Telephony issue

[EQTitan]

I setup a commercial building internal network, and they also wanted a few more outlets for phone server ran to new offices. I did a home run for each of the new telephony lines but after splicing it all together this is what i get.

- Cat5e (green line 1)(blue line 2)(orange line 3 adding later)(brown line 4 adding later)
- (2) line phone base stations with 3 cordless handsets
- Line #1 (ends in 5545) can receive phone calls, phone rings, line 1 lights up
- Line #2 (ends in 5555) can receive phone calls, phone does not ring, line 2 lights up


I tested the incoming lines from the service provider and I'm only getting dial tone from one line. Which is strange because the service provider was out the day before and marked the two incoming lines on the D-mark switch box.

Is it possible for 1 physical line to support to lines but be separated by voltage?

 

[bruceb]

You need more specifics of how you are hooking it all up. Is is thru a PBX box or just two seperate Phone Lines going to one telephone set or to two seperate telephone sets (1 line on each set) .. Basically, most phone sets have an RJ-11 connection which has the Dial Tone going into the set on the Red & Green wires, this is the Center 2 pins on the RJ-11. You can run 2 dial tones thru 1 Quad (4 wire cable) to the wall jack, but at that point it would need to go to seperate RJ-11 wall jacks. One line would use the Red & Green and go to the same colors on the jack. The other line, if it is a quad wire will be Yel & Blk and would also go the Red & Green pins on the other RJ-11 jack. It is easy, nowadays to wire both phone lines into a simple PBX box then you just need a normal 2 wire connection to the phone. All the ringing, call pickup and call hold are handled over the one pair of wires and the pbx box

 

[EQTitan]

Coming in from outside - 4 pair cat5 (green/green-white|blue/blue-white|brown/brown-red|yellow/yellow-red)

only receiving tone from (brown/brown-red) pair

The line coming in runs to a small gray box where the brown pair is stripped at the ends and then wraps around the green/red posts along with my green pair coming from the wall plate jack. No other lines coming from the outside have dial tone even though they worked before I started the installation and the Phone company came inside to label them. So, line one xxx-xxx-5545 can make outgoing, incoming calls, and has enough voltage to allow the phone to ring.

Now from the wallplate it runs via a small 4' cat3 line where it connects to a base station that has a line 1 and line 1/2 inputs. When calling in from the xxx-xxx-5545 number the phone rings and line 1 light and the line 2 light blink.

 

[bruceb]

First it sounds like the 2nd line is bad coming from the central office or your in home wiring is bad causing the other line to take itself out of service in the telco switch. It also sounds like you have something cross wired or shorted by mistake. Since I can't actually see what you did or know the type of equipment you are using it is hard to remote troubleshoot it.

 

[drebo]

A standard analog line does not support multiple phone numbers or line designations. There are some types of lines known as "DID Lines" that, when paired with compatible equipment (your cheap 2-line phones are NOT compatible with this technology) will distinguish between multiple inbound phone numbers. It's important to note that if you plug a non-DID device into a DID line, it will fry the device.

Your cheap 2-line phones are probably expecting the two lines to be delivered line 1 as the inner pair of an RJ-11 jack and line 2 as the outer pair. If you're not getting dialtone at the demarc with a butt set, then the issue is a telco issue.

Running CAT5, you can maintain up to 4 analog lines through it, with each pair acting as a separate line. Regardless, though, it sounds like the line is not hot from the telco or you're punched down improperly at the demarc (short for demarcation point).

 

[EQTitan]

I got it all fixed today (i hate following up on someone else crappy wiring job) I tore down the entire telephony wiring inside the D-mark and rewired it all and everything is running beautifully.

I blame myself for expecting someone else work to be done correctly, goods news the person that hired us, already has 2 more jobs lined up for my company.

Thanks everyone.