Who has a security system and dialup?

Within the next month, I'll have what you say.

I sort of doubt this is the problem****, but when I've had speed problems, I've routed the line straight from the nid to the computer, and from there to everywher else. That didn't really help either, but I knew I had done what I could.

If you want to check, bypass the connection with the burglar alarm.

The best way to do this if you have a NID, a network interface device, outside your house, is probably to get some phone wire with modular plugs on each end, and run the wire from her modem to the NID. (You have to unplug the house to do this) You can go through the hall and out the window. See what kind of speeds you get. If you want to do this for an extended period, take the second jack of the modem and use another wire to plug that in to the place the modem is plugged into now. Then the rest of the phones in your house will work, except probably not the burglar alarm connection. But her alarm is probably not armed when people are home, anyhow.

If you want to keep the alarm in the circuit, for extended testing, you'll need to reverse two pairs of two wires each. So that when the alarm siezes the line, it will sieze the wires in the house (that go to the computer and then to the NID) instead of the wires that go directly to the NID, which are no longer conected to anything.

The major reason the alarm siezes the line is so the burglar can't interfere with the dialing (the touch-toning) by picking up the first phone he sees and pushing extra buttons. But I don't think many burglars bother to do that (anyone know?), and you're not likely to get burlarized during this modem speed testing period anyhow. Plus I have a siren.

So the alarm will still work in every other way even if it doesn't sieze the line, if you reverse the in and out You could do this at the alarm control panel, or at the 2x2 telephone outlet the alarm is plugged into that I explain below.

I know I'm not always clear, so if any of this is confusing, please ask.

The second way to bypass the alarm, only bypasses that and not the rest of hthe house, but doesn't require there to be a NID outside.

2) My alarm, which I am installing myself, has four phone connections, two in and two out, and is intended to use standard four-conductor indoor phone wire, with a modular plug on the other end. The modular plug is intended to plug into a standard phone jack (at least that is what I'll be using) but one that is wired differently from an extension phone. This one instead has two wires (in the same sheath) from the line from the phone company, and two wires that go to the rest of your house.

So all you have to do is, not at the burlar alarm panel but at that

2x2 inch box, either use 2 wires with alligator clips on each end, and clip them from red to red and from green to green.

(You could do this at the burglar alarm panel too. although there might not be any stripped wire showing.)

Or you can take one of each color off, and put it on the very same screw as the one of the same color.

(The colors won't be like this at the control panel)

This box should have two phone wires coming in, and the red and greeen of one wire connected to the red and green screws of the box (by which I mean, the screws are all the same color but they have different color little internal wires connected to them. They may also have an R and G embossed in the plastic.) And the red and green of the other wire is connected to the black and yellow screws of the box. That way all four wires go to your burglar alarm which will just pass them through to each other normally, but will intercept the phone line when there is an alarm and it wants to call the central station. IF this box doesn't have two reds and two greens, post back with more details.

****Without having my burlar alarm connected to the phone, I've had a lot of variation in connection speed. When I first got a faster CPU etc., the speeds went up a lot, and I tried to figure out what that had to do with it. But they went down again.

For a ahile they were down, and I thought it was because the telephone pole broke in a storm, and my phone line, and the other 100 in the n'hood were lying in a stream. But they lay there for almost 3 years and in the middle of all that, the speeds went up again. When they actually took it out of the stream, the rate didn't change. And all the phones worked fine for conversation during the 3 years.

I've found the best thing with dialup is to read my mail and my news while webpages are downloading.

Also, see if your isp has a download accelerator. They really work. The company I use give one out for free.

And YouTube and the new version of Real Player work darn well, even without high speed. Find the link, click on play, then click on pause, and the download will continue while you eat dinner if necessary. (Videos are pretty long) There are two indicators, one that says how far the user has listened or watched, and another that says how far the download has progressed. You can wait until the download finishes, then back up if necessary** and play the thing from the start, with no download wait time. **Sometimes I'm only one seconn in.

I've also been able to listen live to Web radio with speeds as low as

32000. Although I think I haven't had speeds in the 20's for a long time, and iirc it didn't work well then, but maybe it would now that I have a 800MHz processor, still not fast as things go.

She should also read her news with a newsread, not via the web which takes much more time, but I have a feeling she dodens't read news or she would be asking hersself.

Also post to alt.security.alarms .

Agreed.. So far..

Nope, that will effectively send the phone voltage back to the customer side of the NID, which is now completely isolated because the small jumper cord from the Telco side to the Customer side in the NID is.

I think you meant to say run the 2nd jumper from the "phone out" of the modem to the NID "in", the jack that was unplugged (the small jumper inside the NID). Which will effectively make the modem the seizure device.

Nope.. don't do that of all the other house phones are gone.

That's true.

Iv 'e been an alarm tech for 16 years and your explanation *is* confusing - not because I don't understand in-house wiring better than the phone man, but because I had to decipher your instructions.

It's NOT a standard jack - It's an RJ-31x. It has shorting pins inside, so when the cord gets disconnected the shorting pins allow the phone voltage to go back out to the NID - (when it's plugged in the panel's relay does it)

Inside the RJ-31x the colors are to street, to house phones.

This is NOT a standard jack by any means.. If you look inside one there are 4 more connections - they are for tampers.

True.. He would put blue to orange and blue/wht to orange/wht

Please do....

x-posted

No real mystery. Sounds like a dial up c>

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Yes, maybe I wasn't clear. The customer side of the NID is only connected to the house, because the small jumper cord in the nid is disconnected from the telco side.

