View Full Version : Why did Verizon use the brown/white twisted pair for my DSL connection?
rideabike4
Dec 7, 2010, 07:58 AM
I bought 100 ft of cheap, but effective, Cat 3 cable. It has 3 pairs - blue/white, orange/white, and green/white. The purpose is to upgrade the 1952 phone wires as well as move and add jacks. I have run the new wire to new locations for the jacks. But I need some help about how to make connections.
The tech at Verizon used the blue/white pair for the phone line to service the house. I understand this is the norm. Then he used the brown/white pair from the Cat5e cable to run a line directly for the dsl modem. Perhaps also the norm. I would like to know if it will work to rewire the DSL line using the Cat5e orange/white or green/white pair in place of the brown/white connection.
Also, how can I find where or if he used a splitter in the NID? (I have never looked inside of one.) Finally, must I run 2 different lines to wire up a dual jack of this kind - Leviton's 6-position, 6-conductor USOC Voice Grade QuickPort Snap-In Connector? Or can I simply jump the dsl wires (from above) from the lower port to the uppper port?
donf
Dec 8, 2010, 08:09 PM
You really need to get a look inside the NID (Demarcation Box)
Usually, Verizon uses the Brown/white white/brown paring for a Digital line that is a step above the DSL modem. If Verizon attached the Brown/White-White/Brown pair to the Blue/white-white/blue pair then it is a DSL line using the same phone number as your main number.
However, if the brown/white-white/brown conductors are going to a separate connection then it is one of their upgraded services. I forget the name of it. If I have time tomorrow, I will go over my notes and see if I can get some more info for you.
rideabike4
Dec 9, 2010, 10:06 AM
Thank you so much for responding. I looked in the demarc box and found a blue/white, white/blue pair as well as the brown/white, white/brown. They come off 2 different (but same in appearance) connections. They are clearly separate conductors. Do you think there is a whole house filter on one of the pairs?
I connected the brown/white, white/brown pair from verizon to the green/white, white/green pair in the cat3 cable I used to replace the quad cable. If I had bought a 4 pair cable, I could have used the same colors, but that's not the case. I terminated the pair on the middle position (pin 3 and pin 4) in the quickport jack. The dsl is now working fine!
Could you maybe answer this question: Will splitting/splicing the brown/white, white/brown pair coming into my house from the demarc box into 4 separate lines going to 4 separate jacks/ports degrade or lessen the strenght/speed of the DSL? What I want is 2 wall plates, each with 2 jacks, in my home office so I can plug in a phone, dsl, and fax machine all on the same brown/white, white/brown pair from the demarc box.
Or maybe you can refer me to a good beginners guide to phone and data wiring/connections. I like to read and learn, but need to know a good source.
traderjoecmh
Jan 19, 2011, 10:06 AM
I have a similar question. We have phone and DSL coming into the NID in the garage. I was having some problems with the service, so the rep asked me to go to open the NID and plug a phone directly into the voice jack and see if I had a dial tone. I opened the NID and saw three phone jacks with a plug in each, and to the right of each jack were the four screw terminals for twisted pairs. I'll number the terminal screws 1 through 4, with 1 being on the far left, and 4 being on the far right.
The 1st/bottom jack was the voice line. The 2nd/middle jack and terminals it were labeled with a red/green ADSL sticker. The 3rd/top jack and set of terminals are unused.
The bottom/voice terminal screws have the blue and blue/white wires connected to them (blue/white on the screw 1, blue on screw 4). The ADSL terminal screws only had one wire attached the them. The solid brown wire is attached to terminal screw 3, but nothing was attached to the screw 2. The brown/white wire isn't connected to anything.
Our phone bill shows that we are paying for 3M/640k DSL service, but when I run a speed test (downloaded from cnet) it shows we are only getting 860k down/330k up. It has been slow for a long time now and I'm not sure what the cause may be.
Does it sound like there is a problem with the wiring? Should there be another wire connected to the #2 DSL terminal screw?
Is this type of signal loss (dropping the download speed from 3M to 860k) normal? Do we need an in-line filter?
I know if I call the phone company again they will say that everything is fine on their end and charge a bunch to come out and look at it, so I would like to do some research on this end first. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!