How to hook your house up to the ATA adater guide.

[zevin]

So you want to hook up your whole house to your VOIPo adapter…

\\ Do NOT plug a VoIP device into a phone line (jack in wall) while that phone line is still connected to the local phone company. Doing so may fry your VoIP device.\\

Here are some helpful tips to follow.

First step is to find the Telephone Network Interface box. This is the gray box located outside and it may be imprinted with "Telephone Network Interface."
The box contains a 'customer' side and a 'phone company' side. Don't worry, you cannot access the 'phone company' side of this box, the part that you can open is meant to be opened by you, and is clearly labeled "Customer Access."

When you open the customer side of the box, you will likely see a bunch of wires and one or more line modules. Each 'line module' provides a phone line to your house.

The short phone cord connects to the red/green posts. The red/green screw posts are where you add wires to connect your entire house to the phone company or in this case the VoIP adapter.

Now unplug the phone cord (modular plug) from the phone jack in the box. Just make sure you unplug the correct line (your house may have multiple phone lines, some unused.) Also, you will need to ensure that the plug doesn’t get plugged back in the future. I recommend putting tape over the jack or tape around the plug end.

Congratulations, all the jacks in the house are now still connected to each other, but not to the phone company.

You can now go back inside and connect your ATA via a phone cord to a wall jack in your house. Use a standard phone cord to connect the line out of your ATA to the wall jack. Once you have connected your VoIP adapter to the wall jack every jack in the house will have a dial tone.

Important notes to consider:

REN, or Ringer Equivalence Number is a measurement of 'load' the phone device (telephone, fax, etc) places on the phone line. The phone company usually supplies enough current on a phone line to support a total REN load of 5.0.

So, just go to each and every device plugged into phone jacks around the house and look under each device -- you should see a REN number. Add up the REN number for all devices and the total should be less than 5.0. If under 5.0, you are fine. If over 5.0, you have overloaded the phone line.

If you are over a REN total of 5.0 you have a couple of choices. Simply remove some rarely used phone extensions, or buy some newer lower-REN phones. If you overload the REN, some phone may not ring properly, caller id may not always function, or the phones might not work at all.

Home Run vs. Daisy Chain the ideal wiring situation is where all cables to phone jacks are 'home runs' -- where each jack location has a separate cable running from the jack back to a central location. The phone network then implements a 'star topology'. In some older homes, you may have something called a 'daisy chain' -- where a cable runs to one jack, is tapped into, then runs to another jack, etc. Daisy Chaining is the least preferred method because a fault in the cable or jack affects all jacks 'downstream' from the fault.

Notes: I would have posted pictures but it seems the forum will not allow me to upload. Said this is not a valid image file, but clearly it was a jpg.

[FarmerBob]

This is only if you are not getting your Internet connection via the phone line you'd be unplugging? Otherwise, there's a bit more to it.

[ThorsDad]

Note on REN: The phone company supplies enough current to support a REN of 5.0, however, the Grandstream HT502 only supplies a REN of 3.0. I believe the PAP2T is also rated at REN 3.0. The phones in my house have a REN rating of 0.1 to 0.7 so even when limited to a max of REN 3.0 I can still have a lot of phones.

[zevin]

This is only if you are not getting your Internet connection via the phone line you'd be unplugging? Otherwise, there's a bit more to it.

You are correct... This would apply to people who have cable internet, etc. Not people who get dsl via a dry loop. More guides to come, hopefully with pictures.

Perhaps I will edit the above post to reflect your point.

[mobilelawyer]

This is only if you are not getting your Internet connection via the phone line you'd be unplugging? Otherwise, there's a bit more to it.

The story of my life. Never a black or white answer. There is always a bit more to it. See my seprate thread on hooking the Grandstream to the in- house phone wiring. I'm gonna figure out how to do it, though!

[budmaster]

A solution for DSL service and two VOIPO lines. I know it can be done, just thinking what the cleanest method is.

[usa2k]

I would connect DSL straight to the modem, and keep the house wiring completely separate and far from phone company wiring.
Assuming dry DSL.

Actually, I'd never use house wiring myself, only wireless phones.

[chris]

I was looking at doing what you were suggesting with a Dry DSL line and whole house wiring. My house phone was wired in with DSL using what looks like Cat 5E cable from the outside and through out the house. The only line being used was the blue (blue and blue/white) pair. I had the Orange, Green and Brown pairs run everywhere but not used (eight wires or four pair total).

