Activate phone jacks: at punch-down box or jack?

Howdy folks, hoping to get some help. Here's my situation:

There are three jacks in the house, one is active and the other are not (ie. no dial tone). We live in a 16 unit condo building, so all the lines are controlled in the downstairs closet at 2 m-boxes. Fortunately, our unit's rows are labelled clearly on the box. There is a purple wire and a blue wire at this box. They come from a grey box, connect to the right most clip in our row and then connect over to the second m-box. I don't really understand what the connection on this box mean, so if someone could explain this I would appreciate it. For instance, what does it mean to connect different rows or different clips in the same row? Why are most of the center clips unused? Anyway, back to my situation...

I removed the two non-working jacks to check the wiring and they both have a red/green and black/yellow connections. I plugged a phone into both and didn't get a dial tone. Now, here's the weird part, the phone that works has a strange plastic plate with 4 pairs of wires punched onto it. They are numbered, like this:

#4: Black/Green
#2: Red/Light blue
#1: Green/White
#3: Yellow/White

So, the working jack doesn't look anything like the other 2 non-working jacks and I'm not sure if I need to do something down at the m-box to activate these lines. One more thing, there is only one line activated in the house and we just had DSL turned on. The whole point of this is so that we can have the DSL in the room with the computer.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've done lots of searching online to gather information about phone wiring, but haven't been able to answer my particular question. Please let me know what you advise. Thank you!

PS> I can take pictures of all the wiring if necessary.

 

sounds like it was wired by somone not competent

what you describe are "split pairs" which are a basic, no ,no .in the world of telephony

from your descrption dialtone is coming in on red/blue and green/white becouse that was the closest the installer could find to red and green.


I have read your post a couple of times and I can't make sense of it so pictures would probably be helpfull

I would be particularly interested in pictures of working jack It is not making sense from your description

 

Thanks for the response, mango. While I was not able to achieve my desired result, I have settled on a partial solution to the problem. Here's what I figured out:

That jack that worked had 2 cables: one with red/green/black/yellow and one with (what I now know) blue,white/white,blue/orange,white/white,orange. The red/green and blue/white wires were connected to the same "line". I went to one of the other non-working jacks and found that same second cable (blue/white/orange/white), so I wired to the jack and I got a dial tone. The problem is, this isn't the room that I really want the DSL in, I was just testing here because the jack is more accessible.

So, I went to the other bedroom (where I want the computer to be hooked up) and pulled off the jack. Turns out there's only ONE cable at this jack. The second cable was nowhere to be found. So, my guess is that the building was re-wired with the new cable and it only found its way into two of my rooms.

So, the DSL wireless box is in one bedroom and the computer is in the other. Which is fine. I guess my only remaining curiosity would be: Can anything be done down at the punch-down box to send the new line to the old cable? If not, no big deal, the computer is up and running on DSL.

Thanks for the help!

 

the fact there was only one cable probably means it was the last one on the "loop" the other jacks didnt really have two cables just the same cable coming in and then going back out thus the loop

best telcom practice is to not cut the loop but rather to tap into it

this practice is rarley followed

you could look for either a hidden jack or a blank plate covering where a jack might go it could be that your other cable is cut at that point
or
it might be on the 66 block

to find the cable you really need a tone and probe

http://search-completed.ebay.com/ton...atusZ2QQsotrZ2

looks like 60-75 dollars on ebay for a used one

you could buy one , use it then list it back on ebay and re-sell

you could also try twisting the wires together at the jack then going to the 66 block with a continuity meer and finding the pair that has continuity then go untwist the wires at the jack to confirm you are on the correct pair and test again.

 

I just went wireless on my 2 PC here works just fine. That after 2 weeks trying to ring out the phone wire. Ran a new wire to outside for one unit then wireless to the other.


ED