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Step 3I paid for these jacks, I'm gonna use them
So, we have our phone, and the gateway, which is great.. but my house is wired for landline phones.
Obviously I am not going to pay the ridiculous fees for landline phone service just to use these jacks. I haven't had a landline phone since 1994 when AT&T tried to charge me an extra $1 a month for the privilege of NOT having long distance service (yes they really used to do this).
After that I canceled my landline phone, and sent the then-CEO of AT&T a bill for $50 for NOT giving him an erotic massage (a real bargain! Once I start that massage you'll be wishing you'd paid the $50). He never paid up, so I guess if I ever run into him he's gonna feel these magic fingers.
The good news is, we can use these existing jacks with the Xlink! If you have a relatively new home you'll have a junction box where all your phones tie together on either a jumper block or a splitter with the old spade connectors.
If you have the junction box like I have you can see it's easy-peasy. All you need to do is find which cable is the 'incoming' cable (where the phone company would connect to provide service), and put an input jack on it that you can plug the Xlink into.
You'll notice something about these cables.. they are actually cat5 networking cables. At some point I guess the builders decided pulling cat5 cabling was just as easy as pulling regular phone cabling (and cost nearly the same). The funny part about this is that when I asked if they could pre-wire the house for networking, they gave me a blank stare. When I pointed out that they already used cat5 cabling and RJ45 jacks and that all I would need was a patch panel in another room (the wiring closet in my office), he looked at me the way a dog does when you show him a magic trick. In the end I just had them run the cabling where I said and coil it up in the wall so I could add jacks later.
But, in theory I could use these same phone jacks for networking or VOIP phones, although I'd have to replace this dumb jumper block with a small network switch.
Obviously I am not going to pay the ridiculous fees for landline phone service just to use these jacks. I haven't had a landline phone since 1994 when AT&T tried to charge me an extra $1 a month for the privilege of NOT having long distance service (yes they really used to do this).
After that I canceled my landline phone, and sent the then-CEO of AT&T a bill for $50 for NOT giving him an erotic massage (a real bargain! Once I start that massage you'll be wishing you'd paid the $50). He never paid up, so I guess if I ever run into him he's gonna feel these magic fingers.
The good news is, we can use these existing jacks with the Xlink! If you have a relatively new home you'll have a junction box where all your phones tie together on either a jumper block or a splitter with the old spade connectors.
If you have the junction box like I have you can see it's easy-peasy. All you need to do is find which cable is the 'incoming' cable (where the phone company would connect to provide service), and put an input jack on it that you can plug the Xlink into.
You'll notice something about these cables.. they are actually cat5 networking cables. At some point I guess the builders decided pulling cat5 cabling was just as easy as pulling regular phone cabling (and cost nearly the same). The funny part about this is that when I asked if they could pre-wire the house for networking, they gave me a blank stare. When I pointed out that they already used cat5 cabling and RJ45 jacks and that all I would need was a patch panel in another room (the wiring closet in my office), he looked at me the way a dog does when you show him a magic trick. In the end I just had them run the cabling where I said and coil it up in the wall so I could add jacks later.
But, in theory I could use these same phone jacks for networking or VOIP phones, although I'd have to replace this dumb jumper block with a small network switch.
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