FTTH, phone and wires etc

legend99

Hi,
Now that I've calmed down after my lack of a Sky router was solved I was wondering if anyone could advise how to make a FTTH connection a bit neater. I have the standard ONT inside the front door. And the Sky hub connected to that. There are 2 cables coming into the house. One is obviously the fibre - is the other a CAT6 type copper? Both are going into that white eir box although I assume the fibre one is just physically passing through it? There are then 3 cat 5/cat 6 cables connected into that white eir box as well. When I opened it tonight the front has like a typical phone connection on the front plate which is going into the box when you push the front plate on. I noticed that when I pulled off that front the alarm started beeping straight away.

So I was wondering what's going on there? That is, I assume, a live telephone wire? I was hoping to hijack one of the cat5/6 wires and crimp on a rj45 and plug that into the ont and find where it is going so that I could use the other end of that wire to plug into the sky hub elsewhere in the house. Is that feasible at all or will it just be a nightmare to figure out what is going on?
Thanks!

legend99

legend99 wrote: »

Hi,
Now that I've calmed down after my lack of a Sky router was solved I was wondering if anyone could advise how to make a FTTH connection a bit neater. I have the standard ONT inside the front door. And the Sky hub connected to that. There are 2 cables coming into the house. One is obviously the fibre - is the other a CAT6 type copper? Both are going into that white eir box although I assume the fibre one is just physically passing through it? There are then 3 cat 5/cat 6 cables connected into that white eir box as well. When I opened it tonight the front has like a typical phone connection on the front plate which is going into the box when you push the front plate on. I noticed that when I pulled off that front the alarm started beeping straight away.

So I was wondering what's going on there? That is, I assume, a live telephone wire? I was hoping to hijack one of the cat5/6 wires and crimp on a rj45 and plug that into the ont and find where it is going so that I could use the other end of that wire to plug into the sky hub elsewhere in the house. Is that feasible at all or will it just be a nightmare to figure out what is going on?
Thanks!

Sorry. I should have attached some pics. That's the ONT. That white eir box underneath. Then the 3 cat 5/6 (don't know how you figure out which cable you actually have) and finally a look beyond one of the phone plates, of which there are a few in the house. Interesting I guess that this one is in series. Also a white cable running out of the box but not sure what that one is!

legend99

legend99 wrote: »

Sorry. I should have attached some pics. That's the ONT. That white eir box underneath. Then the 3 cat 5/6 (don't know how you figure out which cable you actually have) and finally a look beyond one of the phone plates, of which there are a few in the house. Interesting I guess that this one is in series. Also a white cable running out of the box but not sure what that one is!

Posting pics is not going well! Sorry!

AutoTuning

The FTTH has nothing to do with the phone line. The wiring may just be passing though the duct into the back of the socket.

Is your alarm being monitored over the phone port on the Eir router/gateway?

If so, that’s more a very reliable way of doing it as the alarm might not be able to communicate over VoIP audio as those old analogue modems are designed for the specs of an old PSTN line from a telephone exchange and more significantly it could be unplugged.

Is there still a dial tone on the phone wall socket?
Can you make a call on it? It’s possibly been disconnected, leaving a “soft dial tone.” If you try to make a call the exchange won’t let you. You’ll get an announcement asking you to call Eir or your choice of carrier (or it might just play an error tone.)

Your alarm panel typically just checks there’s a voltage across the phone line and will see it being physically disconnected as a line having been cut or tampered with. A voltage or dial tone on the line doesn’t mean it actually works.

Normally your voice phone service, when you change to FTTH, is moved to VoIP unless you specifically asked to keep an old PSTN service. Your phone service would be provided by a VoIP module in the Sky router, not though an Eir exchange.

If the phone line isn’t working, your alarm isn’t monitored and you should discuss it with your alarm installer. They would likely move you to mobile monitoring, or even IP monitoring.

The connection is just Fibre — ONT —(Ethernet cable) —- ISP Gateway (Sky router).

