O Canada! → Canadian → Canadian Broadband > VOIP home wiring question

VOIP home wiring question

Bell NID

Wiring

Connect your DSL modem directly to the "DSL Modem" connection on your POTS splitter. Disconnect the wire from the "Phone" portion of the splitter and then either crimp an RJ11 connector to that wire and plug it into the phone port of your ATA, or plug the phone port of your ATA into any phone jack in the house. All other phone jacks will now use the VoIP ATA. That's the most straightforward way to do it.

Alternately, you could connect the black and yellow wires to the DSL Modem portion of the POTS splitter and disconnect the red and green wires from the Phone portion. Go the phone jack in the house where you want your DSL modem and VoIP ATA and connect a two line adapter to the jack. (something like »www.amazon.com/Steren-4-Conducto···_sbs_e_1, *not* a regular split adapter). Connect your DSL modem to Line 2 and make sure it works. Confirm your DSL modem does not work on any other phone jack in the house. Once confirmed hook up your VoIP ATA to the Line 1 port and all the other phone jacks in the house will be on VoIP ATA. This method will provide you with the most flexibility as you can use any phone jack in the house for the DSL modem, but you need to be sure that the phone jack you want to use is wired to both pairs, and none of the phone jacks have the pairs reversed as that could screw up your ATA. If you feel more technically inclined you could also replace the phone jack you want to use with a two line split jack and avoid the two line adapter.

I'm sure others have different suggestions as well, and will no doubt have additional thoughts on how to do this. These are the two "easiest" methods I can think of.

good questio Mealtime - i am actually also looking into this myself!

Are you sure you described the current setup completely?

If red/green wires on “DSL/Modem” go to your modem AND a phone, the splitter in the picture should block that phone from working. Does the phone next to your modem work? Are you sure the wires are not connected to "Line"?

When you switch over to VoIP on your ATA, make sure that NOTHING is connected to the "Phone" contacts on the DSL splitter. Accidentally connecting your ATA to Bell's line could damage your ATA. You might need to join the upstairs and downstairs wires. Use splice connectors for that.

Are you planning on overlapping your old 6/1 DSL and the new 15/1 FTTN dry-loop service? You might want to post in the Teksavvy forum to see other people's experience with that. Apparently, if you sign up with Teksavvy's VoIP service, they will make all the changes for you with minimal disruption, without having to overlap DSL service.

Have you chosen your VoIP provider yet? Most turnkey providers let your port your number after trying their service with a new number. Bring-your-own-device providers let you make outgoing calls with no phone number at all. You could sign up with either and try the service before you make changes to your DSL.

In my case, I ported out from Bell first and then ordered the FTTN DSL 7. The port happened before the FTTN install date so I did have some DSL service disruption.

Oops!

I ported out and WAITED until the port was complete before ordering dry loop FTTN DSL 7. If I had ordered DSL first, I probably would have lost my phone number.

Just to confirm, the red-green pair connected to the "DSL/Modem' on the POTS splitter go the a phone jack in my computer room. That jack has a small splitter plugged into it, so I have 2 phone ports: one goes to the modem and one goes to the phone. The phone line is filtered. Is this working as it is supposed to?

In terms of VOIP providers, I am considering Freephoneline or Voip.ms. I know that if you choose TekTalk the transition may be better, but I don"t want to play a monthly fee since I don"t use my phone that often.

I also know nothing about splicing or crimping wires, so I might need to hire someone to do that for me.

Yes. If you disconnect the red/green pair from the Phone port on the POTS splitter, you will lose Bell dialtone (or, at least, Bell CO-supplied power) on all your phone jacks in your house. By connecting the DSL port to the yellow/black pair you will light up the second line of your internal wiring which will allow you to either use a line splitter like the link I included or re-wire a jack on just the yellow/black pair for the DSL modem. Once this is done and you confirm your DSL modem works you then connect your VoIP ATA into the red/green pair - either by connecting it directly to the wire in your photo (by crimping on an RJ11 end) or by plugging it into any other phone jack in the house - which will provide ATA-supplied dialtone to the rest of the phone jacks in the house - again, so long as they are all wired correctly.

The only caveat is that if any of the jacks are wired with line 1 and line 2 backward it could potentially blow your ATA as CO-supplied voltage will be running on that jack. These jacks right now wouldn't work properly so you'd know that ahead of time. So long as everything is wired correctly the above setup will work. I am also assuming that you live in a regular home and you haven't wired any phone jacks in any weird ways to segregate them from the rest of the jacks.

At no point do you want to do anything with the wires going into the Line portion of your POTS splitter.

Oh boy. I took so long to compose a reply. The following post was written before I saw Gone's new post. While having redundant information, it is based on my best guess of how your own wiring is hooked up. (two runs, one to your phone and modem downstairs, one to a single jack upstairs) I hope it helpful:

Disregard my first paragraph. It is in error. I guess I shouldn't post when I'm tired. The "DSL/Modem" port should pass through Bell's Home Phone as it does on your setup.

