized age to leave "disconnected" lines active whenever possible but restricted to 911 and the phone company business office (so you can order new service).

-Larry Jones

Years from now when I'm successful and happy, ...and he's in prison... I hope I'm not too mature to gloat. -- Calvin

Reply to
lawrence.jones

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