In terms of tidying up the wiring, you can get nice looking router hiding box. Plenty of them online if you look around.

legend99

So, I've never actually connected a phone which means I can't answer a number of your questions! I was paying on the eir bundle for free calls etc (how foolish am I that I had zero minutes used in 2 years with eir) but I guess I just always used the mobile.

Re the alarm. Its not monitored and as the FTTH was only installed under my watch, and no wires were changed for it, then there must be some voltage on the standard PSTN line as the alarm only beeps when I remove the panel on that standard eircom box. Interestingly when KN did the install the installer was okay with using the old copper to pull in the fibre - but he said he had to bring in a replacement copper wire as well as he was worried about both staying on when he pulled the original in. So something must be live on that if it keeps the alarm happy?

And fundamentally I'd like to move the router away from there as it's the back of the front door. Hence wondering if I could chance using one of the cat 5/6 cables and convert them to an ethernet run?

Tks

ED E

Yep, bring CAT5e/6 from the ONT to wherever you would like the router.

Tack/trunk it down properly so it won't get pulled on/rubbed over time.

AutoTuning

Main thing with Ethernet cable is don’t kink or over squeeze it with tacks and definitely don’t staple it.

If you get some attractive looking, thin conduit, which is often self adhesive, you can make it seem part of a skirting or moulding and it will just be invisible.

legend99

Sorry. So I was hoping to use one of the existing cables. There are 3 going into the existing eircom box right underneath the ONT. So I was hoping to figure out which one goes to the phone point which is on the other side of the hall and move the router there as there is a hall table there etc. That should work I assume? With the price being losing the connection from the eircom box to that phone box? Hence my question about whether, if I had a phone, does it connect to the router or the standard box etc? As clearly there must be voltage on the old pstn line as the alarm which is connected to it isn't beeping?

AutoTuning

The Eir phone socket is just a test socket / demarcation point. Your house internal wiring for any extension sockets is connected to L1 and L2 on the back of the “faceplate”.

The incoming phone line comes in on the back plate, which has a socket on the front. When the faceplate is pushed into place, it has a phone plug on the back which inserts into that socket, connecting your extension wiring.

When you remove the faceplate, that disconnects your internal wiring and the socket just has the raw incoming Eir line. That’s used to test the line without any internal wiring connected.

The faceplate will have a DSL filter built in if you used to have VDSL broadband. That filter also filters your internal wiring, removing the DSL signals.

It also has connections that are used for hardwiring monitored alarms.

If you’ve a phone now, it would be connected to the ISP’s (in your case sky) router, which provides a VoIP based phone service.

Your landline may eventually be removed from the power at the exchange, assuming you didn’t keep it active.

legend99

AutoTuning wrote: »

The Eir phone socket is just a test socket / demarcation point. Your house internal wiring for any extension sockets is connected to L1 and L2 on the back of the “faceplate”.

The incoming phone line comes in on the back plate, which has a socket on the front. When the faceplate is pushed into place, it has a phone plug on the back which inserts into that socket, connecting your extension wiring.

When you remove the faceplate, that disconnects your internal wiring and the socket just has the raw incoming Eir line. That’s used to test the line without any internal wiring connected.

The faceplate will have a DSL filter built in if you used to have VDSL broadband. That filter also filters your internal wiring, removing the DSL signals.

It also has connections that are used for hardwiring monitored alarms.

If you’ve a phone now, it would be connected to the ISP’s (in your case sky) router, which provides a VoIP based phone service.

Your landline may eventually be removed from the power at the exchange, assuming you didn’t keep it active.

Hmmm. Thanks for that. If the phone line was ever killed so the alarm wouldn't like that? Although I also wonder why KN made a point of saying they had to not just pull in a fibre wire using the old wire - but that they had to pull in a phone wire as well? Or maybe it was to cover up that they used the wire to do the pull?

Either way, short of connesting a battery to one end of the three cat5 cables and a torch bulb at the other end, I assume there's no easy way of knowing where each of the wires are going? It doesn't look like the sparks put any marks on the wires - assume they wouldn't as it's not like electrical wiring where they have to know what to connect to what fuse etc?

legend99

legend99 wrote: »

Hmmm. Thanks for that. If the phone line was ever killed so the alarm wouldn't like that? Although I also wonder why KN made a point of saying they had to not just pull in a fibre wire using the old wire - but that they had to pull in a phone wire as well? Or maybe it was to cover up that they used the wire to do the pull?

