VoIP Adapter Installation in Four Steps
There are many options left up to you when you decide to take advantage of VoIP phone service. One of the first decisions you have to make is whether to keep your analog line or completely switch over to VoIP. This decision may affect what VoIP adapter you’ll need to obtain and where the VoIP adapter will be installed.
Most people have several telephone jacks throughout the house. Even if you decide to convert your entire home to VoIP exclusively, if you follow this method, you’ll only need one VoIP adapter to convert every phone jack to VoIP.
Though there may be several phone jacks throughout your home they are all typically spliced from the same incoming line. The VoIP adapter will be installed where you’re primary phone line enters the house and is split to your individual phone jacks. This will ensure that every available telephone jack in your house will be converted to VoIP with only one VoIP adapter. Your first step is to locate the incoming main phone line. The main line is usually almost hidden. If you don’t know where it’s located the garage, main closet, or even a pantry would be a good place to start looking. (Most single family homes have it located in the garage). If you can see the main phone line coming into your home from the telephone pole you can just follow the line until you see where it splits off.
After you main line is located and you follow it to where it splits of to the individual jacks there’s usually either a junction box or spliced wires leading throughout the house. This location is usually the best location to install your VoIP adapter. Step two would be to disconnect the main line from the junction box or cut it from the other phone lines it’s spliced to. The main line itself will no longer be used so you can tape it off to keep it out of the way. If you have a junction box just plug a telephone line into the junction box and leave the other end available to be plugged into the VoIP adapter. If there is no existing junction box you can simply cut the end off of one side of a phone cord and splice the wires to the where you removed the original main phone line from. Typically there will either be a red and green wire or a yellow and brown wire, or even all four. Simply twist the matching wires together and tape them up. (Just to clarify, there should now be only one lose phone wire connection/plug (an RJ11 connection) that will be plugged into the VoIP adapter. This line will be connected to the junction box or spliced into the lines that are split out into the other rooms)
Now that your phone lines are ready you can connect the VoIP adapter. Your VoIP adapter will have a minimum of two ports. One port is for the outgoing Ethernet cable that will go to your modem our router, the other is for the incoming phone line that you just attached to your phone system. Both ports look almost the same but the Ethernet port is larger. Step 3 is to simply plug the phone line that you just hooked up to the corresponding port on the VoIP adapter. Now that the connection is made from the VoIP adapter to your main phone line this now connects every phone jack in your house to your VoIP adapter.
Now that your VoIP adapter is connected to you entire phone system the fourth and final step is to just connect the Ethernet cable from your router or modem directly into the Ethernet port on the VoIP adapter. This will now connect every phone and available phone jack that was previously connected to your main phone line to the VoIP adapter.
In four steps you’ve managed to convert your old analog home phone network into a digital phone system. Installing the VoIP adapter itself is easier than it may sound. In fact installing a VoIP adapter will probably take less time than reading this article but as the popularity of VoIP grows knowing how to upgrade an analog phone system is valuable knowledge.