2wire vs. 4wire

[crabbyman]

Right now most of the phone wiring in my house is only the 2 wire system. It was more of a choice of not needing the other lines that they were disconnected or not connected.

Now...my family is switching from cable internet to DSL since we have so many problems with Adelphia here. Plus DSL is 1/2 the price.

Should we be fine using only a 2 wire system...or should I reconnect all the wiring from the box to the house, etc... to use a 4 wire system?

We have plenty of filters...but I was wondering if it would just be better for it to have its own 2 wires...

 

[Ernie99]

DSL only uses one pair of wires, and it is usually the same pair as your regular phone line. That is why you need filters on the phones. Otherwise, the telco has to send out a tech to put a splitter at the demarc. In this case, you would get a dedicated pair to the DSL modem which the tech would run for you. In either case, you should be fine. You should have at least two pair in the wall anyway.

 

[crabbyman]

There are 2 pair in the wall..only one pair is connected. That's what I meant about the wiring. The "christmas tree" lights are connected but not the black and yellow.

 

[Ernie99]

Correct. If the telco puts a splitter at the dermarc, the DSL will use the black/yellow pair and no filters are needed. Otherwise, DSL goes on the red/green pair and you put filters on all the phones.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: Ernie99
Correct. If the telco puts a splitter at the dermarc, the DSL will use the black/yellow pair and no filters are needed. Otherwise, DSL goes on the red/green pair and you put filters on all the phones.

Sorry, but that is wrong if you're using DSL on the same phone number. All phones on an individual phone number are connected in parallel. Regardless of whether you connect them on the same line in the house or back at the box, you'll still need filters on every other device connected to the same phone line.

That includes your dial-up modem, if you still use one. I still have one for occasional faxes and as a backup if the DSL goes down.

 

[Ernie99]

Originally posted by: Harvey

Originally posted by: Ernie99
Correct. If the telco puts a splitter at the dermarc, the DSL will use the black/yellow pair and no filters are needed. Otherwise, DSL goes on the red/green pair and you put filters on all the phones.

Sorry, but that is wrong if you're using DSL on the same phone number. All phones on an individual phone number are connected in parallel. Regardless of whether you connect them on the same line in the house or back at the box, you'll still need filters on every other device connected to the same phone line.

That includes your dial-up modem, if you still use one. I still have one for occasional faxes and as a backup if the DSL goes down.

The telco can install a filter / splitter at the demarc, put the DSL on another pair and have the regular voice lines on the filtered "red / green" pair. I know for a fact Sprint does it this way because that is how it was installed in my house. No phone filters needed, with everything on the same "line." If the telco does not want to send a technician out to the location to install the central filter / splitter, then you get the filters on each phone.

http://www.homephonewiring.com/dsl.html

This page will explain what I am talking about.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: Ernie99
Correct. If the telco puts a splitter at the dermarc, the DSL will use the black/yellow pair and no filters are needed. Otherwise, DSL goes on the red/green pair and you put filters on all the phones.

That's true. I did that myself at my old house. I used one pair for my DSL line and put a single filter ahead of the line that fed the rest of the house. It worked fine.

Since the DSL line came up to my office space, I still had to use a filter on the dial-up modem.

 

[bruceb]

Ernie is absolutely correct about only using the Red & Green for normal Voice Telephone sets
The Yel & Blk are usually not needed for anything
I wired in a Whole House DSL Filter for my home, but deciided to run a seperate cable to the
modem from the dsl filter ... the filter has 3 connnections on it:

Phone Line Inpuit

Filtered Voice Set Output

Unfiltered Output for the DSL Modem

This is the best way to go especially with more than 6 dsl filters
Once my whole house filter was installed, no more dropped dsl link