Phone socket wiring

DoctorChipolata

Can anyone link to a diagram for how to wire up a standard Irish phone socket with cable already there? Thx.

kaizersoze

Couldn't find a diagram for an Irish socket but it's fairly simple to do.
There are 6 or 8 coloured wires inside standard telephone cable, but only 2 are used. Look inside the phone socket where your extension cable originates (possibly the eircom master socket) and see which 2 coloured wires are connected up and connect the same 2 colours at the extension end. If none are connected inside the master socket, just connect up any 2. It doesn't matter which colours you connect as long as you use the same colours at the other end.
For wiring the extension socket itself, look in the "hole" at the front, where the phone plugs in, and you will see 4 copper contacts. Only the middle 2 are used. Look inside the extension socket and find the 2 connectors that are going to the 2 middle contacts and connect the 2 coloured wires mentioned above to these 2 connectors. If it does't work swap the 2 wires on the 2 connectors in the extension socket. Don't worry about getting it wrong, you won't do any harm, it just won't work.
Clear as mud eh

Solair

Ireland basically uses the same wiring scheme as the United States and Canada for telephones



Only the centre two contacts are used for a normal single line telephone. So wire it like that.

If it's an eircom / telecom eireann socket the terminals you need to connect to are marked L1 and L2. The older beige sockets require a special tool to push the cable into the contacts (Called an IDC tool, you can pick them up at Maplins or Peats.. don't use anything else as you'll bend the terminals out of shape and they're a pain to fix! They've very easy to use though. just loop the cable around and push it in (you don't even need to strip it as the terminal cuts into the outer sheath) ) The newer white ones have two screw down terminals on the back. (You can ignore the "R" terminals, they're only used when wiring up old fashioned rotary dial telephones with bells)

If you're wiring up any of the sockets you can buy in hardware stores, just use the red and green contacts.

The Irish systems polarity is random, so you don't really need to worry which way you wire them it will work perfectly well both ways.

If you're wiring multiple sockets you should daisy-chain them where possible rather than using any other configuration of cables.

i.e. (Socket 1)

---

(Socket 2)

---

(Socket 3) ---- Socket 4 and so on.

(You can use a star topology too if it's more practical, the key is to keep the cable runs as short as possible and use good quality well sheilded cable to reduce noise... ALL extensions MUST be connected to the line via your eircom master socket though. Otherwise, you risk failing DSL tests etc)

Also, a normal phone line will only support about 4 telephones. Any more than that any you need to look at a DECT cordless system or a small PABX.

Use good quality cable e.g. Cat5 (this will reduce line noise!)

http://www.reci.ie/technicalinfo/eircominterface.pdf
(this file explains everything in a lot of detail)

If the phone socket's a modern eircom master socket it has 2 moduels. A front panel and a rear panel. To wire it to a phone line you need to remove the front panel, then remove the two screws behind it to reveal the back of the socket

The incomming phone line is connected at the very back of the socket. Your extension wiring should be connected to two screw down terminals marked L1 and L2 on the back of the front plate and NOT directly to the telephone line.

There is circuitry inside the master socket that allows eircom to run line tests and it also protects your internal wiring against lightening strikes and other voltage spikes. Cheaper basic sockets you pick up in a hardware shop won't have this protection.

If you don't have any eircom socket at all, phone them up. Its about the only thing that they will do at a very small fee. Installing an "NTU" (Master socket) is somthing that their engineers have to do by default if one is not already installed.

Also (just for reference)
The above diagram uses terms like "R1 and T1" (R = ring .. T = Tip, these come from the old days when telephones used plugs like headphone jacks. The tip of the plug was "the tip" and the ring was the other contact further up the jack)

Eircom refer to R1 and T1 simply as L1 and L2

Those telephone connectors can be wired up with a full 3 pairs and carry 3 telephone lines simultaniously, it's just very rarely done thesedays since most office systems are now digital. You may also find that some systems use the spare pairs for other purposes... e.g. signalling / lights / loop backs etc .. so you're always safest to only wire the centre pair as you don't risk being incompatable with anything!

Hope that's all of some help.

