Voip Blog
Distributing VoIP Throughout Your Home, Part 1
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
If you have service from voip.com or one of the many other, similar service providers, chances are, you've thought about making it so all the analog telephones in your household can take advantage of the service. It certainly is possible to do, but it requires knowing a bit about the wiring in your house.
In most homes, all phone jacks appear to be hooked together. That allows you to pick up the phone in any room in your house and have it work properly, or put an answering machine, etc. The theory goes, you should be able to plug in your analog telephone adapter provided by a Voice over IP service and it should work, right? Before you do that, read on!
The first thing you need to know is where your Network Interface Device (NID) is. Now this sounds like a computer-related thing, but it's not. It's where your home interfaces with the public telephone network. Other names for this are the demarcation point, minimum point of entry, or simply demarc.
In most recently-built single family homes, the demarc is a little grey box attached to the side of your home. It is relatively easy to get into this box with either a flathead or phillips-head screwdriver, depending on who made it. In older single-family dwellings, it might be a fist-sized box that contains several bolts with wires screwed in.
In multi-family dwellings (e.g. apartments), it may be somewhere not easily accessible. The building owner has to provide an easement to the telephone company to allow access these connection points. If it's not obvious from walking around the building, you'll have to check with the building owner to find out where it is.
Have you located your demarc? Great. That's the first step. In the next article, I'll tell you what you need to do at your demarc.