Either way, short of connesting a battery to one end of the three cat5 cables and a torch bulb at the other end, I assume there's no easy way of knowing where each of the wires are going? It doesn't look like the sparks put any marks on the wires - assume they wouldn't as it's not like electrical wiring where they have to know what to connect to what fuse etc?

So as you described. Clearly there are 4 wires, yellow, red, black and blue going to the alarm. Two of the cat5 cables are connected to the front panel as you described. The third cat5 cable is crimped onto the RJ11 connector so difficult to know what was going on there? Assume it was used to plug in the wire there at the plate area for some reason to run somewhere else. I'll have to look around the house again to see how many other plates there are to try to hazard a guess as to what might be running where. Either way, I think crimping the right cat5 cable and plugging it into the ONT yo use as an ethernet wire might be the way to go, and move the router then

AutoTuning

legend99 wrote: »

Hmmm. Thanks for that. If the phone line was ever killed so the alarm wouldn't like that? Although I also wonder why KN made a point of saying they had to not just pull in a fibre wire using the old wire - but that they had to pull in a phone wire as well? Or maybe it was to cover up that they used the wire to do the pull?

Either way, short of connesting a battery to one end of the three cat5 cables and a torch bulb at the other end, I assume there's no easy way of knowing where each of the wires are going? It doesn't look like the sparks put any marks on the wires - assume they wouldn't as it's not like electrical wiring where they have to know what to connect to what fuse etc?

As far as I’m aware, Eir isn’t removing existing “copper paths” just yet. Most of these companies are fairly conservative and the regulator is too. If the copper path was there, the contractor wasn’t contracted to remove it. They will eventually just let the copper network wither and shrink away, rather than something more dramatic like removing it.

Your alarm will probably start to complain in a few months when OpenEir ultimately disconnects your copper line. They typically leave lines live for a long time - connected to a line card in the exchange, so they can be activated in software rather than having to wire anything up.

But there’s some eventual stage where they physically disconnect them.

AutoTuning

legend99 wrote: »

So as you described. Clearly there are 4 wires, yellow, red, black and blue going to the alarm. Two of the cat5 cables are connected to the front panel as you described. The third cat5 cable is crimped onto the RJ11 connector so difficult to know what was going on there? Assume it was used to plug in the wire there at the plate area for some reason to run somewhere else. I'll have to look around the house again to see how many other plates there are to try to hazard a guess as to what might be running where. Either way, I think crimping the right cat5 cable and plugging it into the ONT yo use as an ethernet wire might be the way to go, and move the router then

Your alarm wiring basically has two pairs. One is carrying the phone line in, the other back out again. The modem in the alarm can cut off the outgoing side, so it can seize the line and always dial out.

Wiring is like this;

(Incoming line connected to L1 & L2 on the back plate) <=====> (filter in front plate. Data socket for VDSL modem gets unfiltered raw line. All voice connections are filtered.) <====> (passed through Alarm panel’s internal modem which can cut off all voice phone sockets when in use) <====> (voice phone socket on front plate and L1 / L2 lugs where your extensions are wired).

Your alarm wiring isn’t CATx at all. It’s old US phone wiring colours. So that cable isn’t usable for data.

Check that the cable for the phones is actually CAT5. It should be printed on the external insulation.

The Cush

This might be of assistance to the OP

AutoTuning

The Cush wrote: »

This might be of assistance to the OP

Basically exactly like that except with a DSL filter if you had VDSL at one stage.

The terminals:

L1 & L2 = main phone line
S1 & S2 = second line (not installed in your case)
R = ringer. That’s not used at all unless you’re using ancient telephones with dials.

There are two little resistors which are snipped if you’re connecting an alarm to allow that pass through.

Some of those plates also had connection terminals for using ISDN terminal adaptors as a source of a phone line. So you could have a few more.

