How To: Set-Up VoIP Throughout Your Home
Alright Congratulations, You’ve made the switch to the most modern and cost-effective telephone solution of the century. Now that you’ve successfully signed up and received your startup kit box in the mail, what next?
How do you install and hookup your new VoIP line? Well it doesn’t take a telephone service engineer or a computer nerd to install the new VoIP modem and get you up and running. You can easily do this job yourself in under 30 minutes depending on where your phones are going to be. The majority of consumers can do this job themselves. While there is always professional installation available from he telecom company or any local telephone service wiring company. This is really not necessary if you follow the simple step by step instructions that came with your modem start-up kit.
If your keeping all the same phones place as you had before then it’s straightforward, just plug your modem phone jack into one of the existing telephone outlets, and turn the modem on, thats it.
The VoIPlowdown.com says:
Learn The Basics
The biggest obstacle that you will face when switching from traditional phones to VoIP is changing the telephone wiring inside your home. It may sound daunting but it is actually a pretty easy process made easier if your home was built in the last half-century and easier still if it was built in the last decade or so.
Before you start tearing out your phone jacks, cutting random phone wires and connecting them to other wires it’s important to know what you are doing. You probably don’t know anything about wiring a telephone system but don’t worry, because you don’t by any means need to be an electrician or an expert to figure out how to make these small adjustments.
Modern Homes: Telephone service is provided over a pair of wires. You’d be hard-pressed to find a home built in the last 50 years that doesn’t have at least two pairs of wires for the telephone lines. However, this does not mean that the wiring is suitable for two phone lines.
Each phone line is connected to a pair of wires usually consisting of a solid colored wire twisted together with a white wire. The white wire will probably have a stripe running its length that will coincide with the solid color wire that it is paired with. The standard is to use the blue wire twisted with the white wire (with a blue stripe) as the primary pair or “Line 1.” Any further lines will generally be set up with “Line 2” on the orange pair, “Line 3” on the green pair, “Line 4” on the brown pair and “Line 5” (if that’s a possibility) on the gray pair. Newer homes will likely have either Cat (short for category) 5 or Cat 3 wire. Cat 5, which is the most common, contains four pairs of wires while Cat 3 can hold different amounts of pairs (usually between three and six). The outer jacket of the wiring can come in a range of colors but blue is popular for Cat 5.
Older Homes: If your home has been around for a decade or longer you may find a completely different setup. “Quad” wiring contains four wires colored red, green, yellow and black. The red and green wires generally make up the primary phone line and sometimes the yellow and black will be utilized as “Line 2.” However, the use of “quad” wiring for more than one line can cause “crosstalk” between the two lines because the wire pairs are not twisted together. For this same reason, “quad” wiring is also more prone to pick up radio frequency interference from nearby transmitters. If you find “quad” wiring in your home you will want to seriously consider replacing it with Cat 5 wiring. This is when you might want to consult a professional.
Really Old Homes: If your home was built more than 50 years ago then you might find two or three wires twisted together with the same dark-color insulation and no outer jacket. If the wires are still working, the insulation is in good shape and you just don’t want to deal with replacing it all, then you can probably leave them alone for now and use what you have. But, if the wires are insulated with rubber, you will need to replace them because the insulation is likely to crack and crumble with any disturbance. Once again, if you need to rewire the house, seek professional assistance.
Various Wires: Any non-standard wire (doorbell wire, lamp cord, speaker cable, antenna wire, stranded wire, etc…) that is being used as telephone wiring needs to be replaced with Cat 5 wiring. Telephone wire should be solid copper. Say it with me now – if you don’t know how to rewire your home, seek professional help.
Connectors: You will likely not need to splice any wires together but if you need to for any reason, don’t use wire nuts. They do not make a secure connection and will allow moisture into the splice corroding the copper. Only approved communication connectors should be used for connecting wires. Gel-filled, moisture-resistant connectors are available and vital if the wires will be outdoors or exposed to excessive moisture. Make sure to clip off any bare copper ends when using these connectors so that all of the wires are completely insulated.
For more in depth information check out How To Distribute VoIP Throughout A Home.
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