[Asterisk-Users] asterisk home wiring question

[Wiley Siler]

Just for grins....  A few thoughts.

Run Cat5 exclusively and just pull pairs for phone.  Cheaper and better
solution that CAT3 and CAT5 mixed together. 
It allows you to change the end points at will.  Who knows if you may
want to change over to RJ45 ports and go total IP at some point.
You would not be able to do that with CAT3.  You would need some CAT5
and have to redo the pulls.
You also get enough pairs on CAT5 to put two phone jacks per strand
instead of just one.  
Even if you ignore the rest of my email, I would consider this
seriously.

For ideas on how to wire the house, look at the Vonage website for a
graph on how Vonage suggests to wire the Vonage ATA into the house.  I
know you do not have a Vonage adapter but the same essentual
configuration for wiring should apply to your situation.  Essentually,
you disconnect the house form the PSTN then connect your * machines FXS
to any wall jack to provide tone.   This should distribute tone to all
the jacks.  Limit is around 5 analog phones if memory serves.

If your intention is to provide tone to the house with switching between
Asterisk with VoiP service (SIP or IAX from some ITSP) and a standard
PSTN line from the local telco, then you would do as described above.
Isolate your internal phone system, then pull a new jack from the PSTN
to the room where your * sits.  Plug the FXO card in your * into the new
isolated phone jack and * now has a POTS line to work with.

Voilla.  Some good dial plan management and you have an internal PBX
system that has VoIP service over your internet connection and a
connection to a POTS line.  Your internal phones will be isolated
correctly so you don't get contention issues with the external analog
link.  

However, one final question.  If you are rewiring the whole house and
pulling CAT5 (right?), why not just provision each wall plates with 2
RJ45 network ports and pull two strands of CAT5 per location.  Then you
can buy a good Gigabit switch for around $300 and setup your whole house
on Gigabit.  Throw some cheap (or expensive) SIP phones on the network
and you have a really nice internal phone system.  Want to use your old
phones?  Get ATAs or IAXy devices.  That being said, I know that is a
more expensive way to go but it really does offer you a long term
solution with many benefits. 

Just some thoughts!!

Cheers,
Wiley




-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Dylan
VanHerpen
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 9:21 AM
To: snacktime; Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] asterisk home wiring question

Chris,

If you are looking to run your second line through *, you will need to
run the line from the demarc to an FXO port on your Asterisk machine,
and then run a line from an FXS card to the jack location where you will
be using an analog phone.

You cannot connect an incoming line from your telco to an FXS port.

Dylan.

On 4/20/05, snacktime <snacktime at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was thinking about the best way to hook up the second line in my 
> house to an * fxs port.  Would I just wire the fxs to the incoming 
> side of a line at my demarc?

By 2nd line you mean a phone line from your telco, or an unused pair of
wire?

> Or should I splice it in after that?
If you splice the FXS port into an existing phone line, you will be
putting 2 dialtones on the line (one from *, one from your telco). The
end result will be no dialtone at all ;)

> 
> I need to rewire the whole house anyways.  What I had imagined was new
> cat3 for the phones, and then running a cat5 also while I'm at it for 
> housewide internet access.
> 
> Now my computer room where the internet switch and my * box are 
> located is at the opposite end of the house from the demarc.  That is 
> where the fxs port would be.  The house has a huge crawl space so 
> running the wire will be easy.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Chris
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