Very interesting. I may just end up doing this! I'll probably wait until the snow goes away though and I'll probably have questions when I attempt it. Unfortunately my second line is not active (i.e no phone or dial tone). I remember when I did have both a phone and a dial tone I needed to use some sort of decoder device for every jack that a telephone was plugged into. Is this normal? I thought that meant I had only one line somehow and that the decoder device was used to filter out the telephone signal from the DSL signal ... but according to what you say there is always 2 lines.emoci wrote: ↑Doing your own wire is simple, but time consuming:
-First find the Demarc (the primary place where the line enters your house). If it's a home, it's likely a grey box outside the house or in the basement.
-Every place has at least 4 wires coming in, Green-Red-Black-Yellow, and each pair of wires is one line. Green-Red and Black-Yellow. If it's a newer built place you'll have more wires.
-Identify the pair of wires that's delivering your DSL right now (hopefully you have an active phone line which will make life easier to id whether it is Green-Red or Black-Yellow)
-Disconect the pair that's not delivering a line to your house at the demarc, and cover up the free wire ends with some electrical tape (this ensures that your telco doesn't suddenly fry your VoIP box)
-Now go around the house and make sure all 4 wires are properly wired to the jacks (normally Green-Red is your primary line, and Black-Yellow is the secondary line... if this is how you Id'd them above, the jacks should simply hook up by matching wire colors).
-Buy some of these and plug one into evey jack
http://cgi.ebay.com/Lot%3D10-L1,L2-L1+L ... 5008r13582
-Now L2 will be your DSL line, and L1 will be your empty second line. Hook up your ATA device to L1 in a closeby jack, and the tone will be running throughout the house wiring, while DSL is on its own on the other pair
This is all based on the fact that every house is wired for at least two lines (four copper wires). So even though you have one jack, each jack can deliver two lines, you just need a splitter...
Good Reading:http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/phone_wiring.html
Have you heard of this before and will it be a problem or is it just the normal setup?