I don’t know much about phone wiring – Never did much except plug a phone into a jack before.
I need to hook up a new phone jack in an old house. I was just wondering – Do all 4 wires need to be hooked up?
Here’s the block in the basement where all the other phone jacks are hooked to:
Sorry it’s a little blurry. Guess I had the camera too close.
It looks like only the red and green wires are hooked up – Not all 4. But the jack I’ll be hooking up will serve a computer that has DSL through the phone lines.
So am I O.K. with just the red and green wires going to the new jack? Or do I need all four?
Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.
Replies
Typically, red and green are the primary phone line. Black and yellow serve any second line. DSL runs through the primary phone line so all you need to connect at the hub and at your jack is red and green, unless you have more than one phone line.
Just back-wrap the black and yellow as others have done.
You type quickererer<g>
Thanks for the quick response, guys.If you only need two wires, why do all phone lines and phone jacks have 4 wires?When the electrician wired the spec house he used cat 5 wire (8 wires) and wired each phone jack for 2 lines. Why is that?
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help. [Ronald Reagan]
Easier to provide now than have to pull all new wire later
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Easier to provide WHAT?If you'll never need 8 wires, why bother pulling them? It's not like a house is gonna ever have more than two lines. (If that many)
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when its free. [P.J. O'Rourke]
How do you know?Within the house it can be used for other networking connections too.Not likely sure, but possible.It is just the standard issue now. Not many houses that don't get two lines. When I was growing up we had a party line with eight households served. . Let's see, that went from 8/1 to 1/2 ratio in fifty years. a 16fold increase in service demand capabilities.So going from yuour one to eight lines would only be an eightfold increase.Think it'll never happen?
There was a guy running the Smithsonian I think after the civil war who proclaimed that everything that could be invented had already been invented
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
The guy wasn't running the Smithsonian he was running the patent office. And the full quote is to the effect of,"If you don't believe the patent office needs more resources, then you believe that everything that can be invented has been invented"I wish people would quit trying to use half of the quote.
I am not trying anything.I just quoted it the way I read it.I can believe that somebody else in the last hundered and some years dropped part of it
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Yes, the quote has been mis-quoted for probably the past 100 years.
Cat 3 (old 4 wire phone line) isn't on the shelves anymore.....
DSL benefits from good connections....it's worth using a punch down block instead of the old nutted terminal blocks.....
Actually it is interesting. I don't have any stats, but from observations the number of phone lines per house was going up and and up until maybe 5 years ago. Now down and down.Years and years ago internal wiring was 2 or 3 wire. The 3 rd wire was used when they had party lines with selective ringing.Then they started using 4 wire. Mainly to carry power for lighted dails in Prince Phones and the like.Latter for a 2nd line.And the phone drop for underground cable always had 2 pairs in it. That is what I got when I built my house in 79. And the NIC (the gray box on the side of the house) would only accept 2 lines.A friend of mine bought a house about 5 years ago. A couple of years earlier an ice storm had taken down the phone lines. The NIC was repacled with a modular unit that you take upto 7 lines, but was only stuffed for the number of lines in use. And the phone drop was still only 2 lines.Later she need to get a 3rd line and they ran a new drop. At that time the standard drops contained 3 lines.Where I am the phone cable is old and has been in place a long time and a several of the lines in the cable are bad.Starting about 10-15 years ago they started running out of pairs and had to install Slicks on the poles to get 2 phone lines out of a cable pair.At that time I would see homes with 2 or 3 phone drops. It would not be unusal to have a house phone, a business phone, a fax line, computer line, and a kids line.Now the computer is on DSL or cable. And fax usuage is way way down. More often handled by sending computer files. And people have cellphone or VOIP. So the number of house lines is way down.And it it is not unusal for a house to not have any conventional POTS (plan old telephone service) at all..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Thanks for the explanation - I always wondered what the extra wires were for.
When a husband's words are sharp, it may be from trying to get them in edgeways.
There is also the use of the phone to call the alarm company, if you have that type. This requires a special connection that can grab control of the line no matter if it is in use.I had a new drop run to the house to replace the 8 or so drops from the 1920's boarding house. They ran a heavy cable with 6 pairs to a punch down block in my telcomm center. Then we ran a jumper from the punch down block to a patch panel. My panel allows for something like two lines plus FAX plus alarm. Anyway, it would use up four of the six pairs if I so wanted.Anyway, I concur about using a punch down block if you are going with DSL. In telcomm, like electrical, connections are 75% of the battle.
I don't know if I want to go that far. I'm doing this as a favor for someone - This isn't in my own house.Besides - Then I'd have to ask how to install a punch down block.(-:
If Love is Blind and Marriage is an Institution, then Marriage is an Institution for the Blind.
>>Besides - Then I'd have to ask how to install a punch down block.but it would be an excuse to buy a new tool!
A new tool for what?If I would need a new tool, I might reconsider.(-:
My Wife and I divorced over religious differences. She thought she was God and I didn't
A punchdown tool for the punchdown block. And maybe a tester too!http://www.impactacoustics.com/product.asp?cat%5fid=8001&sku=15739(Not an endorsement, just an example).
