What is this piece of junk?

entropy

Ok, so I have Charter (MUCH hate for them lately) cable. This thing is buggy as hell. It's never on, and we get **** speeds. Recently, it wouldn't go AT ALL. I played with it for a few hours, trying different things... nothing worked. Finally I took off this piece of ****. Voila. It works. So my question is - WHAT THE HELL? What is that thing, and why is it suddenly causing problems? Not even connections problems... I mean it would force the modem to totally restart over and over and never connect. It's "supposed" to go between the modem's coaxial and the coaxial cable. Any ideas?

leishi85

looks like it could be a filter used to filter cable tv signals

do you have cable tv with them on the same line??

if not, now you have free cable TV, just hook it up on that line.

primesuspect

Yeah, mine was bad too. Except they put ours on the pole and a tech had to come out and replace it.

It's a filter.

pseudonym

I had to have a filter put on mine to fix my signal. Prolly just a bad one is my guess.

entropy

So it's not hurting anything being off? Thanks for the quick response, too, guys

I'm tempted to call Charter and be like, "Dude, wtf guys, you suck bad. Upgrade my damn service now!"

I hope Charter goes under hard. They're $4 billion down from last year alone. All they need is another year or two before they crash and burn and are forced to sell their lines. All we can do is hope...

bothered

Just a thought, it may not be a filter as such, it may be an isolator. They use capacitors as isolators on TV inputs. The high frequency signals can pass through with ease but lower frequency HIGHER VOLTAGE currents cannot. It may be there to protect the equipment. If it goes up in a puff of smoke you coud be libel. It may just need replacing or your signal boosting.

redchief

Looks like a filter, possibly for blocking or to equalize the band. 550 Mhz is hard to keep a flat response. lightning arrestors are at the pole or the side of the house where shield is tied to ground, ie water pipe.

Dexter

Ditto that. Some cable internet installers will tell you not to decide to move the modem to another cable outlet in the house, since they put a special filter on the line to help keep the signal separate from your TV signal.

When I had cable installed at the old house, they had to put in a new outlet for us, and they used a 2-outlet unit, with connectors marked clearly: "TV" and "INTERNET." If you plug the cable modem into the TV one, you will probably get poor performance, as all the TV signals can cause cross-talk interference.

The filter you removed is probably designed to do the same thing. Like mentioned above, you may have had a bad one. I'd definitely call their support line and see about getting someone out to check things out.

Dexter...

Tex

All the filters I had were done outside Dexter. They normally (in a house) attach outside at the inbound connection/box. The cable TV is wired for the whole house. You had a mickey mouse install done.

The internet and the cable TV can be on any outlet in the house.

And yes it looks like a filter to block cable TV.

Tex

Dexter

Tex wrote:

All the filters I had were done outside Dexter. They normally (in a house) attach outside at the inbound connection/box. The cable TV is wired for the whole house. You had a mickey mouse install done.

Right, so just because your cable company in your city using their particular hardware does it one way, anything done anywhere else is Mickey Mouse....?

If you read carefully enough, you *may* notice that I did not say I had a filter in the house. I said it was "on the line." In fact, nowhere in my post did I say anything about filters being indoors, just "on the line." Depending on the particulars of the cable company's hardware setup, and the wiring of the home, the filter may be outside, or inside, or non-existent.

In the particular house I referred to above, it was done that way because the house was old, the cable wiring was old and the installer ran a separate line for that internet connection, with the filter installed externally. He did not think the old cable line was very good for the network connection, and rather than re-wre the entire house, that was an easier solution, since I only need the connection in that room anyways. If I needed it anywhere else, that's what routers are for, right?

So, no, it was not "Mickey Mouse", it was actually done that way to give me a more reliable connection, and was cheaper than re-wiring the whole house. If I wanted the whole house re-wired, I would have had to pay for it. But to run a single new line just for the internet connection, that was covered in the install fees, which did not cost me anything since my company pays for my internet access (nice perk. )

In the house I am at now, the connections are not labelled that way, the house is newer and the wiring is better. The filter is outside somewhere, either in the box down the road or in the box in my garage.

Dexter...

bothered

redchief wrote:

Looks like a filter, possibly for blocking or to equalize the band. 550 Mhz is hard to keep a flat response. lightning arrestors are at the pole or the side of the house where shield is tied to ground, ie water pipe.

Well over here they are in the TV tuner input, They also serve to prevent a faulty tuner passing a signal to the aerial and turning it into a transmitter.

Tex

Dexter wrote:

Ditto that. Some cable internet installers will tell you not to decide to move the modem to another cable outlet in the house, since they put a special filter on the line to help keep the signal separate from your TV signal. ..

And thats why it would be Micky Mouse OR you didnt understand WHY he told you that. Which is probbaly closer to the truth.

Often they have to many splitters in a new house and they run a seperate cleaner line. It has nothing to do with the filter. If your paying for TV you get it on every outlet in your house. They usualy install a filter to block a range of the broadband to keep ya from stealing the cable TV if you don't order both. There is no filter to block the internet or clean up the signal. The TV should come in the same line as your internet as long as your paying for it. It was common for folks to just order internet and get free cable TV for years before they started slapping the filters on.

Tex

Dexter

Tex wrote:

And thats why it would be Micky Mouse OR you didnt understand WHY he told you that. Which is probbaly closer to the truth.

Tex, I worked in TV for 10 years, and I know a few thngs about RF filters as a result, thank you very much. And the company that owned the TV station I worked for also owned a cable company, and one of my best friends worked for them for a few years, I rode along on installs for fun. Trust me, I know more about RF filters than the average person, so you can save your insinuated insults for someone who may be intimidated by them...I'm not.

Tex wrote:

There is no filter to block the internet or clean up the signal.

I invite you to google the words "cable high pass filter."

Here, let me help you:

http://www.cable-modems.org/tutorial/05.htm

The transmitted signal from the Cable Modem can be so strong, that any TV sets connected on the same string might be disturbed. The isolation of the splitter may not be sufficient, so an extra high-pass filter can be needed in the string that goes to the TV-sets. The high-pass filter allows only the TV-channel frequencies to pass, and blocks the upstream frequency band. The other reason for the filter is to block ingress in the low upstream frequency range from the in-house wiring. Noise injected at each individual residence accumulates in the upstream path towards the head-end, so it is essential to keep it at a minimum at every single residence that needs Cable Modem service..

The point is Tex, not every cable company uses the same hardware. It's not a cookie-cutter "here's your cable internet hardware, start hooking up your customers" kind of thing.

With some cable companies, no filtering is needed, because their data stream encoding is done at a high enough frequency that it does not interfere with TV channel reception. In some cases, the data frequency is low enough that they put a filter on the lines to the TV outlets. In other cases, they put a filter just on the internet line, to filter the upstream frequency band from bleeding back in to the TV frequencies. And yes, in some cases, they put filters on if you only bought cable internet, to block you from getting cable TV. Heck, some cable companies will not sell you just cable interenet, you need to also subscribe to at least their basic cable TV package -probably because they do not want to buy a bunch of filters and have to monitor to see if the customers break into their box at their house and remove the filters, and this way that get more revenue out of you. Since most people who get cable internet probably already have cable TV, it's usually not an issue.

In Entropy's case, it is possible that the installer screwed up. This filter may have supposed to have been on the TV lines only to filter out the data streams, and the dude got it backwards. Or it may have supposed to have been on the data line, to block stray low-frequencies on the upstream frequency band of the data line from spilling back into the TV frequency range. It is possible that this filter was faulty, or was even the wrong fiter in the right place. That's why my first post said to definitely call the tech support line and get someone out to check for sure.

Dexter...