Another wall jack question

[MJINNY]

I know there have been many questions here regarding plugging an Obi device directly into a wall jack to power all phone jacks in a home.  Normally I wouldn't even bother with this...just plug a cordless base directly into the Obi and use the other headsets throughout the house as many others have suggested.  However, I work from home and have been thinking of getting a full featured corded office phone for use in my home office (which is equipped with a wall jack). 

About 5 months ago, I decided to give this a try...except I looked everywhere in and around my house for the telco demarcation point but I could not find it.  The home was built in 2005-2006 and is the type that has the electrical service underground...from the pole to the house running under the front lawn.  The only overhead cable from the pole is for cable internet/tv service.  I spoke to the individual I bought the home from (he operates a business in town) and HE did not remember where the demarc point was!  He told me that he had home phone service through the internet/cable company but the phone service was plugged into the cable modem.  I rolled the dice and gave it a try...and it worked (Obi did not fry).  I've been using it for 5 months when all of a sudden Obi could not connect to my VOIP service.  I would try to get it to connect and then it would say "configuring" and would not connect...finally saying "not connected".  The next day it reconnected but one for two days only...same problem came up again.  I bought another Obi 100, reconnected the same way as the old one and it worked.  But now I'm worried...do you think I "fried" my old one?  When an Obi gets "fried" in this way, does it happen instantly or can it happen over the course of a few months?  Was my old one's inability to connect to my VOIP provider related to get getting "fired" from power in the phone line?  When the Obi is not connected to the wall jack there is no dial tone and there is no demarc box that I can possibly find.  My new Obi 100 is plugged into the wall and the phones all work fine and the Obi works fine but I'll revert to the other method if this will slowly fry my phone.  Any insight would be helpful.  Thanks!

[dircom]

Usually here is a box on the outside of your house were the CATV wire is connected and grounded
are there any phone or ethernet wires going to it?

You don't have a wiring cabinet in your house?  perhaps in a closet or garage?

how many jacks do you have in your house?   open a few up, if there is only one cable to each jack, then you have star connection, in which case all the wires end up at one spot

[MJINNY]

Thanks dircom.  The CATV comes into the house through a hole.  I comes right from the top of the pole, goes overhead across the font lawn to a wire tensioner bolted to the house, then down the side of the house and into a hole.  No box.  I do indeed have a wiring cabinet installed in my house (on the other side of where the CATV and underground electric service comes in - inside a service closet) but there does not seem to be any telco demarc point.  The only thing strange is a rectangular adapter on the outside of the service box attached to the side of the wiring cabinet (pic attached).  I have no idea what this is and whether or not it has anything to do with the telephone wiring.

I have about 8 jacks in the home.

[Mango]

I would be surprised if a hardware problem caused intermittent registration failures, but anything is possible.  Other causes of these symptoms include your router.  Of course if your new OBi has identical configuration and it works properly, that does indeed point to a hardware problem.

Your wiring cabinet is more than likely where the POTS line, if it exists, connects to your household wiring.  If a POTS line is present, it may be safely disconnected there.  This may have already been done, since the former owner had VoIP via the cable company.

I believe the device in your photo is a transformer for your doorbell.

[MJINNY]

Ha Ha!  The doorbell...of course!  I didn't even consider that.  That mystery is now solved.  Hmm...  Well I have the Obi 100 plugged into the wall and it seems to work fine...made a call today as a matter of fact.  I wonder if it was because my old Obi 100 was a pre- May 1, 2014 model?  I'll take another look in the wiring cabinet but it I don't think I'll find that telco box.  I looked at where the underground electric comes in and it does not appear that there is any other type of connection besides electric service.  Similarly, where the CATV comes in through the hole it appears to be just CATV.  I don't see any POTS wires even connecting to the house.  I must have the weirdest setup in the industrialized world.

[dircom]

It could have been that the original owners never had a Telco landline, thus only the CATV wire
however, per code, it has to be grounded, ie, you can't just run a wire from the pole to a jack
Sometimes on old CATV installations, it was just a grounding connector on the outside of the house.
If vinyl siding was installed after the CATV wire was installed then, the ground could be under the siding

   If you have a basement, look in there.
I have seen Telco interfaces in attics, but those were on old houses.

