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DSL question...does this make sense?

M

ManBearPig

Diamond Member
I'm painting our walls so I took apart the telephone jack, which nothing was connected to, certainly not the DSL modem (which is located upstairs), and now the Internet doesn't work. I have no idea how it would affect the phone lines, I thought I was ok since nothing was connected to it.

To top it off, I have no fucking idea how to reconnect the jack, all of the cable colors (which are usually red, black, green, and yellow) are non-standard.

Help please. 🙁



Moved from OT

Anandtech Moderator
KeithTalent
 
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If none of the wires are left touching anything, it shouldn't have made any difference.

Did you only have one set of 4 wires coming in, or is there a second set of 4?

Take a pic of the wires and jack & post it.

Basic info: DSL and phones run off of a single pair of those wires. The other two are not attached to anything assuming only one phone line in the house. You should get voltage across a pair with a meter - that'll be your active pair.
 
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You may have CAT5. If so, the blue and blue/white wires usually have service.

Blue/white = Red
White/Blue = Green

Also make sure there wasn't any other wires spliced in there.
 
Sometimes installers will use a jack as a point to continue the wiring to other points in the home, not the approved method but it is done anyway. Correct way is to bring all the wires to a distribution box or terminals and run each line separately. You can use a meter to find out which wires are live. Avoid touching the wires with your bare hands, the voltage is around 48VDC normally and DC doesn't like to travel to the skin at these levels, but if someone happens to call while you are touching the wires that voltage jumps to over 90VAC and it will hurt. If you do not have a meter , a standard household bulb will work, just touch one wire to the base of the bulb and other to the outer screw mount on the bulb.
 
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Hmm...

Ok so...how do I differentiate white/blue and blue/white? To me it looks like I have 2 blue wires and two white/blue twisted wires.

Then the actual jack/outlet has Res/Black/Yellow/Green from l-->r or counter clockwise.

Thanks a lot!
 
But what about solid blue? Two of the wires are solid blue and I can't figure out which color in the jack they go to.
 
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