On the Grandstream - Why Can't You Do This?

[mobilelawyer]

I tried this experiment, and it did not work.

I have a Panasonic phone, with a base station phone that wirelessly serves three other phones. The base is plugged into the first phone jack on the Grandstream. It works just fine that way, but I wanted to try a different configuration.

All the rooms in my home have a dual plug phone jack from the old days of having a second phone line so the other could serve the modem for the computer. Remember those heady days of the 14.4 and 28.8 baud modems?

I unplugged the base station phone, and carried it back into the kitchen where it was orginally parked and plugged it into the wall. I took a modular phone line, and hooked one end to the phone out jack of the Grandstream, and plugged the other end into the phone plug in the bedroom to see if the grandstream could push its signal to the kitchen jack. No joy. No dial tone, and the phone did not function. I infer from this experiment that the phone must be plugged directly into the grandstream, and my method would not work. Does anyone know why not?

I would like to push at least one connection out to the phone jack in my living room, so I can feed my Directv receiver. I know that there is a wireless jack available that should serve the same purpose, but I would love to use the existing lines, if possible.

[VOIPoTim]

It normally can do that, but it depends on how much wiring is involved. If a lot of jacks are involved, it may just not have enough power to power them all. Support can increase the output voltage slightly if you open a ticket requesting it. It may or may not be enough of a boost but we can try it.

[DaveH]

I was able to do this, but it did require a bit of wiring. Make sure the modular wire running from your ATA to the phone jack are indeed serving the tip/ring pair you think they are. If your house is wired with CAT5, you likely have 4 tip/ring pairs. Just make sure your wiring is correct. It should work. I have my ATA on the basement level were my office is, and I feed phones on the second floor without issue nor a boost in voltage.

[BillG49]

This will work, but first you must disconnect your "in-house" wiring from the old incoming pots (plain old telephone service) line. Even though you no longer have pots service, you must disconnect the incoming wire for the in-house wiring to work with the voip feed.

[MarkTomlinson]

I do it. In fact, I have two VoIPo lines plugged into the four-wire lines in my house. This allows me to have one base unit for my home line and another for my home-office (see: http://www.wire-your-phones.com/).

[mobilelawyer]

Many thanks for the helpful tips. I had forgotten about my post, and just looked at all the responses this evening.

I am sure I can make it work, and I think that the problem may be a plethora of jacks that are still wired to the POTS line. I am going to playwith them for awhile before I requests an increase in voltage.

I shall report back after continuing the experiment!

[ThorsDad]

I'm pretty sure distance is not your problem. I just hooked up my new Grandstream HT502 to my house's wiring and the phones work great all over the house. Check your wiring. Make sure your internal wiring is physically disconnected from the phone company.

[mobilelawyer]

My biggest problem is faulty memory! When we moved into our house in the early 90's, we only had to worry about POTS. But several years later, when we added a second telephone line, yours truly somehow figured out that there were enough spare wires to put dual jacks in several places: one computer line, and one telephone line.

I just can't remember exactly what I did. I am going to have to check and verify, but my best recollection is that each phone outlet was double-wired when the house was built, leaving one wire unused, and I simply got double- jack wall plates and used the wires on the second line for the second jack.I could be wrong about that. I may have simply used an unused pair in the bundle to serve the second jack.

When I ordered my dry- loop dsl line, It appeared to me that the phone guy simply brought the dry loop jack off the network interface, and hooked that jack into the same female connection that served my old computer line.

When I saw he had done this, I condluded I was not going to have to fool with any wires at all. I simply hooked our telephone to the old POTS line, pending porting that number to VOIPO, and I got a dial tone, and it worked fine.

I had the dry loop hooked up to the old computer line wall jack, and it worked swimmingly from the first day I connected.

The old POTS/DSL line is now turned off and unused since the port went through.

But, given what I have read here, I think some of my assumptions and recollections about the wiring will have to be verified.

If my recollection had been correct, then simply plugging the second Grandstream phone outlet into the unused POTS jack should have worked, but it did not. I always wondered how those phone guys sorted out those huge bundles of wires. Now I guess I am going to have to!

[ThorsDad]

I understand the faulty memory problem. I've got it bad. Started when I turned 40.

This is a great page for info:
http://michigantelephone.workbench.net/

My guess is that your house has 4-wire daisy chained to the outlets. That would give you two lines. It's possible that one of the chains was broken when the dry loop was installed. They should have pulled a new cat3 or cat5 line for it as 4 wire isn't good for DSL.

The phone wiring in my old house was so old and cheap that I ended up pulling new cat5 to every room. Glad I did.

[mobilelawyer]

I just read the linked article, and it is a wonderful resource.

The only "bad" thing about it is that it conveyed some information that I did not want to hear! My house was built in 1993, and I am stuck with quad wiring. I would really like to pull Cat 5 cable through to replace it, but I do not think that is practical right now.

By appearance, a quad wire jacket was run from each jack down to the network box, and the bundles of wire from each jacket were segregated so that a red-green pair was attached to one terminal, and a black yellow pair was connected to the other terminal. Several years ago, I ran a seperate quad bundle with a weatherproof jacket on it so that it could be buried and run along the outside of my house to the living room where my directv box is located. This means there are a nice bunch of same- colored wires attached to each terminal. Virtually every room in the house has a phone jack, but not all have been used.

I skimmed the article, and have not read it throughly. I will do so before really trying to diagnose anything.

[mobilelawyer]

I have not had time to carefully follow the directions in your referenced link. It appears to be a great resource.

I do have a four wire hook up (unfortuantely) and pulling new cable through is not an immedate option.

But one thing I do observe is that that each outlet appears to be served by a seperate 4-wire. I do not think they are daisy-chained. It appears that the old POTS/dsl line used the red and green wires, and the second line (now the dry loop) used black and yellow.

[mobilelawyer]

So, once I verify my assumptions regarding the hook up (i.e. that the non- functional and disconnected old dsl-pots line is direct wired to each outlet with the red-green wires, and the new dry-loop is direct wired to each outlet using the yellow- black wires) I am assuming my problem may be lack of ring current.

Would there be any reason to leave the yellow-black wires attached to the terminals for any outlet other than the one that serves the dry-loop (i.e. the one that my modem/router is plugged into? I assume I will bend back and tape the unused yellow-black leads.

The red-green leads I would probably leave all attached to the outlets, to give the most flexibility for locating phones around the house. I since my Panasonic wireless phone is doing 4/5 of the job right now, I really only want to use two of those outlets.

[ThorsDad]

I'd suggest you get a line tester:
http://www.harborfreight.com/merchandising-promotions/merchandising/general-merch-electrical/electrical-testing/cable-tracker-94181.html

I've never used one since I pulled my own cable. Seems like a great tool for tracking down other peoples wiring. Especially since things can get mixed up over time. One outlet might have line 1 and line 2 reversed while another might not have line 2 connected at all, etc.

Once all your wiring is sorted you could run DSL on line two and VOIP on line one.

[mobilelawyer]

I have a line testing device on the way from Amazon! This ought to be fun :)