DSL service & alarm system

I'm re-routing and adding some phone jacks in the house and found an oddity.

Originally, the line came from the telco side of the demarc box over to my side and was screwed down onto two terminals (red/green). The two cables that feed the outlets in the house were tied down to these terminals as well (white/blue pairs).

It appears that when the alarm system was installed, the installer lifted the original cables and ran a new cable from the telco box to the alarm control panel. The telco screw downs are tied to his cable (white/blue) only and the pair goes straight down to the alarm box. It comes out of the alarm box on his (white/orange) second pair back to the telco box and is spliced to my original cables' (white/blue) pair. I'm guessing that if/when the alarm box grabs the line on the inbound pair, it has the outbound pair open so another phone can't come off hook.

If found the installation manual on the alarm box and what was done is exactly "per the book". It tells the installer that the alarm system should have the "first" shot at the phone line and that nothing should be between the alarm box's connection and the telco interface. No way to fault the installer, but I do have a couple of concerns.

Since the alarm was installed, we have added DSL. And in case anyone is particularly knowledgeable, the alarm box is a DSC PC1555.

The alarm guy's wiring is not CAT5, it's CAT3 or some other kind of station wire and because of the routing, the circuit runs through it and the alarm box before coming back to the telco box where it's spliced to my inside wiring. That's adding about 100' of lesser quality cable before I ever have a chance to get it to my modem.

The DSL signals are high frequency, so that "noise" is getting shot straight into the alarm box and I see no kind of filter outside the box and no reference in the box's manual about it having any kind of high frequency filter.

Occasionally, we have problems with the DSL and I wonder if the alarm box occasionally grabs the line to report in or just test itself. There's no sort of filter around the alarm box for this either. If the alarm box comes off hook, it has to "look" like a telephone and therefore it's presenting a

600 ohm load to the line across the entire frequency band. It think that this is what the the "store-bought" DSL filters are supposed to prevent. Maybe this is happening and causing out intermittent "outages". If the alarm box is grabbing the line and doing what I suspect, then the house outlets are effectively "dead" when it happens.

Has anyone else ran into this before and did it cause any problems?

My first thought is to tap the alarm guy's cable and grab what is effectively the "first" presence of the telco pair inside the house to run my additional outlets and put the appropriate DSL filters on the new drops that I run. Secondly, I'd like to find out if there is any need for some other kind of high frequency filter between the line and the alarm box.

TIA-trebor

Reply to
trebor4258
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The CAT3 issue is not a big deal IMHO, as DSL is installed and working on older quad wire. You are correct about the security panel needing to be able to 'grab' a line, and you also are probably correct in assuming the panel does a dial-out periodically to supervise its link with the monitoring service.

If it was me, I would ask the telco to put your DSL on a second set of copper from the street so it isn't sharing.

Short of that, if your DSC panel was connected through RJ11 or RJ31X jacks, you can install one of the modular line filters before the panel - run your panel and house phones through the phone side and a separate wire to the DSL side for your modem.

HTH.

Reply to
Dwight Duckstein

Try this link, it has a good schematic.http://home.earthlink.net/~gingerbarth/schematic.html

Reply to
David Briggs

[...]

Yes. I know some people who experienced periodic DSL dropouts due to this.

The second best solution to the DSL problem is to run a separate loop from the phone entrance to the DSL modem. That could mean moving the modem to the entrance and running CAT5 to the computer/router. The best solution is to get a "whole house DSL filter". The filter has one "in" and a separate "out" for the DSL modem and a separate "out" for the other phone stuff. Call whichever entity you think is most responsible for the problem (alarm co IMO) and try to get them to fix it for you. If that doesn't work, ask them where to buy an apropriate whole house DSL filter.

Note that the whole house filter is a good idea anyway as it gets rid of all the short wire stubs in the house and could conceivably improve your DSL speed.

Bruce

Reply to
Bruce Walzer

I just used one of the provided filters. Split the incoming wire in the basement. Ran the raw feed to the DSL modem and used one of those mini plug in filters for the rest of the house. May not be the right way but it has worked fine for 2+ years. Total cost was 10-15$ for the modular plugs cables and a scrap of plywood to mount it all.

Be happy to share more details if you need them.

Reply to
Colbyt

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I did the same thing with the same good results. Been working for 1 1/2+ years. This really is the way to go -- avoids loading down the DSL with old wiring, missed filters on an extension phone, etc.

Reply to
Paul A

I am going to agree with Bruce in principal but suggest a good way to do the same thing with the filter you already have. Buy a duplex phone jack and wire it to the demarcation equipment. From one of it's jacks run the pair to the DSL modem. From the other jack connect one filter and run that pair to the alarm system terminals. From the alarm system output terminals run your pair to a punch down or terminal block. Connect all of the telephone jacks in the house to that block. With the filter between the line and the alarm equipment it's periodic dial tone checks will no longer dump the DSL signal.

Reply to
Tom Horne

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