Don't worry about the connections outside. They are Bell and Teksavvy's responsibility. If you have 2 overlapping DSL services, they would probably install a second orange module in the NID and hook up the other pair. Inside, they would install a second DSL splitter. All of your own wiring will be to the new splitter.

Gone's suggestion is to send the DSL signal to your modem over the black/yellow pair of your INSIDE wiring. Your phones will connect to your ATA on the green/red pair. In your picture, on the "Phone" contacts, I see one four-conductor wire and a bare green/red pair. Does that mean that you have only the single green/red pair going to your modem? In that case, you will need to run a new four-conductor wire.

The DSL signal will go from the splitter over the black/yellow pair to your modem. Your ATA will be next to your modem and will feed the green/red pair. I personally would avoid using a 2-line jack and two-line adapter. Instead, I would install two new jacks. Also, you need to remove the DSL splitter that is next to your modem.

One jack will have green and red hooked up to the normal green and red screw terminals. This will be the phone connection fed by your ATA. Clearly label the jack "Pair #1: House Phones" You need a normal coupler to plug in both your phone and your ATA.

The second jack will have the black wire connected to the green terminal and the yellow wire connected to the red terminal. This is the DSL connection from Bell's splitter. Clearly label the jack "Pair #2: DSL Line from Bell". Use a normal modular wire hook up your modem.

This is the same connection as suggested by Gone. The difference is the jacks are clearly labeled instead of the tiny and cryptic "1" and "2" printed on the coupler.

At Bell's splitter, on the "DSL Modem" terminals, the black wire will go to the "T" spring terminal. The yellow wire will go the the "R" terminal.

The two greens and two reds have to be joined to send the ATA phone signal to the upstairs phone. Something like this should work:
»www.homedepot.ca/product/3-wire-···r/970395

Twisting the wires together would be insufficient. Something like this could be used too:
»www.homedepot.ca/product/phone-w···y/923135

I totally missed the second pair of wires coming out of the phone jack. Yeah, they need to be coupled. As an alternative to connectors or a junction box you could also install a phone jack there as well with both red wires connected to the single red terminal and both green wires connected to the single green terminal.

Bell themselves use a wall plate with two jacks for their DSL installations - one for voice and one for DSL and then label each jack on the plate. There are baseboard-mount versions of these available as well. That is the most ideal situation, as it is much easier than trying to string two pairs from the same jacket into two separate jacks. The existing phone jack and split line adapter is the quickest easiest way to accomplish the same thing but without needing to rewire anything, though. The caveat is that if anything is wired incorrectly it won't work and could potentially blow the ATA.

I'm using voip.ms and couldn't be more pleased with their service and even more with my now sub-$10 monthly bill.
(and that's with 2 DIDs and 5 (no-cost) sub-accounts for conne cting other sip apps)
All sip apps and my Obi110 ATA are in a ring group and ring whenever the home number is called.
Pretty slick.

Fwiw, I know they had issues with a couple of their servers, but like TekSavvy they're pretty up-front with any service issues -- even when they end up lasting only minutes.

Highly recommended.

Another one of my posts with incorrect information again! I need to Google before posting.

Every dual phone jack has enough screw terminal positions to independently wire each jack. If they didn't the jacks would be useless. There is no need to cut off any pigtails.

I've re-read the replies many times and I think I am starting to make sense of it. I have a few questions as I am still unclear about a few things. But first a summary of what my wiring setup should look like:

Outside (at NID box) – red-green pair already hooked-up. Attach black-yellow pair to a second orange module for dry-loop. (Bell tech will probably do this)

Inside - Connected to my current POTS splitter:

“Line” – red-green pair (wet-loop) from outside

“DSL/Modem” – black-yellow (dry-loop) pair from outside. This would connect to a new dual jack wall plate in my computer room. Modem would connect to the black-yellow port, land line phone/ATA would connect to the red-green port.

“Phone” – red-green pair for the moment (for Bell phone line), disconnect it when switching to VOIP so that the ATA device doesn’t blow up.

With this scenario, because the modem is on a dry-loop line, I can have a phone connected directly to a phone port of the ATA device for VOIP service, while still having landline service through the phone plugged into the upstairs phone jack. Correct?

ORIGINAL
 
       Wall
        ||                                                    |--------Filter-----Compter Room Phone
NID ----||---(Line)Bell DSL Spliter(DSLModem)-------Jack----Splitter--------------Modem
        ||              (Phone)
                          |
                          |
                          |
                    Upstairs Phone
 
VoIP
 
       Wall
        ||
NID ----||---(Line)Bell DSL Spliter(DSLModem)---B/Y--Jack2----Modem----ATA----Splitter---Computer Room Phone
        ||                                                                       |
                                                                                 |
                                                                                 |
                           |--------------------G/R--Jack1------------------------
                           |
                           |
                     Upstairs Phone