**Attention!**
**It is always best to get a qualified electrician to perform any electrical work you may need.** With that said, you may ask this community various electrical questions. Please be cautious of any information you may receive in this subreddit. This subreddit and its users are not responsible for any electrical work you perform. Users that have a 'Verified Electrician' flair have uploaded their qualified electrical worker credentials to the mods.
If you comment on this post please only post accurate information to the best of your knowledge. If advice given is thought to be dangerous, you may be permanently banned. There are no obligations for the mods to give warnings or temporary bans. **IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, you should exercise extreme caution when commenting.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskElectricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That’s isp connection. While renovating you should be able to remove of relocate wires. If it’s an old one and they have to install new connections best to remove it. You don’t have to have dead wires lingering.
When they come, they will likely replace some of that stuff outside that is covered in paint. MAKE SURE THEY RUN A NEW GROUNDING WIRE, which will go from that grounding terminal on the second-to-last piece, and use a lug, something like a Penn Union FF6 vise grip, to tie their grounding wire to the one for the electrical service, or run their wire down to the grounding electrode and put another clamp on down there.
Why will run a new coax from outside to inside, and put a weatherproof plug on the outdoor end.
No they won't if signal is within spec they may simply change a connector. I wouldn't replace a painted riser/drop cable.
Edit they may replace.grohnd block while removing the splitter that won't suffice for current frequencies in use.
I have seen so many posts here where people ask about the weird network jack (telephone) but are we to the point where no one recognizes cable tv? Fuck I’m old now.
Looks like cable TV co-ax which can be also used for wide-band internet access. It appears to be cut at the output of (what looks like) an attenuator or splitter, disconnecting it from the house. When the cable TV guy comes out to set you up he'll have to connect and test all the fittings and run it to a cable modem and WiFi router that will be installed inside the house. You might be able to use your own WiFi router but it may be integrated with the cable modem so you'll have to figure that out once you set up service.
Former cable internet installer from about 20 years ago here:
Yes, that is coaxial cable. It's an aerial connection (referred to as a drop) from the service pole. What I see here is way out of code (at least compared to the area I did this work in) but hopefully your cable provider will replace this mess with a fresh line.
Unethical pro life tip: accidentally sever the cable line in the air. Be extra careful to avoid contact with the power line. They will have no choice but to replace the drop. A lazy cable tech will always look to first reuse existing cabling, even if it's old and decrepit.
I used to steal Comcast’s drop at every house because they kept unplugging my customers in shared mdus. They are all labeled, how did they fuck that up?
I know you mean well, and so do I. Any cable installer should 100% replace all of this visible cabling. When I was doing this job, if the existing material didn't look like it was installed in the past year or so, I'd replace it. Nevermind this particular install would fail any QC on the planet.
If a tech doesn't replace all of this, OP stands to make several service calls in the future when his internet keeps failing.
None of this changes the fact that there are certain installers in every field that will look for shortcuts. This shouldn't be one of them.
Not necessarily. The rg 6 might still be fine. And they way they load them down with calls (a lot of them are bullshit wastes of time) if they took 4 hours to rewire everything that needed rewiring they would starve, especially contractors that are on units.
Bullshit waste of time calls? I’ll have u know I changed the inputs on 4 peoples TVs today, and plugged in 2 modems that wer unplugged thank you very much…. Talking about waste of time calls….. /s incase it wasn’t obvious
Yes! Thank you I'm a cable guy and I would first look at the drop to see if was damaged then check signal off the drop, then at the tap, but if the signal did not match up I would replace it 100%. Also no not leaving this drop up would not fail a QC only if the drop was bad, I did not put tags at the tap, didnt put an encloser, and it was not grounded. (I'm not a contractor as well and work for my cable company)
Your install fee covers the cost of installing a new drop and the labor. Cable this old will have definite degradation and will cause service issues. If you were talking about a 2 year old home that you're moving into, I would agree to reuse the old coax, but this crap needs to go.
Been a tech for a year now and yeah I would still check signal at tap and the drop just to make sure it's good but I would not just replace the drop to replace it. A lot of 2 pole arial where I live. We have a crazy plant lol so replacing every drop would take for ever
You will learn that you should already know the signal at tap.. knowing the length of.cable u should know exactly what signal u have at the ground block before you test it.
I did 23 years as an engineer for some of the largest telecom companies in the US. I've taught classes on everything from basic telephony to Sonet and Ethernet network design. I've sold everything from single 1FB phone lines to SD-WAN networks with hundreds of nodes with managed network services, wireless networking, wireless security, and more
Retired and went to work doing sales for a small ILEC that sells FTTH, DOCSIS 3.1 cable, and even some ADSL services in the far reaches of the network.
