VoIP and Wiring

After way too long of a wait, it seems that our old phone number has been transferred over to our Vonage VoIP service. I haven't received official word from Vonage that the local number portability request has gone through, but dialing our number now rings the phone attached to the Vonage line and not the normal phones.

Of course, to add to my confusion, the normal phones still work, at least for placing out going calls. This could be because we haven't been cleared to cancel our Verizon local service yet, or maybe something with the changeover is screwed up.

Once I'm sure the Vonage line will keep ringing, I am supposed to be able to just run the telephone line from the phone adaptor to any nearby jack and it will connect the VoIP service to all the jacks in the house. But, before I do that, I need to disconnect the outside PSTN line from the house so that there's no chance of damage to the VoIP gear.

It should be a simple task: Go to the outside interface box, unplug the plugs, and voilà — no signal. Expect our house is wired stupidly. Even with everything unplugged from the interface box, I still get a signal. Next I try tracing the lines and find one that runs inside and looks like a likely culprit. I figure if I rewire those I can set up something that will isolate the inside wiring without making it too difficult to reconnect to the PSTN line when we move or if we decide to give up on VoIP.

I disconnect things and ... nothing, the phone still works. I go so far as to cut the red lines (figuring the red and green lines were still twisted together, so maybe that was making the circuit) ... and the phone still works. At this point, I decide to reconnect things in the rat's nest style typical of this house's phone wiring. Maybe in the morning or daylight I'll be better able to discover what goes where (and maybe by then I'll find out whether or not the number has been fully transferred).