You know - I looked around town today and couldn't find a punchdown block. I asked at the hardware store and only got a blank stare - They'd never heard of one. I'm not driving an hour away to find one, so I guess we're gonna get by without it.
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. [Voltaire, (1764)]
Lowes and Home depot should have them. If you don't have one of them around then the local electrical supply house should.
"You can't roller skate in a Buffalo herd." Roger Miller
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x8B6C54ggY&feature=related
Lowes, HD, and electrical supply houses are all a good hour away from here. Remember this is a little redneck town I live in.
Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not been able to answer... the great question that has never been answered:
What does a woman want? [Sigmund Freud]
I have a spare, so if you really want it, I'll mail it to you. But your local phone company can probably sell you one for a dollar or two.
Then he has to get the tool.Just not worth it for this kind of job..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Thanks - But I got the job finished up this afternoon. I just used the old wiring block.Believe it or not - The phone jacks works! I musta done something right.(-:Thanks to all your guys for helping me out with the right info. Not that I expected any less out of you guys...
We can do no great things, only small things with great love. [Mother Theresa]
FWIWI recommend uses a whole house splitter for DSL instead of the micro filters.If you have the modular style of NIC's instead of one of the surge protector blocks you install a spliter. After the surge protector the wires go to the spliter. Then connect the existing house phone line to the phone output of the spliter. The DSL can be put on the 2nd pair, if it is not used. Or you can run a new line from the spliter to the DSL jack. That is the best.There are also ones that install inside.Several advantages. Does not mess with the alarm dailer. You don't need to remember to put the microfilters on EVERYTHING plugged in like Tivo, Sat, FAX, remote bell, etc, or move a phone or get a new one and forget to add a new filter.And uses the splitter bypasses all of the house wiring, which in an old home may not be in good shape.Just passing this on for the Lurkers..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
"I recommend uses a whole house splitter for DSL instead of the micro filters."
O.K. - What's a "whole house splitter"? And what's a "micro filter"?
Inquiring rednecks want to know...
Alimony: The screwing you get for the screwing you got
DSL uses high frequency signals above the phone voice band. Phones are not designed to handle those signals and will load down or "short out" the DSL signals.The filters/spliters are designed to block the DSL from the phones.The DSL uses a seriess of frequencies and selects the best combinations that will work. So sometimes the DSL will "work" without the filters. But the speed will be slower.If this is DSL from ATT or other phone company they will get an install kit that consists of the micro filters and modem. {That is vs a 3rd party that leases ATT lines or services such as Earthlink or DSL Extreme. Not use of how they handle this}This is what theyb look like.http://store.att.com/catalog/productdetails.asp?ProductId=K330-L32&CategoryId=catNAhttps://www22.verizon.com/foryourhome/eRepairNet/DSLRepairANR/Common/SupportDetails.aspx?case=c450BTW, this is an example of the modular NIC and whole house spliter.http://www.dslmodemsdirect.com/DSL%20Configuration/NoWireHomeRun.htmBTW if you are running an new wire the new wire will most like have different color codes.http://www.hometech.com/learn/wiringst.htmlThe white with blue stripe is the GReen
The blue with white stripe is the Red..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Edited 11/30/2007 12:05 pm by BillHartmann
Thanks for the explanation, but I don't think I want to go that far.BTW - That last link you provided doesn't work for me.
Q: What did the co-dependent wife say to her husband when she woke up in the morning?
A: How am I going to feel today?
It got double posted.http://www.hometech.com/learn/wiringst.html.
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
With cell phones, more than two lines is unlikely but phone and data can travel over Cat5e. Data uses two pairs and phone uses one. If they're pulling one cable, it's better to stock only one type, from the standpoint of the contractor. Cat5e also handles wider bandwidth and is less prone to noise issues, too. If they had run Cat3 (regular phone line), anything that needs better will have to get a new cable. It's not even worth it to stock Cat3 anymore. As long as the contractor uses one standard for the color code (and leaves a copy), there won't be any confusion. Also, as far as having 8 conductors, if one pair has a problem, that pair can be abandoned, so a different pair can be used without having to pull a new feed.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Some contractors are even starting to carry and install bundled cables the contain cat5, coax, and fiberoptics.
Jack
"Some contractors are even starting to carry and install bundled cables the contain cat5, coax, and fiberoptics."I know, and it's really annoying to those of us who install only low voltage. The electricians think they run that stuff the same as Romex and pull it nice and tight, but don't consider minimum bend radius, quality of cabling, bundling it with Romex, practical locations, etc. It's bad enough that I saw where an electrician bundled all of his Romex feeds to the lightning suppression cable at the corner of a house but they don't usually have a clue about noise being induced by running the low voltage close to and parallel to the high voltage wiring.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Well if you would of had teenage girls instead of teenage boys... the 2nd line question would have been a no brainer.
As far as 4pr cat5 wiring I'm unsure of, other then future expansion and stuff being invented. Almost as good as running conduit.
Just the red- green for 1 line hook up. The 2nd pair Blk.- Yellow are for a 2nd line.
Blue/white -White blue is the 1st pair coming from your service...