Only 2 wires are used for phone lines and extensions and the Eir exchanges and DSL equipment is designed not to be bothered by polarity, so the wiring is extremely simple. Most of it is just tons of wasted spare pairs and use looks far more complicated than it actually is.

If your alarm needs the line voltage, just connect the phone line straight to the two in wires feeding it (I think they’re marked on the back plate). It’s possible the red and green, but it could be anything. Just connect them to the blue and white pair on the back plate. I would just use the two terminals on the back plate itself to make the connection. The polarity shouldn’t matter. However, I would suggest you get an alarm installer to sort it out on the panel as it will keep beeping once the power is cut.

Also there’s some joined wires there that I can’t figure out. Using those little ScotchLok connectors. Possibly to do with your alarm wiring?

Assuming you definitely no longer have a classic landline, the only thing that can really go wrong is you’ll end up with is an incessantly beeping alarm.

NB: make absolutely certain the incoming landline isn’t connected to any of the wiring you’re intending to reuse. Irish landlines can present up to 48V DC and 75V AC when ringing and you don’t want either accidentally fed into an Ethernet port!

legend99

AutoTuning wrote: »

Basically exactly like that except with a DSL filter if you had VDSL at one stage.

The terminals:

L1 & L2 = main phone line
S1 & S2 = second line (not installed in your case)
R = ringer. That’s not used at all unless you’re using ancient telephones with dials.

There are two little resistors which are snipped if you’re connecting an alarm to allow that pass through.

Some of those plates also had connection terminals for using ISDN terminal adaptors as a source of a phone line. So you could have a few more.

Only 2 wires are used for phone lines and extensions and the Eir exchanges and DSL equipment is designed not to be bothered by polarity, so the wiring is extremely simple. Most of it is just tons of wasted spare pairs and use looks far more complicated than it actually is.

If your alarm needs the line voltage, just connect the phone line straight to the two in wires feeding it (I think they’re marked on the back plate). It’s possible the red and green, but it could be anything. Just connect them to the blue and white pair on the back plate. I would just use the two terminals on the back plate itself to make the connection. The polarity shouldn’t matter. However, I would suggest you get an alarm installer to sort it out on the panel as it will keep beeping once the power is cut.

Also there’s some joined wires there that I can’t figure out. Using those little ScotchLok connectors. Possibly to do with your alarm wiring?

Assuming you definitely no longer have a classic landline, the only thing that can really go wrong is you’ll end up with is an incessantly beeping alarm.

NB: make absolutely certain the incoming landline isn’t connected to any of the wiring you’re intending to reuse. Irish landlines can present up to 48V DC and 75V AC when ringing and you don’t want either accidentally fed into an Ethernet port!

Thanks. My instinct is that the little ScotchLoks were used for the equivalent of what I want to do. I.e. they are joined to an RJ11 plug which is only 4 inches long. I bet you that was plugged into the Adsl port on the eircom box. And that then brought the broadband signal up to a faceplate in what the precious people used as the home office. So they used the cat5e, which was wired in, to join the modem upstairs to the adsl port. However I think for adsl you only needed rj11 wiring. So in my case, i want to use one of the other 2 cat5e wires to bring the ethernet output from the ONT to a different faceplate. Then switch that faceplate for an RJ45 one, and out the modem there. Like I said, I assume an easy way to check which of the 2 wires is going to that faceplate is to put a battery at one end and a bulb at the other?
Now where the problem is going to arise longer term, is, assuming there is a live phone that would plug into the router connection, how I manage the alarm if either the old pstn voltage is cutoff or i want to go back to monitored? Do alarms change if you have fibre - how typically do they manage given that?

Edit-so the scotchlok would be nothing to do with alarm if I'm correct. The alarm is wired as the standard 4 wires for the over and back. Would the alarm, by the way, just check for voltage as opposed to do anything smarter?

AutoTuning

Most alarms get monitored by adding a module with a mobile SIM card, or sometimes by an Ethernet IP connection through your router.

Connecting the alarm modem to a VoIP phone service from the router may or may not work.

Best thing you could do is call an alarm installer.