How I Beat SBC, ADT, Vonage, VoIP, Time Warner Cable, and an RJ-31X Jack: Part Three in a Three-Part Series

It had been a mere month or two after having switched back to SBC when I purchased a DOCSIS 2.0-compliant Motorola cable modem during a late-night visit to Wal-Mart. The compliance with DOCSIS 2.0 was one of the hypothetical “missing links” that could bring about compatibility with ADT. And so it was that, after installing the new cable modem, I signed up for service with Vonage once again.

My new Vonage hardware arrived. I got everything hooked up and proceeded to disconnect our internal home phone wiring from the SBC landline. The phone service was working great. But my tests with ADT failed. Why? With the new cable modem, shouldn’t this problem have been solved? I decided to check the call log on my Vonage account page. Would I see evidence of my security system’s efforts to call the central office?

No such calls had been logged. And this suggested that the home security system was, for whatever reason, unable to pick up the phone line and so much as dial.

I opened up the security system control box. Wires twisted in all directions. I began moving phone pairs around, testing and patching to see where and how I could get a dial tone. I tested numerous scenarios in which the alarm system was explicitly connected to a working dial tone, yet still, the system failed to dial out during testing.

I went back to the Web. And this time, the shadows of confusion began to fade away. First, I was able to identify the name of the tiny patchboard inside the control box. Key fact: this thing was an RJ-31X. And it seemed to be at the center of my troubles.

Then, the eventual discovery of an obscure Web page, “How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home,” set me on the home track. As it turned out, the configuration of an RJ-31X was more sophisticated than I had initially understood. Because the alarm system needs the ability to perform a “line seize” when dialing out, the RJ-31X is doing more than just connecting the system to the internal phone loop. It’s connecting to that loop, and it’s connecting to the telco landline. It’s serving as a bridge between the two that can stop the flow of traffic at any given moment.

My newfound obscure Web page brought forth additional revelatory knowledge. In order to get VoIP to work with an RJ-31X jack, one must put the VoIP “telco” on its own line pair and let it hook into the RJ-31X from the other side of the gateway.

This was clearly, obviously, completely, very nearly almost making really good sense. I pulled the nearest phone jack out of the wall and I re-patched one of the two jacks to a brown pair. I plugged the VoIP router into that phone jack. Our home phones no longer worked. Good, exactly what I wanted. The plot had thickened.

I went to the outdoor telco demarcation point — the phone box attached to the side of our house. Wires, and more wires, were exploding in every direction from numerous CAT-5 cables. I sat there patching lines and testing. Identifying dial tone. Connecting one pair to another. Blue to brown. No, green to brown. No brown to black. No. Wait. And then repeating the same cycle inside at the security system control box. Green to yellow. No, green to green. No, brown to blue. Right.

Needless to say, this took awhile. But little by little, the code was being cracked. Piece by piece, the pieces were falling into place. And in the end, VoIP was routed to brown pair which was patched over to blue pair which made its way to the telco side of RJ-31X; internal wiring was routed to blue pair which was patched over to green pair which made its way to the internal side of RJ-31X.

The moment of truth had arrived. The home phones were working. Would ADT? Had civilization actually advanced?

Yes, it had.