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  1. #1
    Legendary! gherkin's Avatar
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    I rebooted coaxial cable? wtf?

    I've run a speed test on my internet regularly for the last 4 weeks. Average was 18 down .5 up. I'm paying for 50 down, 3 up.

    So I finally have time to call in and sort things out, and the guy on the phone tells me to unplug the coax from the wall, touch the ends together, and plug it back in. I've been on hold for about an hour and a half now and I just about lost it. I just hung up the phone. Reboot a cable? Residual signals? He could have told me to go fuck myself and I would have felt the same.

    But I think to myself maybe there's something to it, or I heard him wrong, and worst case is I call his manager, rip into the guy, and demand a free month or two for not only being bullshitted but also not receiving the proper service.

    I unplug ONE end of the cable, tap the bare copper against just about anything metal (other coax ground/shields, my watch strap, a bare nail from some furniture) and screw it all back in. I even check the rest of the connections for tightness. I turn everything back on, and run about 6 speedtests on various servers across canada and the US (datacenters where wow servers are held).

    Average: 25 down, 3 up.


    What the fuck? Were the connections just a bit loose and I fixed that? Is there some truth to this bullshit about grounding your cables to reset them? Or was he just some punk who was fast on his end of the computer and managed to fix my account while laughing about the lie he told me?

    R.I.P. YARG

  2. #2
    The Lightbringer MrHappy's Avatar
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    No he is legit and it is basically a technite to rid of any electro static in the cable which can be caused by bending in the wire or by shitty/decaying insulation

    Taken from PCB Piezontronics

    Environmental contaminants such as moisture, dirt, oil, or grease can all contribute to reduced insulation, resulting in signal drift and inconsistent results.
    Standard, two-wire or coaxial cable when flexed, generates an electrostatic charge between the conductors.

  3. #3
    Legendary! gherkin's Avatar
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    ... That's insane. Cool, and I believe you, but that's insane.

    Physics is weird.

    R.I.P. YARG

  4. #4
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    wow, that i dident think of that!

  5. #5
    A coax cable? Are you from the 1990s? and where to you get a motherboard or a "network card" that accepts coax :O !

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Pandaliciouz View Post
    A coax cable? Are you from the 1990s? and where to you get a motherboard or a "network card" that accepts coax :O !
    Don't all cable companies use coxial?..
    I remember it all too well

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Pandaliciouz View Post
    A coax cable? Are you from the 1990s? and where to you get a motherboard or a "network card" that accepts coax :O !
    Every damn cable modem uses a coaxial cable.

  8. #8
    Mechagnome Wargon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pandaliciouz View Post
    A coax cable? Are you from the 1990s? and where to you get a motherboard or a "network card" that accepts coax :O !
    I think he was thinking the coax was plugged directly into his computer, instead of going into the cable modem.
    “The Jedi…the Sith…you don’t get it, do you? To the galaxy, they’re the same thing; just men and women with too much power, squabbling over religion, while the rest of us burn.”-Atton Rand

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Xevan View Post
    Don't all cable companies use coxial?..
    You know this is a coax http://techgenie.com/wp-content/uplo...xial-Cable.jpg

    Where I live we use fiber optic http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/603554...iber_cable.jpg

    I have never in my life seen a coax connected to the internet only to TV. And if its not Fiber Optic its usually CAT5 or above.

  10. #10
    The Lightbringer MrHappy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pandaliciouz View Post
    You know this is a coax http://techgenie.com/wp-content/uplo...xial-Cable.jpg

    Where I live we use fiber optic http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/603554...iber_cable.jpg

    I have never in my life seen a coax connected to the internet only to TV. And if its not Fiber Optic its usually CAT5 or above.
    yes but not if you live in an area with old infrastructure

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Pandaliciouz View Post
    You know this is a coax http://techgenie.com/wp-content/uplo...xial-Cable.jpg

    Where I live we use fiber optic http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/603554...iber_cable.jpg

    I have never in my life seen a coax connected to the internet only to TV. And if its not Fiber Optic its usually CAT5 or above.
    You must be very young.

    Or you live in a country with companies that care about customers as well as the bottom line. In the USA, I've lived in a LOT of places, and the only thing I've seen coming remotely close to fiber was the fiber line that ran down my street... but was connected to the individual modems via copper coaxial wire. Everything else has been pure coax wire.
    Super casual.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Pandaliciouz View Post
    You know this is a coax http://techgenie.com/wp-content/uplo...xial-Cable.jpg

    Where I live we use fiber optic http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/603554...iber_cable.jpg

    I have never in my life seen a coax connected to the internet only to TV. And if its not Fiber Optic its usually CAT5 or above.
    Cha, I was using fiber optic before it was hip.