[MJINNY]

Thanks Dircom.  I'm beginning to think that they never had a telco demarc box installed.  If this is the case then I should have no trouble plugging that obi right into the wall jack.  I don't think it's in the attic as there are no wires going to the attic.  What I think they did is pretty much what I did...except they plugged the wire from the phone port on cable modem into the wall jack (as opposed to an Obi). The CATV system is indeed grounded.  I'm probably the only house on the street with no demarc box.

[MurrayB]

Make sure that there is no voltage present on line 1 (the center two wires) and no voltage present on line 2 which is the outer two wires. Then you can be fairly certain that you are not connected. I say fairly certain because if there is truly a connection to the Telco they could light it up at any time.

Good Luck!

[sailing]

I just read through this thread and will add my opinion. In 2005-6, when your house was built, cable companies were in full competition with the phone company. Since the original owner never had a POTS line, there was no reason for the phone company to string a line to the house. If a POTS line was run to the house underground, you would find a box in the basement. Since you could not find one, it probably isn't there.

If the Obi was back fed because the phone lines were connected to a POTS line, chance are the line output would be blown but the Obi would still register and you could still access it with a browser. I would say the first one was faulty. (Hopefully you did a factory reset and reconfigured it before assuming it was broke.)

[MJINNY]

Thanks sailing, MurrayB and all others!  I don't have a proper voltmeter unfortunately to be able to test the phone line.  As you mentioned, I was still able to access the Obi with a browser, I attempted to reset and reconfigure many times, but it just would not connect to the VOIP provider...it would say "configuring" for about 10 minutes, then stop and would simply say "not connected".  I gave up on it for the day but by the next morning however it was reconnected!  I thought the problem was solved.  This lasted for about two days and then it disconnected again on Monday and I had the same issue as the first time. By that time, my new Obi 100 arrived.  It was only about $40 so no big deal.  I simply replaced the old one with the new one...same connection and everything and it's worked fine since Monday.  I guess I can keep the old one as a spare.  Maybe I'll unplug it from the wall just to be on the safe side?  I don't think I'll call the phone company just to come to my house to confirm there is no demarc.  However, having all the interior jacks lit up is nice...you can purchase a full featured corded office phone and just plug it into the wall.  It's not worth if the device gets back fed though.

If an Obi is plugged into a jack that is powered however, is the damage immediate or does it happen slowly over a period of time (assuming there is no sudden turn on, i.e. the power is on continuously)?  I did have my old one plugged into the wall for months with no issues.  I don't think the line output was blown however because I still got a dial tone.  It was when I tried to dial out that I got the recorded message "no service is available". 

[dircom]

If someone installed a wiring cabinet, normal practice is to run a wire from the cabinet to the outside of your house, perhaps near the electric meter.  (It would not have to be connected to anything, but most people who put in a wiring cabinet would run a wire to the outside of the house for future use)

count the number of wires in the wiring cabinet, and compare that to the number of jacks in the house (assuming the wiring all "home runs" i.e. from the jack directly to the wiring cabinet

[MJINNY]

I should clarify that by "wiring cabinet" I mean the cabinet that has the circuit breakers in it.  There does not seem to be any box or anything in the wiring closet that phone jack wires go into.  The only box there is the circuit breaker box.

[dircom]

An electrical panel, while containing wires, is not commonly referred to as a wiring cabinet
I would look for a wire going outside
If you are going to live there for a while, it won't hurt to open up a few jacks, and see how many wires are in each box.
If only one, then you have a connection point somewhere in/under/around your house

[sailing]

Obi uses specialized integrated circuits. I am guessing but I would expect the Obi to tolerate a backfeed. I would also expect under a backfeed situation, the Obi line out wouldn't work correctly. You would have noise while talking or no voice at all. This situation would not affect the ability of the Obi to register. If the new one is working ok, then something went wrong with the first. (If its still under warrantee, you should get a replacement.)