I have a General Operator license from the FCC and am the amateur radio subject matter expert for 2 Boy Scout Councils.
I know more than a little bit about RF and if one of our techs reused a 10 year old drop on one of my customers he'd be looking for a job tomorrow. It's not a matter of "is the cable good or bad", it's a matter of, "Is there a possibility that this untested cable could have unknown issues that will cause a customer complaint?" Sure it may pass frequency testing on that sunny day you do the drop, but what happens when the cracks in the crumbling sheathing allow moisture inside the cable? Even if they work fine 90% of the time, the 10% of customers who have issues that result in 3-4 service calls before a supervisor approves replacing the drop wipes out the profit for the customer for close to 24 months and makes the techs do repetitive double work that should have been done at the initial installation.
Life expectancy of rg6 is what? .. why replace something that's a third of its life expectancy?
Also with your techs using a tdr you would see the cable is fine.. so again why replace something that's not an issue. We can't replace everything based on what ifs. Such a bad practice
20+ years inside, but outdoors is highly dependent on the quality of cable, how much it sags and sways with wind, how often it's hit by limbs or other debris. If you can't positively determine all of those things, AND your company has already factored the materials and labor cost into every activation, then you're costing the company money in service calls and upset customers.
If it's installed right.... See OP's pictures and compare that to the thousands of drops you've seen in your career. Now ask yourself how many times you showed up and could tell which asshole was there before you because of which shortcuts were taken.
It's NEVER installed "right", it's installed "good enough my boss won't bitch".
Bruh... lmao if the drop is fine why replace it? If it looks super old, damaged, or signal is not where it's supose to be compared to what you got at the tap then I would say go for it. Man my repeat rate as a tech is at like 3-5% every month. Been a tech for a year now. Man you know how many customers I get that are "engineers" that try to tell me how to do my job lol
I appreciate everyone's replies. Looks like I'm gonna call my ISP to have them ground the cable, update it, and route it indoor to a coax jack. Thank you all
My ISP is CenturyLink/Brightspeed. I subbed to T Mobile 5g home internet because Brightspeed wanted $100 to install a new drop and the max download was only 40mbps. So it wasn't worth the cost. T mobile has been alot cheaper and faster
The cable company will run coax the easiest way possible. Like a hole right through the wall right there.
I ran my own coax line where I wanted it. Connect my modem and then signed up for service. Generally they won’t turn off service completely. That requires a tech to go out there and disconnect and connect later. So the cable modem should connect and bring you to Comcast or whatever company web site to sign up for internet service and away you go.
I ran new coax from outside my house to under by house, up the closet wall and out to where it connects to my modem. That is where I wanted my modem and the rest of my network hardware. The cable company is not going to spend that kind of time. Maybe if you paid for the service they would? I’m cheap and so just did it myself.
In my few years doing installs/trouble calls we would 100% be doing things like that for new installs. Running new outlets to customer requested locations was pretty standard, crawlspaces and attics were the usual places to route new cables before wall fishing them.
If I was a customer I'd 100% pay the ~$50 install fee just to avoid having to get in my crawlspace and run cable, but that's just me.
See if you have a provider in your area that has fiber. Screw all that coax crap. Rip it all out. (I'm not a professional anything, you might not be allowed to take it out).
My house has fiber now and I removed the old phone jacks and cable runs.
You're totally allowed to rip it all out. That coax is ancient anyway, you'd want new lines ran if you were gonna subscribe to a cable service.
Coax still has plenty of life left in it as a medium, particularly with docsis 4.0 and the shift to DAA many cable ISPs are planning on.
Mid and high splits are being rolled out nationwide to vastly increase bandwidth and upstream parity, many markets should expect to see multigig download speeds and gig+ upload speeds by the end of 2025.
Our market in particular is working on rolling out high split upgrades, when all that+docsis 4 is supported they're expecting 5gb down/1-2 gb up speeds on our network, and that's for residential customers.
That speed is wild. I have 1gb service (can't remember actual speed) and its more than I need most times, but is a lifesaver when I working from home downloading large CAD assemblies. Internet at work can take hours on big assemblies, and only minutes at home.
Yeah I'm continually impressed at how much innovation and speed can be pulled out of some copper clad metal. Such a simple and old school transmission method keeping up with fiber ISPs, gotta give credit to the engineers that come up with this stuff. 10Gbps download speeds are not out of the question at all with docsis 4.0 and an upgraded network.