DoctorChipolata

Brilliant , thanks a million lads.

oneweb

wow, thanks Solair! I've been looking for that info for yonks, that's great

garyh3

These is the NUT I think you were taking about

oneweb

garyh3 wrote:

These is the NUT I think you were taking about

NTU (Network Terminating Unit)

kasintahan

Some good info in this thread.

You should see the job I did at home, multiple phone systems running over shared cat3 cabling, DSL and 1Mbit Phonlink networks routed everywhich way.
It's a mess, but it's a reliable working mess!

lucernarian

Yeah that eircominterface file is pretty handy, I found it last year and still have it downloaded on the comp. Also, if you see any eircom engineers about and if they're not too busy talk to them about any issues with the master socket. At home here we used a cheap DIY socket for 5 years to replace the TE socket that broke. I mamaged to replace it 4 months ago after I found an eircom engineer who gave me the master socket and even showed me how to wire it. Very helpful men, they are. And for cabling, use CW1311 as it only costs 13 cent per metre in the shop I bougnt it in. It's designed for telephone use and normally has 2 twisted pairs inside.

iregk

Have to say the eircom techs are sound enough lads. One knocked the door of my house last week (brand new estate) and as next door who had arranged to get connected was running late he was bored and figured he would ask if we needed any work done while he was waiting!

As I had wired all but the master socket myself I showed him what I'd done and he said top job but use these instead. Gave me 3 eircom phone ports to replace the 3 cheap ones i bought in a local hardware store!

Sound man so if you see any eircom techs about just ask them, they are usually very welcoming.

DoctorChipolata

I think I know where you are iregk! Begins with C ... same as me.

Our line comes in to the Eircom bosca downstairs and we got the developer to run a cable upstairs. It's there behind a blanking plate. I presume it's safe enough to strip a 'live' phone cable to connect it to a socket?

kasintahan

DoctorChipolata wrote:

I presume it's safe enough to strip a 'live' phone cable to connect it to a socket?

Try not to touch the wires together (might damage Eircoms eqiupment at the exchange).

You can also get a belt off the wires if you touch them in certain circumstances (i forget, i do remember it involved an incoming call).

WillieFlynn

kasintahan wrote:

Try not to touch the wires together (might damage Eircoms eqiupment at the exchange).

You can also get a belt off the wires if you touch them in certain circumstances (i forget, i do remember it involved an incoming call).

The ring voltage is about 50V and can give a shock, but it should not be harmful. To stop this take another extension off hook or redirect your incomming calls first.

Eircoms equipment should not have problems with a short, however if the line test was done at this point it could show up as a fail. I'd imagine that that a short a long way from the exchange is the least of the miss treatment it receives.

WillieFlynn

iregk wrote:

Sound man so if you see any eircom techs about just ask them, they are usually very welcoming.

Pity about some of the management..................

iregk

Absolutely Willie, couldn't have said it better myself.

DoctorChipolata

Erm ... sorry to be thick ... inside the cable I have 4 twisted pairs. Just to be clear - I unwrap the one blue/white pair I have and strip those, then wire them onto the red/green screw terminals on the socket I have ??

pugleon

If you're using cat5 which it sounds as if you are. You only need two out of the eight in those twisted pairs.

Snip away the other six to give yourself some fiddling room.

One to green, one to red. Then match them on the other end.

Not thick, everyone has to start somewhere mate

mamolian

I recently was moving a wardrobe, and dropped it on the master socket.. destroying it ;( went out and bought some cheap socket, and connected it up.. phone worked perfectly, seem any 2 cables you connect will allow the telephone signal to operate correctly, how ever for DSL.. you need the red and green wires on the L1 and the L2 for the master socket, as an eircom engineer explained when he came out to rectify the issue, was rather dissappointed I diddnt try every combination myself. Apparently its that Pair that they install the equipment on.

Hope it helps someone.

Opps seems the red and green are the old colour codes, by looking at that diagram at the very top.
They are now white and blue, striped with the other being the inverse

Mamo

AMurphy

Quick Question;
If there are 6 contacts in the wall plug and 6 wires shown in the wire color illustration.

