The phone line @ home has 4 colored wires, however, individual indoor jacks only have 2 & phones work ok, why?

Question

All phone features work, but dsl internet seems to hesitate.
Which colors are what?

Answer 1

Red and green are generally the pair that is required for dial tone. Most jacks have four wires so you can easily add a second line to any jack.

On the plug that plugs into the phone jack the middle two pins are for dialtone, the outer two would be for a second line.

I would confirm you have DSL filters (should have been supplied by your DSL provider) installed on all jacks that shouldn't have DSL. Make sure you didn't install a DSL filter on a jack that is suppose to have DSL.

Answer 2

Starting with the phone line itself. Usually they have 4 wires (could be 6 or 8) Red & green are line #1 (it take 2 wires to create dial tone -1 is positive and 1 is negative) yellow & black are for line #2 if there are 2 numbers in the same phone jack. Usually the jack has the same 4 colors. I've been working for the phone company for 25 years and have never seen a phone jack, in Okla., that has less than 4 wires. It would be posible for a phone jack to only have 2 wires though. That would mean it can only have 1 phone number working in it. Also, about the colors.. in the past 10 years we started using wire that uses blue/white and white/blue as line 1, and orange/white & white/orange as line 2. The only purpose of color coding the wires is to make it easier. It doesn't matter which color is really used as long as the same 2 colors are used from the jack to the connect on the back of the house. .. Now here's an answer about 'dsl'. I'm well trained in working on high speed also. DSL is a interesting product, it only needs 1 wire. However, I don't know if it's the positive or the negative wire (I never worried about it because my job is to fix all the wires in a main cable) I have had customers who have a solid short (2 bare wires touching) and have no dial tone but DSL works fine. I have had customers who had 1 wire broken in the main cable and have no dial tone but DSL works fine. However, if you have crosstalk on your line, you'll have dial tone usually, but it will slow your DSL down because the signal is now shared with a wire going to a completly different house. There are a few other things that will slow DSL down. If you need more details let me know. I have 25 years worth of experience with AT&T. After reading some of your other responses about slow DSL, I decided to update this one.. If you have checked your filters, then you might report your phone service to repair. The reason I say that is because although you may have aceptable talk service, if there is a phone cable problem you may not realize it. 'We' (the phone company) have what is called 'bridge tap' which is hard to explain in one sentence and plus we have 'dead drops' these are things that could slow your speeds. One thing to know is that we are not required to remove 'bridge tap' so if you bring it up to your repairman he may not be willing to solve it without a charge. Sometimes it requires us to go into manholes or dig up a buried splice. if so, it usually isn't worth the cost to speed up your DSL.

Answer 3

There are 3 possible pairs in a phone jack:

Red & Green - line one. This is likely the only pair in use at your house. This carries both Phone and DSL. Hesitation may indicate a configuration issue with your PC - I'd recommend checking out dslreports.org - they have some excellent tools and suggestions for tweaking your performance!

Black & Yellow - this would be Line 2, if you have 2 lines from the phone company. It is likely not in use. DSL doesn't require a second pair.

Blue & White - You generally only see this in smaller offices. This is an intercom pair, and you need to have phones designed for it. If you have an intercom enabled phone, it would use this pair to page another phone in-house rather than tying up an external line.

Answer 4

Even i Obesrver this when i first got DSL connetion at my home.
I asked one of my friend and he told me that these 2 wires are kind of spare, they are not actively used by the phone company for present voice services. Hope this helps

Answer 5

http://www.wppltd.demon.co.uk/WPP/Wiring/UK_telephone/uk_telephone.html
this explains all.
for dsl u need to make sure its all filtered.