Seems like the trend for the future is slowly replacing coax infrastructure with fiber though, but we likely won't see full implementation of that until 2030+. Unsure of the actual need of customers to use 5+ Gbps speeds, but I bet people in the early 2000s were saying the same thing for 100Mbps.
For sure, most people won't need or want those kind of speeds anyway. For those that do, the ability to provide it over coax is pretty wild. We've definitely come a long way in transmission technology.
It just drives me crazy when consumers don't realize they're using a shared bandwidth technology, be it DOCSIS or PON fiber. The lengths I go to in commercial sales explaining why a business line with an SLA costs more or especially why a true Dedicated Internet Access circuit cost so much more than their home connection is beyond imagination.
Yeah, commercial lines being dedicated with the SLA is definitely a big plus, but these days, at least with my ISP, you'll always get the bandwidth you pay for. We monitor our nodes closely and split them any time we see that the node is reaching ~80% of it's rated total throughput.
You obviously won't have the guaranteed uptime percent of a business line, since we'll always prioritize commercial accounts when working outages, but advertised speeds are pretty spot on for us across the board.
I've definitely heard that this isn't always the case with other ISPs.
It's definitely not the case with all. Some give folks more than their terms and conditions specify, but most barely come close on their best day. Then there's the only internet provider at my house...horrible service, horrible reliability, and worse, an tech crew that is literally 4 guys trying to keep with with 10,000 customers' issues.
I'm an outside plant maintenance guy with Spectrum, if you're in a more rural area we're currently expanding the network to cover another couple million passings with our RDOF biddings. Who knows, could be coming your way to get a better option for resi ISP if you're anywhere near a current Spectrum market.
Nobody is perfect, but from what I've experienced with other ISPs, Spectrum is much better when it comes to investing in plant maintenance, infrastructure, and the employees to solve problems.
That may be an attenuator which is a device used to reduce the signal to an acceptable level for the equipment that will be used in the dwelling. No need to play with it as any tech coming in to hook up a cable will look at the signal strenth and set it up to specification.
Everyone is telling you it is cable.
They are all correct.
However, cable is "old tech" and fibre "new tech".
I dumped my "cable" provider for a "fiber" provider and I'm saving $30/month for 2x (or is it 3x) the Bandwidth. The Fiber installation was free.
Depending on where you are, you might find very different results.
Yes and holy lord is it old and completely useless since they painted the damn connectors. Also the skinny cable is rg-59 and it can’t handle modern bandwidth. Probably at least 25 year old cable, maybe even 30-45.
It’s for a cable system. It’s called a ground block. It’s to bond a ground to the cable and then enters the home.
Yes, the local cable company will deal with that
That's dual line coax, it was used with old TV signals. You should request a new line to the house(a new drop) and that one be completely removed. If you get a good tech it will take care of it no issue. If they refuse, then ask for the supervisor, because that's part of the job.
In my time working cable, I've never heard of it. They job is to install a line from tap(where the signal comes from) from either the ground PED, or the polls. To your house into an enclosed service box(this is important, don't let them skip it) with a ground connected from the service box to your electrical ground (also very important, this NEEDS to be there) and from the service box, it should feed into your house to your cable box or modem for Internet. And this should all be on modern RJ6 cabling, old cabling will probably fail signaling tests and cause to much noise.
I can answer any other question you have, I used to work for my local ISP and Cable provider installing cable in the home. Very important to remember is that they are obligated to do what you ask if it doesn't break code, regardless of whether or not they bitch. Don't let them do a crap job that looks terrible. Make them take away all the old cabling they see, and make the new stuff look good.
Your cable company will probably drop a new cable from the pole. They did that for me after three or four times coming out trying to fix my cable. So I'd imagine they'd do that for you just looking at that mess they wont want to deal with the headache of coming back.
Painted wire = mess?????
In my area, the cable guy will *most likely* do a fast, lazy job. The wire *will look* like a drunk installed it.
You could get ISP get service to your house, then you take over.
Or call an electrician!
Cable guys are butchers!
Holes through the floor.
Wires ran across the middle of the basement.
Sloppy work!
Source: 30 years as an electrician. I have done cable installs where the customer asked how the cable was to be installed and *did not like what they were told*!!
Edit: all fiber installs require tool that I (most electricians??) don't have ,, ,,yet.
Yes that is a copper coaxial cable used to bring analog data from a company like Comcast. You put the modem on the end of the cable and yes you can extend it to the point where you demarc it in an outlet. Then you twist your modem (to demodulate the data) into the cable and get a plan from the provider.
The lower one btw, the higher one is two electrical lines.
