Eircom - Phone socket

mousehouse

Hi
Quick question, I have 2 eircom sockets 1 in each bedroom but when I plug anything in they do not seem to be working and they were installed new into the apt when they were built. The main one in living room is active and working fine any suggestions

KoolKid

Is there a single cable at each or do some have 2 cables?
They may not be all joined together.

Solair

It's likely that the phone sockets were just never connected.

If the active socket's an eircom branded one, there'll be a face plate that you can remove at the front. The extension wiring should be connected to terminals on the reverse of that faceplate marked L1 and L2.

To be perfectly honest, these days I wouldn't even bother wiring up those sockets.

Just get yourself a good DECT phone with a few handsets. It's far less hassle than trying to figure out what your electrician's done / hasn't done with the phone wiring and also internal wiring can be problematic with DSL if it's not well put together / is using bad quality cable by introducing line noise.

cowsfriend

Hi guys similar issue to mousehouse and didn't want to start a new thread. I have an eircom socket in my kitchen which works for my broadband router and phone. I have other generic sockets in my sitting room and bedrooms which don't have L1 L2 (they have red, green, black, yellow). Although the same blue/white, white/blue wires and connected to the L1 L2 in my kitchen and to the red green in my sitting room I don't get a dial tone in my sitting room. I would like to be able to move my router and phone to my sitting room as the location of my main eircom socket is an awkward location. Can anyone explain if this can be done?

KoolKid

Basically all telephone lines are the one pair joined together. You either use the L1 L2 connections or the red & green on generic sockets. To put it another way these are always the center 2 pins on the plugs & the sockets. If you are not getting a dial tone somewhere then the connection is not made correctly or the connection is not connected through to that location.
Do you have the use of a multi meter? If so check the DC voltage at each pair. It should be approx 50 volts DC.

Solair

Irish telephone wiring basically follows North American standards, and is *FAR* easier and more straight forward than the UK system BT came up with, or most other European countries' over-complicated systems.

Ignore all references to UK wiring that you might find on line, they are not relevant in the Republic of Ireland will cause you serious confusion as the BT wiring systems use a 3rd wire for the ringer. We don't and you don't have to bother with any of that stuff.

We use RJ11 plugs and sockets, the same as the United States. They were developed by AT&T / Bell Labs in the 1970s and were designed to be DIY-friendly and pretty much idiot-proof.

The line comes in as two wires which eircom likes to call L1 and L2.

In Ireland, the polarity of the line (which way it's wired) also doesn't particularly matter as the system was designed so that it doesn't make any difference. The exchanges don't care which way you connect the line. Some countries e.g. the UK uses polarity reversal to signal certain things like Caller ID or to control payphones. The Irish network does all of those things using tones and ringing pulses. So, if you see anything about polarity, ignore.

If you get a dial tone it it will work.

Eircom-branded sockets contain extra wiring for various possible services (ISDN, office phone systems, monitored alarms etc) as well as terminals for connections with legacy 1960s/70s wiring for rotary dial phones (the R connector) so they have a lot of extra terminals which can make things confusing looking. Basically, ignore all of them except for L1 and L2.

They also allow eircom to disconnect your extension wiring to do a test if an engineer calls out. Basically, they're just a hugely over-complicated RJ11 socket, most of the features of which are never used.


----

Your phone line comes into the house on L1 and L2.
Those two wires are then connected to every other phone socket in the house. You can wire them as a daisy-chain where one socket links onto the next one, or you can wire them all as a star from a central point, or any combination of those methods. All that matters is each socket is getting the L1 and L2 connection.

RJ11 sockets have up to 6 terminals but only the centre two are ever used for normal phone wiring. The others are all for various other purposes like office phones and stuff which you don't really have to even worry about.

A lot of those sockets will have 4 terminals coloured Red, Green, Yellow and Black.

Only use the Red and Green, the yellow and black are ignored.

Some sockets are also marked up for CAT5 colours, so they'll have the centre terminals marked as blue/blue+white.

---

You'd typically use CAT5 type cable to wire phone sockets. This has 4 X "twisted pairs" inside.

It's convention to use the blue pair to carry the phone line. You can use the other pairs for anything you like, e.g. carrying a second line, maybe to supply a filtered / unfiltered DSL or whatever you like.

I'd strongly suggest CAT 5 though as it's widely available and good quality. It will mean you'll be less likely to have problems with DSL signals etc.

----

Buy your sockets in an electrical wholesalers if you can. Brands like Legrand do really high quality, easy to wire sockets very reasonably if you're buying in a proper electrical wholesalers.

The cheap and nasty unbranded stuff you'll pick up in supermarkets will do the job, but you can never be sure they're all that great for DSL e.g. poor connections / bad quality contacts on the pins and they're usually fiddly to wire too.

They're also usually the same price (or more expensive) than the good quality sockets in wholesalers!

----

Junctions :

If you're connecting the phone wiring together use telephone junction boxes, or twist the wires together and clamp them down in the sockets with the terminals. Just make sure the copper wires are actually physically in touch with each-other and not using an electrical connector suitable for mains wiring or something like that.

It's signal wiring, not electrical wiring so you don't want to introduce noise or unusual resistances. That's especially important if you have DSL broadband, probably doesn't matter much for just voice.

Basically, the wiring should be high quality copper-to-copper the whole way through.

----

In short, the Irish network's very DIY friendly, just don't over-complicate things or read UK material

That and use good quality cable and reasonable sockets + make sure you get all your connections nice and tight with copper-on-copper (wire-to-wire) and you'll never have any issues.

----

Handy tip:

If you want to test the line dial 199000 - The exchange will read back your phone number as a voice announcement.