What I was going to do is leave the blue pair hooked up to the phone company for DSL as it is now and then use the Orange and Green pairs (Orange with Orange/white as well as Green with Green/white) to carry the other two lines. Line one would be orange and Line two would be green. I think that if budmaster had the same type of set-up, they could do this. In all of the phone jack boxes in the house, make sure all of the same color wires are connected. Blue with Blue, Blue/White with Blue/White, Orange with orange, and so on. In the box that I would be using for the DSL modem connnection and the VOIP box I would place three jacks. I like using the Leviton Modular ones that I can get at Home Depot (you can snap up to six into a single wall plate that has the pre-cut holes). For the DSL jack, you could hook the blue pair up to the blue punch down terminals (the main line plugged into this jack is now associated with the blue pair). For line one off of the VOIP box, I would install a jack with the orange pair off the cables hooked to the blue push down terminals on the jack (the main line plugged into this jack is now associated with the orange pair). For line 2 off the VOIP box, install the Green pair again to the Blue punch down terminals (and the main line plugged into this jack will be associated with the Green pair). Anywhere in your house now, you should have DSL on the blue pair, Line one from VOIP on the orange pair, and Line 2 from VOIP on the green pair. You could hook up new jacks around the house (with the Leviton jacks) you wouldn't match colors for the phone jacks though. I think for phone jacks (not DSL jacks), you would hook the orange pair up to the blue terminals, and the green pair to the orange terminals. Sounds confusing, but you are leaving DSL on line 1 in the cables, carrying your line 1 voip on the second line in the cables, and carrying line 2 voip on the third line in the cables. Make sure all lines are disconnected from the phone company.

I got lucky--just switched to cable modem before getting VOIPo. I will disconnect from phone company all together (it will be a happy day). On all the phone jack boxes except for one, I will just match the colors on the terminals on the back of the pone jack with the colors of the wires. On the jacks by my VOIPo box, I will hook the blue pair to the blue terminals to plug line 1 from the box into. I will hook the orange pair to the blue terminals on the jack that I will plug the second VOIP line into.

I just thought of a better idea for the Dry DSL case that would be similar to my cable modem case. switch DSL over to the fourth line (brown) at the phone company box (unhook the blue pair and hook up the brown pair to the phone service for the DSL). Then in all of the boxes in the house except the one by the VOIP / DSL modem boxes, you can just connect similar color wires and leave the termination to the jacks matching the standard colors. At the VOIP / DSL modem box, hook the brown pair to the blue posts on the jack to be connected to the DSL modem. Hook the blue pair to the blue posts on the jack hooked to line 1 from the VOIP box. Hook the orange pair to the blue posts on the jack that will connect to the line 2 on the VOIP. If you do this, Line 1 VOIP phone is in Line 1 in your wiring (blue pair), Line 2 VOIP phone is on Line 2 in your wiring (orange pair), and the DSL is on Line 4 in your wiring (brown pair). I guess you could switch green for brown in these examples.

I hope this helps. I don't know if it follows all conventions, but it should work. Where all of the colors on the wires match the colors on the jacks in every place but the phone company box and the box with the three jacks for the DSL Modem / VOIP box, the last suggestion is probably the easiest to still know what you have in two years.

[MisterEd]

A solution for DSL service and two VOIPO lines. I know it can be done, just thinking what the cleanest method is.

I got a 2 line cordless with three "extensions." Plug the base directly into the ATA and away you go. Beats dealing with home wiring. 90% of people today use cordless phones anyway.

[budmaster]

The solution was quite easy. I realized I had three pairs of conductors within the phone wire throughout my house. Blue was the primary number, orange was the second number (back in the dial- up ISP days), and green was never used. Blue was being used as my dry DSL (Uverse) connection. I simply moved my DSL over to the green pair changing both the outside connection and DSL jack connection. I then installed a double phone jack as seen in the attached photo. The upper line connected to the green pair (DSL) and the lower line connected to the blue pair and connects with the Grandstream. Since blue is the default pairing for my phone lines, all jacks in my house are no connected. One note, if you have multiple phone lines, you will need to ensure all the blue pairs are connected (I.E. all the blue wire conducters twisted together and all the blue&white conductors twisted together. If you want to run two lines, do the same with the orange pair and use a line 1/2 splitter to combine the line 1 & 2 of the Grandstream.
(Sorry, I tried to upload a small 23kb jpg file, but system says "plug.jpg: This is not a valid image file.")