    No seriously, 95% of the infrastructure (at least in the US) uses co-ax from the wall mounts to the cable modem. They use fiber from their local hubs into a centralized location that then connects up to the lovely thing we know as the internet.

  13. #13
    Epic! Idrinkwhiterussians's Avatar
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    I might have to try this technique and see if it speeds up my internet a bit. One can only hope
    Quote Originally Posted by Cyanotical View Post
    anyone want doughnuts? i hear there is a great shop in Vancouver

  14. #14
    I didn't know it was still being used so much in the USA. I live in Iceland we even have farms connected to fiber optic for free and its either CAT5 or fiber optic.

  15. #15
    For all you foreigners, the coax goes into a DOCSIS modem. Not directly in to the PC...Coax/Cable services can provide quite substantial bandwidth. We're not talking some bullshit BNC token ring system. New bonded channel DOCSIS 3.0 will get you up to 250mbit download speeds, sometimes more.


    As for the OP, I'm guessing Shaw? :P Neat, I worked there as a Tier 2 lol for 2 years back in like 2005. It's actually a common trick and I used to teach it to newbies in the call center I was at; it's a combination of static on the sheathing of the cable causing EMR with the signal and oxidation of the core of the cable itself which is usually stripped off in the processes of removing it and plugging it back in. Touching the cable to metal also grounds it, removing that static electricity. It sounds quite dubious (almost as bad as telling the customer to unplug their computer power and then press the power button 3 or 4 times) but more often than not it will correct a minor bandwidth issue when RF levels for the modem are looking in line.

    As for your provisioned download rate of 50mbit, sadly it's a case of "up to 50mbit" and as long as you're within the next tier of service (Broadband 50) you're technically getting what you paid for. Lower rates in your area are likely due to too many customers on the downstream card in your region...it will likely improve.

    ---------- Post added 2011-12-02 at 11:38 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Pandaliciouz View Post
    I didn't know it was still being used so much in the USA. I live in Iceland we even have farms connected to fiber optic for free and its either CAT5 or fiber optic.
    It's because Iceland is small. Fiber to the home infrastructure is not cheap and when you're spanning 3500 miles and millions of homes. It's quite expensive...

  16. #16
    It's because Iceland is small. Fiber to the home infrastructure is not cheap and when you're spanning 3500 miles and millions of homes. It's quite expensive...
    It is funny you should say that since the US Army put fiber optic into the ground around Iceland for free and when they left we get full useage of it we only used part of it when they were still here.

    But isnt the Coax cable it self limited to 10mb/s ?

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Pandaliciouz View Post
    It is funny you should say that since the US Army put fiber optic into the ground around Iceland for free and when they left we get full useage of it we only used part of it when they were still here.

    But isnt the Coax cable it self limited to 10mb/s ?
    You're thinking of Coax in terms of the old BNC token ring or ethernet systems from back in the 70s. DOCSIS specifications for cable modems range from 38mbit/10mbit on DOCSIS 1.0, 38/30 on DOCSIS 2.0 and with bonded channels on DOCSIS 3.0 the download and upload rates are only limited by the number of channels available to the modem. Each channel capable of 38mbit down and 30mbit up. It's theoretically possible to have well over 1Gbps download and upload speeds on a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem...though unlikely we'll see that for residential services any time soon. Typically it's anywhere up to 100mbps, sometimes higher and upload limitations at anywhere from 2mbit to 10mbit just to curb P2P sharing etc.

    The only real limitations with coaxial cable is their frequency range for channels. With most north american cable providers moving their tv services to strictly digital, this frequency range has expanded dramatically. Newer regions will have up to 750Mhz or 1000Mhz capabilities, and with digital TV taking up -maybe- 20Mhz total of that range (versus almost 6Mhz per channel for Analog). There's a lot of room for internet bandwidth and cable based home telephone.
    Last edited by Tradewind; 2011-12-02 at 07:22 PM.

  18. #18
    The Patient
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    Seems like using Coax has been a bit before my time... :s In Norway we use Cat5 or Cat6 cables with a Rj-45 plug... Been like this computer net has been built in Norway...



    And while some are on the topic of fiber, we got a fiber "junction box" 15 meters from our house, all we got to do is dig up a dirt road...

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Deathtanker View Post
    Seems like using Coax has been a bit before my time... :s In Norway we use Cat5 or Cat6 cables with a Rj-45 plug... Been like this computer net has been built in Norway...



    And while some are on the topic of fiber, we got a fiber "junction box" 15 meters from our house, all we got to do is dig up a dirt road...
    Yes you have a Cat5/cat6 going from the cable modem to your PC.

    This is a cable modem:

  20. #20
    The Patient
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    Different countries different systems, thats all I have to say. I've never used or a seen a coax modem

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