Sysadmin Field Notes

November 7, 2005

So we got a DirectTV DVR (Tivo) today. This is our first DVR.

Upon purchase and on the way home, I promptly forgot all about our phone line situation. We have speakasy voice over IP (VOIP), so we just have one jack out of the terminal adaptor. Motorla's manual for the thing says that you can't/aren't allowed to hook it into your home phone.

So first I thought maybe those wireless phone jacks. But those apparently cost $80. Yuck.

I called my good bud Andy who has both Tivo and Vonage voice over IP. And he has tied the jack back into his home phone, but did add the suggestion of disconnecting the loop from the phone company. Sounds good, I'll give it a shot.

So I get home and pop open my phone box. Wow, surprise, it's actually nicely done. With the surprise that it's fairly complicated. We knew the previous owners had a lot of lines, but wow. There are two split boxes, one with 6 lines and one with 2, and it's not at all obvious what feeds what. Luckily they all have little modular jumpers to connect the house loop into the telco end. I love those. So I disconnect 'em one at a time 'til I find our DSL line. Yay, off the grid.

Figuring I can't possibly be lucky and guess what goes where, I start with my toner (dead battery, run to Radio Shack to get a replacement, they are out, find one at Rite-Aid...you know the drill).

So I plug it into the desired jack upstairs. Of course, that signal's not present in the office. So I find it in the box and mark it. Then I pick one of the 3 office jacks and tone it back to the box. Now I build a crappy jumper wire between the two. Finally, take the phone line out of the DSL modem and into the jack that's now jumped to the other jacks. Viola! Dial tone upstairs. And it even works with the DirecTV modem on the first try. All told, about 45 minutes worth of work (not counting trip to store).

I love my little Ideal ABS line tester. Sort of a poor man's buttset, but with an optional toner attachment. For only about $80-90 you get a toner and something that makes it easy to check line polarity and dial tone. Every time I use it I save tons of time. Highly recommended item.

Before and after pictures of the box. I highlighted my jumper wire in green.

Now we're Tivo'ed up. Man the thing is cool. Should have got one sooner, but now I'm lusting after the 3-4 tuner HD monster for downstairs, but that's just extravagent...right?