Wiring a second phone socket

jrochie

Hi all,

This may be a stupid question but I'll ask anyway!

I'm trying to hook a second phone socket as a favour but having trouble. Firstly there already is a cable coming out of the main socket, but it's cut short. It has 6 wires, red gren black yellow and a blue and White. I just picked up a piece of extension from the local hardware shop, it only has 4 wires, red black green and yellow. Anyway I joined up these, and connected them to the new socket. I don't get a dial tone, but strangely the broadband connection will work!?!

Where am I going wrong?

Cheers

Faolchu

could be that you simply have the pairs to the wrong connection on the extension try reversing how you have the pairings. so if you have it something like this:


1 red 2 green

3 black 4 yellow

swap red and green to see dos you get a dial tone. if no luck put it back then swap black and yellow. again if no luck swap green and black and so on. you may have to ad in the Blue and White ones til you get a dial tone and have your broadband at the entry point.

if you then just need voice on the extension end once you have a good connection at teh entry to the house ie the first phone socket, then trial and error again on the pairings til you get dial tone on the other side, if i remember right you actually only need 1 pair (2 wires) for voice only on an extension. but broadband would need 2 pair.

Also don't forget if you're with eircom etc then you'll need line filters. basically is a small connection that comes from the wall socket with two sockets on it, think of it like a 2 plug extension lead. one will be marked as line the other DSL something like:



then there'll be a second one that may need to go on your extension to filter the braoad band (date) from voice, again it will look similiar but should only have one socket in it. you should be able to pick them up cheap enough if needed.

jrochie

Ok cheers I'll give that a go so then.

Would I maybe better wiring straight from the main socket instead of joining the 2 cables, just incase the socket isnt wired up correctly? Also when you say I may have to add in the white and blue, does that mean I'm using the wrong cable, as the one I'm using only has red green yellow and black? Final question if I am using the wrong type of cable, could I use cat 5e cabling instead? If i matched up the wires correctly wouldn't it still do the same thing? I know I'd have a lot of redundant but would this matter?

Thanks again

PaulieBoy

Best bet is to go back to the socket with your new length of cable, and forget about the join. You only need one pair. Have a look at where the telecom cable comes into the junction box, you will see one pair of wires. Connect off these, then the only issue is polarity ( positive / negative) when your connecting you new cable to the new junction box you have to put the cable the right way around, try one way and if that don't work then swap them around and your good to go. And yeah you will need a filter.
Off the four wires in a telephone cable only the two middle ones are used.
Yeah you can use Cat5, just cut all the strands back except two, use the same two on the other end.

Faolchu

come to think of it. when you started 4 of the 6 cables coming from the wall were connected, the other two (blue and white) were disconnected so its probably best to ignore them. just make sure they dont tip off anything in teh socket in case they short the connection.

What I have done in my place is this but mine was built in the last 8 years, if yours is an old house it may vary:

taken the existing socket from the wall and looked at the cable colours and didnt unscrew anything. if the colours matched what i had on my expenstion cable i connected the extension matching black with black etc to see did i get a tone.

if the colours coming from the wall do not match what i have on my extension cable then i sat in the hall or where ever the first entry point for a phone is I plugged a phone into the extension and held reciever to my ear and basically held one of the 4 waires from my extension to one of the spost on the wall socket in the hall. tipped one of each of the other three to the remaining points til i got a dial tone. if i got no tone then i tried again this time placing the same wire to a different point and kept going til i got a dial tone, theres only something like 16 combinations or so

for voice you only need 2 wires (1 pair) to get a dial tone
this link may help

http://www.ehow.com/how_5161292_wire-telephone-socket.html


http://homepage.eircom.net/~leslie/testpage/wiring.htm

agcomms

ok handy men, here it is.

from the sound of it you telephone socket is wired with alarma cable and your hard ware store gave you some more alarma cable.

Check the following, 1. There should be a pair (2 wires coming in from the
netowrk provider. This pair of wires should be filtered out either by a Broadband socket or a filter.

if you have an alarm, the line (from the line side of the filter should go to into the Alarm panel for the dialer), if provided, and back out again to the phone socket. From the socket you join the new cable to the
telephone line that was returned form the alram or from the filter if the alarm does not take the line first.

Think of it as train tracks, and you are just extending the track.

PaulieBoy

agcomms wrote: »

ok handy men, here it is.

from the sound of it you telephone socket is wired with alarma cable and your hard ware store gave you some more alarma cable.

Check the following, 1. There should be a pair (2 wires coming in from the
netowrk provider. This pair of wires should be filtered out either by a Broadband socket or a filter.

if you have an alarm, the line (from the line side of the filter should go to into the Alarm panel for the dialer), if provided, and back out again to the phone socket. From the socket you join the new cable to the
telephone line that was returned form the alram or from the filter if the alarm does not take the line first.

Think of it as train tracks, and you are just extending the track.

You do not use alarm cable for phone.
Also, spell checker is your friend!

agcomms

whar a stupid statement to make.
Of course you can use alarm cable for pstn lines and extensions.
What you cannot use alarm cable foris DATA, I.E DSL.

My point about the alarm cable was the colour code is different on alarm cable than that on twisted pair telco cable.

it is perfectly acceptable to use alarm cable on any Analogue Device.

rmacm

PaulieBoy wrote: »

You do not use alarm cable for phone.
Also, spell checker is your friend!