Another thought is the connection to the router is faulty. If the signal between the obi and router is attenuated, you could get what you describe. It could also be, that the router resets the IP address of the Obi and the Obi looses registration for awhile. How far from the router is the Obi? You could fix the IP of the Obi but make sure it is outside of the DHCP range of the router. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't try it.) Since I cannot see what your setup is, I'm grasping at straws here.

[MJINNY]

Thanks dircom...I will do that sometime, perhaps this weekend.  In light of your explanation of an electrical panel vs. a wiring cabinet, I do not seem to have a wiring cabinet.  There are three connections that go outside...1) the electric service that runs underneath the lawn into the electric panel, the incoming CATV wire, and an outside electrical conduit that services the outside electrical outlets.  Thanks for your insight however...I'll take a look inside those jacks.

Sailing...thanks again!  My call quality is and always has been excellent when making a call...the calls are crystal clear, no noise at all.  There should be no issues with the router-Obi connection as they are right next to each other and I am using the obi supplied cable.  The IP address issue may be a factor...maybe I should assign it a static IP. 

It does not appear (as is the case with others on this forum) that I have an immediate issue...everything is working fine as of now.  That being said I don't want to take up everyone's time.  I just wanted to see what the issue may have been with my old one.  I might actually see if a neighbor has one of these voltmeters and then I can know for sure.  It could have actually been an issue with my VIOP provider (GV-yes it's still working).  I looked on GV's website and didn't see any information about any outages...plus I was still able to use GV with my laptop perfectly fine.  Who knows?  A mystery! 

[SteveInWA]

It sounds to me as if the whole "is the wall jack safe" discussion is a red herring.  Land line telephone service that might have been connected to your house's telephone wiring would have come from one of the following sources:

• Traditional telephone service from a telephone company, carried over copper wires from a pole or underground cable.  This service MUST, by code, terminate in a demarcation block or box outside or in some area near outside, like a garage, etc.  It must be accessable to the customer, and it  is easy to unplug the customer premises wiring from the telco (it's obvious, visually).  You don't have one of these, so POTS service was never run to your house...the house wiring is safe.  Or,
• Some form of digital phone service.  It can be a VoIP adapter built into a Cable TV company demarc box, which would have telephone wire running out if it, into your house wiring, or you'd have a combination cable TV/internet/telephone modem/router/VoIP adapter in your house, with a RJ-11 telephone jack and a cord plugged into it.  You don't have one of these, so your wiring is safe.
• Some third-party VoIP service (Vonage, other "locked down" provider, or an OBi or other brand of BYOD Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA)).
• Fiber optic broadband service (Fiber to the premise), such as Verizon FiOS.  You don't have that.

Note that telephone wire is never (legally) run in the same conduit as electric power.  A building inspector's head would explode if he saw that.  Your issue was either a random hardware failure,  or, if the old box can actually be revived, some unreleated issue with your OBi  configuration, or a firmware update.

[MJINNY]

Thanks Steve, I think you are completely right.  I took a second look and there's just nothing there that looks remotely like a demarc box.  Firmware may certainly have been an issue (don't think I ever updated it).  New one is still working fine...we'll see.  Thanks everyone for your assistance!

Here are some pics so people don't think I'm crazy.  Notice that on the outside, there's only a meter (sealed), conduit to external outlets, and the incoming CATV.  On the inside...it's the circuit breakers and that's about it.

[MJINNY]

Guess what?  Same issue is happening again.  It just started within the past hour.  My Obi lost connection with the Google Voice server.  I went into the configuration page and all I get now is the status of "configuring" with the circle spinning around and around.  The problem is it never actually configures...it keeps on going until it times out and says OFFLINE.  I 'm using my newer OBI.  This is even more perplexing since Obi officially announced support for Google Voice yesterday.    Hmmm...

[dircom]

FYI, you might call your cable company.  The coax does not appear to be grounded anywhere.  I have never seen CATV installed without a box outside, and grounded.

[MurrayB]

Cable installation does not necessarily use a box but will (should) have a ground block. A ground block is a device where the coaxial cable cable drop is broken via connectors, the feed to the block and the block to the house, and a wire is run from the block to a ground. Typically a connection to a convenient ground is typically on the electric meter.