How do phone jacks work?

[Red Squirrel]

I am installing a phone jack from the wire that comes to the house, the jack has 6 connections, I've never seen this since a phone line normally has 4 or 2 (4 for 2 lines). The line that comes in has 4 wires: black, green, red and yellow. The jack colors for 1 2 3 4 do not match up with those colors.

How does the pin out normally work on jacks? Say I'm looking at the pins from the top like th is:

****
****
****
||||||

Which ones are line 1, line 2, and I'm guessing if there's six, line 3?

 

[seepy83]

I very rarely do any telephone wiring anymore, so I always have Wikipedia bookmarked for occasions like this. They have a good chart that shows how the colors match up between old cabling and newer Cat5/6, the pin-outs, and Tip/Ring:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RJ11,_RJ14,_RJ25

Hope that helps.

 

[bruceb]

You need to use either an RJ-11 or an RJ-14 type jack for the wire from the phone to the phone line.
For a normal single dial tone, it is the RED & GREEN wires on the jack and also coming in from the telco.
An RJ45 jack, while it can work, is not the proper size for the telephone wire plugs.

 

[Red Squirrel]

It's actually a phone jack, but not RJ12 and not RJ45, it's like in between. But knowing that the center pins are line 1, think I'll be ok from here. Does the order matter or can they be swapped and still work? Guess I should have just checked the nid and see which pins are wired to what color, never even thought of that till now.

Thanks for the help, I'll give it a try again tonight! Can't wait to get my net working.

 

[Pantlegz]

I always thought it was magic that made them work.. thanks for ruining it for me guys

 

[Red Squirrel]

I work for the phone company (ironic that I would not know this stuff - I'm IT ) and the one who takes 611 calls gets crazy calls sometimes. This one lady saw a fly go in her jack. She thought it was making her line buzz.

 

[ScottMac]

Pair one is the middle pair, always (red/green, or white-blue/blue)
Pair two is the pair that straddles pair one (yellow/black or white-orange/orange)
Pair three will vary by jack .. in a six pin jack, pair three straddles pair two (in an eight-pin jack, it'll go on pins 1&2)
Pair four goes on pins 7&8 for most applications, for (really old) old setups, it could be USOC wired and all pairs straddle the one before it (pair four would be pis 1&8)

 

[Red Squirrel]

I checked at lunch and sure enough red and green are the active pair, held the wires together to my phone and got a dial tone. Now to figure out which punch down part of the jack is the middle pins but i can probably test that with my multimeter (continuity test).

Also when punching down do I need to strip the wire, or does the punch down do that for me? It's a tool less keystone, so I just push it in with this mini pusher thingy that comes with it.

 

[ScottMac]

You do not need to strip the wire. "Punchdown" style connections are "Insulation Displacement Connectors" (IDC)

The red and green would go to the blue marked pair on the jack/punchdown connector. Red goes to the solid color (blue), green goes to the blue/white
The red and green are 'Ring" and "Tip" respectively. Just remember Red/Ring = both start with R ... and Tip is always the color/white wire. For most panels, connectors, and blocks, Tip leads the Ring (Tip on the left, Ring on the Right RRR Red Ring Right),

 

[Red Squirrel]

I managed to get it working, one of the pins was not punching down properly while the others were. Had to play around with it till it contacts. I hooked up my phone and all was good. DSL modem was not working but turned out they forgot to jumper me at the CO. Having worked at the help desk I pretty much figured it was that when I noticed the DSL light never turning on so I called them up and told them and I'm fixed up now. Just need to wait for my cat 6 order to come in so I can actually hook up to my PC. Shipments from the states takes forver.