VM Man with Leakage Aerial

[Milambar]

That would make more sense indeed.

[jgrove]

So it would appear that one of us or both have a break in the cable that runs from the street cab to the house?

Cheers

[Graham M]

Not necessarily, it could just be some equipment putting interference back down the line

[Sephiroth]

Graham_M has got it right. The man isn't looking for wifi, he's looking for the source of obvious noise injection to the cable system. I'd say that a lot of people's upstream is running at QPSK and having further difficulties.

VM are monitoring each CM in real time AFAIK and can be reactive to an area or locality issue that's thrown up.

[jgrove]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Graham_M has got it right. The man isn't looking for wifi, he's looking for the source of obvious noise injection to the cable system. I'd say that a lot of people's upstream is running at QPSK and having further difficulties.

VM are monitoring each CM in real time AFAIK and can be reactive to an area or locality issue that's thrown up.

Not sure what QPSK means? Is it an error correction system?


Does it mean i have a break in the cable?

Cheers

[Graham M]

QPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) and QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) are Modulation methods, IE ways of sending digital signals down the wires over distance whithout the signal degrading too much, IE that it is still recognisable for what it started out as when it reaches the other end of the cable.

[on in an hour!]

heres the reason (simply put) that the VM network engineer was in your garden:
VM's system (nothing to do with wireleess transmissions) can leak RF into other systems using the same transmission freqs,which can degrade their service,a particular worry is leakage (egress) into (ingress) a close-by emergency services system.
they are legally bound and monitored by OFCOM to keep the leakage under certain criteria.each principal technician from the service side of VM has a monitor (manufactured by TRILITHIC for these purposes) in his van which picks up 'hotspots' of leakage from VM's network.

these guys then park up at the office or stores where it downloads its info.this info is then transferred onto a map with its measurements,the high leakage points then have a fault ticket raised which goes to a network engineer to investigate.
they have small handheld RF 'sniffers' which generally locate the leakage,but for awkward jobs theres a bigger aerial type device they use.

typically its unterminated connections on the network that are egressing but it can be an open-ended cable in a customers house or an output on a splitter or an open box on the front of a house with an unterminated cable in.

these cases of course are reliant on the 'drop' cable still being connected to the network.
hope this helps

[Sephiroth]

Or noisy fridges, electric drills, stair lifts .......

[jgrove]

Thanks for the replies, having looked at my VM connections, none are unterminated and all are done up, one to the tv box and one to the cable modem.

[Kymmy]

Originally Posted by on in an hour!

heres the reason (simply put) that the VM network engineer was in your garden:
VM's system (nothing to do with wireleess transmissions) can leak RF into other systems using the same transmission freqs,which can degrade their service,a particular worry is leakage (egress) into (ingress) a close-by emergency services system.
they are legally bound and monitored by OFCOM to keep the leakage under certain criteria.each principal technician from the service side of VM has a monitor (manufactured by TRILITHIC for these purposes) in his van which picks up 'hotspots' of leakage from VM's network.

these guys then park up at the office or stores where it downloads its info.this info is then transferred onto a map with its measurements,the high leakage points then have a fault ticket raised which goes to a network engineer to investigate.
they have small handheld RF 'sniffers' which generally locate the leakage,but for awkward jobs theres a bigger aerial type device they use.

typically its unterminated connections on the network that are egressing but it can be an open-ended cable in a customers house or an output on a splitter or an open box on the front of a house with an unterminated cable in.

these cases of course are reliant on the 'drop' cable still being connected to the network.
hope this helps

Weird then that the OP stated that the techs words were to the effect that the leakage was interferring with wifi and caused by too much power..

Unterminated transmission lines wouldn't effect a band over 1.5Ghz up (even it's harmonics would be limited)

So would this be the tech trying to dumb it down??

[qasdfdsaq]

Could be, yes. Too many people associate "wifi network" with "the internet" without any understanding of whats on the other end of the wifi link and a lot of IT professionals are trained to dumb it down to the level of common folk.

[Kymmy]

I know I used to dumb it down when doing 3rd and 4th line but I've never given them an excuse which is nothing to do with the problem even when I needed to dumb it totally down..

Perhaps it's a dumb down that doesn't put the fault on the cable

[qasdfdsaq]

Like I say, you'd be surprised how dumb the average consumer has got over the last few years... What with technology being so much more accessible, cheap, and easy to use nowadays.

I remember the days when I had to use telnet to get my wireless network set up correctly, now it's plug in superhub and expect everything to just work. Or don't even do that, since engineer plugs in superhub for you on some installs...