That wire is out, but the long wire from her modem to the NID is plugged into the Telco side.

BTW, OP, if you don't have a NID, at least with Verizon in Maryland, they'll install one for you for free. I guess in the long run, they think this will save them money. IIRC, they didn't have to come into the house to do this and I didn't have to be home.

Not really. :) I can't keep track of what they call these things, so I figured he would have to do some of the work himself.

I called it the second jack because it wasn't the one he should have used in the first stage. I figured he knew how to connect the modem, and I figured for the first connection he would use the same jack which is now plugged into the wall or the surge surpressor.

At the NID end, I said he had to unplug the house, and I figured he would take that to mean that he should plug in the new wire to the same place. But shouldn't that wire come from the Line In jack on the modem?

Yes.

Although I must have wired mine a bit differently, since I can pick up any of my working phones and hear the internet noise. Since I got a

56K modem years ago, doing this no longer breaks my internet connection, although sometimes I wish it did, so I could use the phone. :) I guess I allowed one Y connector between the phone line and the modem, and the other half of the Y goes to the rest of the house.

Why would that be? The wire from the burglar alarm jack goes to the nid, but the short jumper in the nid is unplugged, so that has no effect.

I'm assuming she's not connected to the ISP when she tries to use a phone, so the modem hasn't siezed the line.

So all the phones in the house should work fine.

Again, I may not have been clear, but that's what I meant.

I'm sure. But with a post this long, which alrady took time, and the chance the OP will go in an entirely different direction, and the ability for him to ask questions, I don't want to spend the extra time rewriting.

Let him spend the extra time rereading. In the long run that will be helpful to him. :)

Thanks. Didn't know about those. Is that so someone in the house won't accidentally unplug the alarm and defeat the phones? Since I'm the only one that lives here, that's not a risk for me. Is there another reason?

I'll remember about these jacks if I talk to others again.

Hmmm. If it has shorting pins, does that mean all he has to do is to unplug the phone wire from the jack and that will be the same as bypassing the burglar alarm? That would be really easy.

If the OP want's to sort out what we have talked about, then let's wait until he has more questions. We have gone way beyond his skill level if he is a novice.

The RJ-31x is an FCC requirement. It is intended as a disconnect from the alarm panel if things go awry. If the dialer locks up for instance, the customer needs a way of defeating line seizure to get his telephone back - so he simply unplugs the cord from the RJ-31X and then the shorting pins will allow the telco voltage to flow back to the NID (where the house phone wires are spliced), bypassing the control panel's relay that usually handles it.

Control panels should be located in an area that is not easily accessible by a burglar, in a closet for instance. The RJ-31x should ALWAYS be mounted outside the panel (not in the can) per. FCC requirements.. this is a security risk, yes... But nonetheless is required.

You are right about unplugging the jack.. But "we" are betting the burglar cannot find the jack in time to prevent the alarm transmission. I place my panels up high too, so he would need a ladder even if he did find the jack within the 30 second delay period (if he kicked in a delay door) - other zones are instant..So there is no time to find the jack.

There are other ways to circumvent the dialing, but will not be discussed on an open forum.

I know >

I meant here that that's all the OP or his sister would have to do to test her suspicion that the alarm was causing her low internet speeds.

I wasn't even thinking about a burglar doing this.

At least in my n'hood I don't think the burglars are anywhere up to speed on these things. I wonder how expnesive a n'hood I would have to live in for the burglars to know this kind of stuff.

We have had 3 strings of burlaries in this townhouse n'hood in the last 28 years, and I think 2 of the burglars were caught. Although alarms didn't play a role. I don't think many people here had alarms then, though a lot do now. I think all three strings were more than 20 years ago.

One guy was caught cashing a stolen check or using a stolen credit card that came from a neighbor's house, and not too far from where we live, fwiw.

Another guy, the police wouldn't give me details, but somehow they figured out who he was, were outside his home in the morning, and followed him around until he went to burgle a neighbor. They let him break in and waited outside with reinforcements, including a dog and iirc a helicopter. (that was a few blocks from here, if they had one.) When he came out they arrested him. The cop wouldn't tell me how they figured out where he lived, but now that I think about it, the obvious answer is that he left a fingerprint earlier, even though I don't think they fingerprint for burglaries.

The owner was annoyed that they let him break in, but I presume he got over that and figured out it was the best thing to do.

Both of these guys ended up in jail, I was told.

The second one I think was the one who used to ring the doorbell and if no one answered, he would go around back and break in there. In some of the houses, that is the basement, so he broke in there and was headed up the stairs. At the same time, the mother of one of the owners was visiting, and it took her a while to put a robe on and head downstairs. They both heard each other on the stairs and both ran the other way.

The third guy wasn't caught, but he went in through the little basement window, and everyone bought bars.

Plus the break-in at my house 24 years ago, which afaik was not part of a string. They didn't catch him and he didn't take anything, I guess because the very annoying, always barking, waking me up dog next door, scared him off. This burglary was between 5 and 7 on a summer Sunday evening. He kicked in the front door.

I think I may have one after all, that came with the alarm. I'm sure if a jack came with the alarm, it's the proper jack. I'll check tomorrow or so.

I have not experienced a reduction in dialup speed with the addition of an alarm system. I have noticed a reduction in DSL quality. The addition of an Excelsius alarm DSL filter at the panel eliminates this problem.

Ahh.. Okay.

Yeah, unplugging the RJ cord at the panel will isolate the alarm from the phones... But I suspect if the download speed dropped after the alarm installation there is something up with the dialer wire, not so much the panel. But that's a good first step that isn't hard to do.