Why there are there only 4 screws/wires shown in the photo 'Terminal 2' of the rear of the unit
and where are the 2 other wires connected if used?
and I'll assume these 4 are the incoming supply from the pole or service.

Where are the extensioin wires to the bedroom extensions connected?.
Does one simply loop them in under the same 4 screws and take it from there, or are there specific 'out to extensions' screws/terminals.

What connections have to be made or wires used if the bedroom extension has to support a DSL modem?.

Thanks in advance.

MyBaby

Some good info here..

I am moving house very very soon, in the new how there is a phone line coming in with 4 different wires in it, i have a small white box which inside has basically 4 connections were i can screw in the wires, i am just not sure were to put each wire. can any one guide me in the write direction?

Eircom said my phone line is working but i just need a box connected, there charge to do this is expensive - low on cash right now.. hope someone can help..

thanks in advance.

paulryan

I am currently looking at replacing my inlaws tel. wiring in Dublin.
They have old PT&T wiring and it seems as though the existing wiring is not quite right. They originally had 2 lines into the house (one for dialup not isdn) and have since had it deactivated.
Now the dialup NTE5 socket doesnt provide a dialtone though the adsl filter
and i want this to set up a VOIP ATA, the broadband works fine off this socket though. Strange but true, eircom didnt have an answer either.

I am going to bite the bullet and try to replace the master with a new NTU and a few other slaves around the house.
* Can i change the NTU legally ?
* Where can i purchase decent quality surface mounted sockets ?
* I dont really want to fully rewire as it traverses awardly upstairs so i would also be looking for decent quality tel cable junction boxes. Any Recommendations ?

Any help would be really appreciated.

rgs
Paul

lucernarian

Simply don't use junction boxes wherever possible. Once the connections are secure, any sort of junction box, even terminal blocks will work perfectly. You only need a single pair of wires for phones and broadband, and do the wiring as illustrated in the RECI file.

A lot of the P&T wiring seems to use a ringer wire, but this won't affect the quality of everything. I wouldn't disturb anything if possible unless the broadband or in worse cases the voice is affected. The NTU is meant to be fitted by eircom but I doubt any linesman would complain if he saw the socket wired correctly:) Usually the best improvement in quality is making sure the connections are screwed properly and also by replacing the cabling.

I'm not sure if it's possible to purchase decent surface-mounted sockets. In olden days, master sockets were also used as secondary sockets. You can do that with the current ones I'm sure but I don't see the advantage. Just get an extra cheap socket to use in case one of the secondary sockets gets damaged. They are rather flimsy.


MyBaby: If you don't have a single socket in the house but are paying line rental to eircom, then they are legally meant to provide you with a main socket in the hallway or some other central place, at no cost whatsoever (USO service reqs.) If the above applies to you, ring and complain to them and if that doesn't work, ring (don't email) ComReg to escalate this.

Judge2112

Does anyone know if there exists an Eircom NTU box that includes an integrated DSL filter?

oneweb

Judge2112 wrote:

Does anyone know if there exists an Eircom NTU box that includes an integrated DSL filter?

An eircom broadband technician installation will replace an existing ntu with an integrated filter ntu. I doubt they're available to buy anywhere.

kaizersoze

oneweb wrote:

An eircom broadband technician installation will replace an existing ntu with an integrated filter ntu. I doubt they're available to buy anywhere.

Yes there is but the only place you're likely to get on is from an Eircom tech. They install them during a BB install is requested by the customer or where the line is a conditional pass and needs an engineer visit.

O7Pat

Thanks for all the really helpful stuff in this thread.

I have done some of it and now have a related question.

I have a telephone cable going from tv point in living room to the attic, its not connected to anything in the attic but now I want to use that point for sky. The telephone cable from the bedroom phone point is also in attic, can I connect into this ??

Is it simply a matter of cutting the existing cable and joing up the relevant wires?? (Presumably the three together - both ends of the one I cut and the new one)

Thanks

lucernarian

Pretty much. It will work once you take the usual precautions against loose wires and short circuits.

A small terminal block might make life easier for you when doing it.

