Setting Up Brother MFC 4550 w/2-line system?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. We recently moved and I'm trying to set this machine up and it's driving me bonkers. I have two lines coming into my house, and most all the outlets are of the 4-wire type that can handle two lines. I have a AT&T 2-line phone with a digital answering machine built-in up in the kitchen. In my home office, I have a 2-line Sony phone. I would like to have the fax dedicated to line two, but I would also like to use line two as a home biz line. My understanding is that you can route the 2 lines through the fax machine and then on to the 2-line phone. The sticky part is that I want the fax machine to discriminate between voice calls and fax calls (which it's supposed to do) on line 2, and ignore line 1 altogether.

A. It's unlikely you can route both incoming lines through your fax. Even if you have a four wire system with a RJ11 jack, the two wires at the side are generally used for switchboard functions. The 2 in the middle are your line wires If your fax has two RJ 11 type sockets one is a line in and the other a phone out. But it works only if you have the fax connected at the very beginning where your lines come in, before any phone, otherwise all the phone ring anyhow. Only some newer faxes do pick up the line anywhere in the system, listen for the type of connection and release it if no fax transmition. Some faxes can be started from other phones with a code like *73#. But if you have a known fax number that might give you midnight fax calls. Most fax machines require an RJ-11(1 line) jack which supports only one line on the center pair of wires. If you have an RJ-14 (2 line) jack, only line one will work with the fax machine. You must get your jacks rewired as two separate RJ-11 jacks or buy a triplex adapter which converts an RJ-14 jack into two RJ-11 jacks and one RJ-14 jack. To work what you want on line two , you would need the triplex adapter. Plug the MFC into the line which is split off as line two. Set the MFC to TAD and connect a telephone with answering machine to the line out. You would have to have the answering machine answer every call or answer it with the phone before the answering machine picks up. The MFC eavesdrops on the call and capture it if it detects the CNG tones. Otherwise the voice call continues. Timing is important because the call has to be answered within enough time for the sending fax machine to be still sending CNG tones and for the MFC to send its answer tones with two to four second overlap. The sending fax machine only send the tones for sixty seconds. A fax machine cannot tell what the call is until it is answered. If the fax machine answers first, the call stops there. It cannot send the call to another device.

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