People's spelling isn't up for discussion on the forum. If you have a problem with a post report it.

agcomms wrote: »

whar a stupid statement to make.
Of course you can use alarm cable for pstn lines and extensions.
What you cannot use alarm cable foris DATA, I.E DSL.

My point about the alarm cable was the colour code is different on alarm cable than that on twisted pair telco cable.

it is perfectly acceptable to use alarm cable on any Analogue Device.

Same goes for you agcomms, report posts if you have a problem with them don't drag a thread off topic.

PaulieBoy

agcomms wrote: »

whar a stupid statement to make.
Of course you can use alarm cable for pstn lines and extensions.
What you cannot use alarm cable foris DATA, I.E DSL.

My point about the alarm cable was the colour code is different on alarm cable than that on twisted pair telco cable.

it is perfectly acceptable to use alarm cable on any Analogue Device.

Off with ya so! I would not use alarm cable for voice, in addition what if the person wants to use it for data ? Go back and rip it all out and do it again?

Let me clarify: If your a cheapskate and want to use alarm cable for an extension then fine. If you want to do a proper job, use proper cable.

quickdraw2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair

and not too many phones read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringer_equivalence_number

A few meters of alarm cable will make no noticable difference
to the audio quality on your phone.

quickdraw2

and this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_connector

lucernarian

The DSL is working as the line must be short from house to exchange and the signal is basically able to transmit into the neighbouring pairs and simply be picked up on a different wire pair. This is normally a bad effect of DSL and is called crosstalk.

Easy way to solve this is to see what wires within the 6-wire cable are actually connected to the existing socket. The sockets uses and their colours do vary so if the wiring of the main existing socket is posted back then I could figure out what's going on.

The 4-wire cable is unlikely alarm cable, it's probably some of that flat telephone extension cable you see in shops everywhere. I would say that this is particularly detrimental to DSL but seeing as crosstalk alone is strong enough to give a working DSL connection, I doubt this will be an issue.

Solair

agcomms wrote: »

whar a stupid statement to make.
Of course you can use alarm cable for pstn lines and extensions.
What you cannot use alarm cable foris DATA, I.E DSL.

My point about the alarm cable was the colour code is different on alarm cable than that on twisted pair telco cable.

it is perfectly acceptable to use alarm cable on any Analogue Device.

Actually, it's not acceptable to use it on phone lines as it introduces RF interference as the straight-cable behaves like an antenna and it also introduces crosstalk.

Telephone cabling, particularly if you plan to use DSL, should ALWAYS be twisted pair e.g. CAT5 in a modern installation.

Alarm cable / straight cable will work, but you'll get crackles and crosstalk and your DSL will be rubbish.

Eircom specifies "All internal telephone cables should be 3 Twisted Pair six wire solid conductor" If you don't install that, don't expect them to be able to provide ADSL or a proper phone service.

How it should be done:

http://www.reci.ie/Portals/0/RECIDocuments/technicalinfo/eircominterface.pdf

Even very old telephone installations used twisted pair. If you've ever seen them you'll notice it's tightly twisted open cable tacked along the skirting.

It reduces interference and that's why it has always been used.

lucernarian

Solair, bad cable can only rarely produce crackles on phonelines. They're usually caused by physical breaks or damage in the line which are very audible because of the intermittent 48V DC hitting the phone. But I agree with your post in general.

I also wouldn't recommend using alarm cable though it will not automatically turn a good DSL signal into a bad one. The future is that such lines will be expected to carry ADSL2+ speeds and sooner or later the alarm cable will likely reduce the maximum speed compared to better cable.

Btw, the first 4-core cables that the P&T used for internal installations did not have twisted pairs (it has a somewhat funny colouring scheme of blue, orange, brown and green if I remember right). The two-wire cable seen in older houses is as much twisted for ease of use as for noise reductions I believe, much in the same way bell wire is twisted despite how it only carries steady DC current. The telephone network is wired to Cat 3 standards apparently, but that standard has only been around since 1991.

Solair

On the network side it's all twisted pair as otherwise if you've bundles of cables one line picks up the next line.

P&T used traditional non-sheathed twisted pair it was only when modular sockets came in Telecom used short runs of straight telephone wire (non twisted pair).

They quickly went back to twisted pair again though.

For DSL using any significant runs of non-twisted pair is a disaster. That's largely why some older internal wiring systems cause chaos and have to be disconnected at the first socket to ensure a decent DSL connection.

They pick up all sorts of electrical noise from broadcast radio, TV, electrical equipment etc etc. ADSL operates from about 25kHz to 1.1MHz or 2.2MHz for ADSL2+, and there's plenty of on-air noise in that band!

When you fire-up your DSL modem it starts by 'training' i.e. seeking out which frequencies are usable and ignoring the ones that aren't. The better your line, the more frequencies are free from noise and the faster your connection.

It's not ideal if your phone wiring is behaving like a long-loop antenna and picking up RTE Radio 1 on 252kHz, BBC Radio 4 on 198, BBC Radio 5live on 909 kHz etc etc and random French and other stations

Yazoo69

Hi sorry to jump in on this but I have an eircom broadband only connection and I want to move it to second point in house. Looking at main socket only two wires are connected orange and white with orange. The second socket is already wired to box outside house. Is it just a case of connecting the same coloured wires from second socket to those on the main connection ..??