Benedict XVI

I am looking to setup a VOIP in my house where I will plug the ATA into one of the phone jacks (not the NTU) so that all the other phone jacks in the house will be enabled and I can then plug an analog phone into any jack and have the VOIP service.

Someone told me that this can be done as long as you are not connected to Eircom. Now the house is brand and I have not yet been connected to Eircom.

What sort of changes do I have to do to make to the NTU to make sure all the phone jacks in the house are connected together but not to Eircom

Right now on the NTU there are two blue wires connected to the eCU and all the other wires are hanging loose.

The NTU is exactly like the one in the document
http://www.reci.ie/technicalinfo/eircominterface.pdf

Thanks for the help

monkey tennis

kasintahan wrote:

You can also get a belt off the wires if you touch them in certain circumstances (i forget, i do remember it involved an incoming call).

Speaking of this... DON'T do what I stupidly did once upon a time and use your teeth to strip the wires - you get some belt if that phone rings! :eek:

Benedict XVI

Can anyone help me with this situation?

I have my VOIP ATA (Linksys PAP2) connected to a phone jack (Jack 1) in a bedroom.
I took the panel off the wall and saw that the blue and white wires from the standard phone wire are connected to the jack.

In another room I have my analog phone plugged in to a phone jack (Jack 2) and I can use it with the VOIP no problem.

When I opened that panel however I saw that there were two standard phone cables and the blue and white wires from each cable were twisted together (blue to blue and white to white) and connected to the jack.
I untwisted them and connected one pair (one blue , one white, each from the same cable) at a time but only one pair of wires gave me a dial tone.

Now here is my problem.

I have another jack beside the TV (Jack 3)that I want to connect a SKY + box to and use with the VOIP, however when I connect my analog phone to that I don't get a dial tone.
When I open that panel I see that it has one phone cable coming in and the blue and white wires from that cable are connected to the jack, exactly like Jack 1

How do I make that Jack 3 work so that I can get a dial tone from it?

BTW I cannot change the location of where I have the VOIP ATA plugged in or where I can plug in the SKY +

While I was doing this I had the eircom NTU completely disconnected, that had originally the blue and blue and white wires connected to L1 and L2

Now that I think of it I did not test for a dial tone on Jack 3 when the pair that did not give me a dial tone were connected in Jack 2, would that make a difference. ?

Solair

Be very careful about plugging an ATA into an eircom phone line. There's a serious risk you could damage your ATA quite badly.

Even if there's no dial tone on the line, it's very likely it's still connected to the exchange and is being powered. This will at the very least confuse your ATA and at worst actually damage it quite badly.

The other problem is that even if the line's not connected to the eircom exchange, it can be a LOT of cable i.e. several KM. There's no way your ATA can cope with that length of cable.

What you can do is open the eircom socket, disconnect the line completely and use electrical tape to insulate the bare ends of the cable, making sure they're not touching each other. Leave all your house's internal wiring connected and then you can connect the ATA to the master socket either by just plugging it in, or by connecting it in place of the phone line.

As for working on live telephone lines, there are two voltages used on the line.

aprox 50V DC is applied at all times. Touching the lines together won't do any harm to the exchange whatsoever, however you will see a slight spark.
When you replace the receiver on a normal phone it connects those two cables together to signal the phone's "on hook". Also, if you use pulse dialling or press the R key on a phone it signals by connecting and disconnecting the two sides of the line rapidly i.e. it's known as "loop disconnect signaling.

When your phone rings, the exchange sends roughly 75V AC at about 25Hz across the line. It's usually "balanced ringing" i.e. there's a potential difference of 75V between the two cables, but it's much less than that to earth. However, it's not always the case and it depends on how your local exchange is setup.

So, beware you can get quite a serious shock from a ringing phoneline. Stripping it with your teeth with the phone rings could deliver a shock with enough voltage to knock you unconscious. In the UK, higher voltages are used too so a BT line can present anything up to about 150V under certain circumstances.

The rule of thumb is treat phone lines as live and handle with care.

The safest way to work on a line is to activate call diversion before you start.

i.e. dial *21* (your mobile number) #
All calls will be sent to your mobile, and the line will not ring.
To cancel dial #21#

(This applies to both eircom and Smart Telecom lines)