Question for Phone Techs

What is your motive..? There are easier ways to limit ADSL usage. Are you concerned with download bandwidth.? When going away why would you want to disable your phone line..? If you list your primary concerns we could suggest best practice to address them..

G'day,

i think what you are suggesting may be illegal unless you hold a current austel license. fiddling with the line to the first socket (black cable) may earn you a $12,000 fine last time I checked. :)

Remember the line to the first point at your house belongs to the big T [Telstra] Beyond that point it is yours but as someone else points out you must be a licenced cable to legally play around with it.
Putting a switch in a telephone line, even by a licenced cable, isn't a good idea and will be bound to cause problems such as forgetting to reset it when you do want to get calls or make them. For these reasons it has never been communications practice to switch the line in this way.

Ken

Do it the simple way, take the ADSL modem with you.

seems like youre going to get alot of help here on this one.

As mentioned, do not play with anything before the first socket- that is not your property, and you can be fined pretty heavily if you touch it.
ADSL signal is able to operate off a single wire, so if you do install your switch, get a double pole switch or something that with break both wires. The pairs in phone cabling are white (+) and blue line 1, red (+) and black line 2.

Hi,

I assume you connect through a broadband router? these are often configurable to the point that what you suggest could be totally automated...the internet may be made unavailable before 9am and again after 5:30pm. You could also make this managed By the PC'S themselves if they are all W2k or XP - otherwise many third party apps allow you to configure this simply and easily...one of many I would recommend is Net Nanny (probably be easier and more secure than a physical switch).

This will only stop use of the PC's - not the overuse of the phone line....consider VOIP to drastically reduce your call costs.

Rod

How about several ideas:

- get some Bandwidth sharing software and limit the speed at which they can access the net to under, say, 5kbps (good old dialup speed). This gives them some limited access for basic email, assignment searching, and stops the games (due to being way too slow for any real action).

- sneak in a line filter on the adsl modem when you go out and they are not watching. May take them some time hopefully to work out the problems as it blends in with the rest of the system.

- tell them not to use it ;-)

Andrew

What you want to do is legal but most do it within the confines of the house.

Find where the black cable terminates and if you have a phone line in your bedroom you can get what they call a cut/over switch, people use these to toggle back and forth from answer phone to normal fone.

You could put it in the garage or your bedroom but rember the line must come to the Cutover switch first and redirected back to the other sockets second. You could wire it up a number of ways as Off would mean maybe only fone in your room works in case of emergencies and toggle the other way and the intire house plus ADL comes back into play. You would need help of a comms tech who can do it for you.
It can be done but you will only know if it is worth it.

Good luck

Thanks to everyone for the helpful suggestions.

The powersupply for the ADSL router will be living in a locked, ventilated box along with a 240V timer.

I can already hear the screams of anguish. One small step for a man, one giant leap for family's sanity. ;-)

EV

Good thinking...I would have said use the manual connect/disconnect function in the router and don't tell anyone...:) - but this is a better way to go!

You could always get them to pay for the upgrade to umlimited broadband while your away, depending on your plan, they would only have to cough up about 30 dollars max for a month.

You then don't have to worry about usage, and they get internet, everyones happy.

I'd be looking into some of the common routers that have the facility to lockout internet access at preset times.

Netgear have several. They aren't expensive.

You can configure them easily and password protect it.

Locked boxes are less secure than good passwords.

Of course they only have to borrow a modem or router off a mate for while you are away in either circumstance and they are up and running.

I'd not be playing with switches and wires. You also restrict their ability to make a "000" call which would not be good in the event that they burn the place down or one of their mates has an asthma attack or worse.

Murphy loves a player, and when he challenges he often wins...

But I do like him, he keeps me in a job!

Dave