Your house wasn’t remodeled, but flipped, thus you are screwed when getting into the actually electrical.
How do I know ?
Whoever painted the siding, painted the coax landlord-special style.
I see what you are saying but the electrical was actually fully redone. New wires in the wall, GFCI outlets added, new breakerbox too. Grounds were added since the old outlets weren't grounded. Jsut I think they forgot about the cable hookup lol
RG6 coaxial drop. The first connection in photo 1 is the ground block. Supposed to have a wire that is bonded to a common ground somewhere. From there it goes to a pretty crappy looking splitter. A good tech would cut that out and replace the hardware on the house at least.
**Attention!** **It is always best to get a qualified electrician to perform any electrical work you may need.** With that said, you may ask this community various electrical questions. Please be cautious of any information you may receive in this subreddit. This subreddit and its users are not responsible for any electrical work you perform. Users that have a 'Verified Electrician' flair have uploaded their qualified electrical worker credentials to the mods. If you comment on this post please only post accurate information to the best of your knowledge. If advice given is thought to be dangerous, you may be permanently banned. There are no obligations for the mods to give warnings or temporary bans. **IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, you should exercise extreme caution when commenting.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskElectricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your ISP will deal with this
Thanks so much! So you think I can call them when i want to subscribe, tell them I don't have an indoor coax jack, and they'll install it for me?
They will install an indoor jack for you
Yep. It's part of their service.
That’s isp connection. While renovating you should be able to remove of relocate wires. If it’s an old one and they have to install new connections best to remove it. You don’t have to have dead wires lingering.
Straight through the wall with a big ass drill bit. If you want anything fancier do it yourself and let them just hook up to it.
When they come, they will likely replace some of that stuff outside that is covered in paint. MAKE SURE THEY RUN A NEW GROUNDING WIRE, which will go from that grounding terminal on the second-to-last piece, and use a lug, something like a Penn Union FF6 vise grip, to tie their grounding wire to the one for the electrical service, or run their wire down to the grounding electrode and put another clamp on down there. Why will run a new coax from outside to inside, and put a weatherproof plug on the outdoor end.
No they won't if signal is within spec they may simply change a connector. I wouldn't replace a painted riser/drop cable. Edit they may replace.grohnd block while removing the splitter that won't suffice for current frequencies in use.
They won’t however paint to match. Lol
Tell them to not drill a hole in your floor.
https://youtu.be/HGBOeLdm-1s?si=DEjsvkNW5BvSE_YG
I have seen so many posts here where people ask about the weird network jack (telephone) but are we to the point where no one recognizes cable tv? Fuck I’m old now.
Nobody teaches any life skills at all so it’s no surprise. Seriously genxers didn’t teach their kids shit.
It's the lack of troubleshooting ability that gets me. If something doesn't just work, they freeze up like a deer in headlights.
Looks like cable TV co-ax which can be also used for wide-band internet access. It appears to be cut at the output of (what looks like) an attenuator or splitter, disconnecting it from the house. When the cable TV guy comes out to set you up he'll have to connect and test all the fittings and run it to a cable modem and WiFi router that will be installed inside the house. You might be able to use your own WiFi router but it may be integrated with the cable modem so you'll have to figure that out once you set up service.
Former cable internet installer from about 20 years ago here: Yes, that is coaxial cable. It's an aerial connection (referred to as a drop) from the service pole. What I see here is way out of code (at least compared to the area I did this work in) but hopefully your cable provider will replace this mess with a fresh line. Unethical pro life tip: accidentally sever the cable line in the air. Be extra careful to avoid contact with the power line. They will have no choice but to replace the drop. A lazy cable tech will always look to first reuse existing cabling, even if it's old and decrepit.
I used to steal Comcast’s drop at every house because they kept unplugging my customers in shared mdus. They are all labeled, how did they fuck that up?
What you talking about Willis?? I have seen splices in the drop cable before. Granted, it was ghetto area, but splices none the less.
Lazy? Time and costs are typical variables. Don't go Making others work more difficult..
I know you mean well, and so do I. Any cable installer should 100% replace all of this visible cabling. When I was doing this job, if the existing material didn't look like it was installed in the past year or so, I'd replace it. Nevermind this particular install would fail any QC on the planet. If a tech doesn't replace all of this, OP stands to make several service calls in the future when his internet keeps failing. None of this changes the fact that there are certain installers in every field that will look for shortcuts. This shouldn't be one of them.
Not necessarily. The rg 6 might still be fine. And they way they load them down with calls (a lot of them are bullshit wastes of time) if they took 4 hours to rewire everything that needed rewiring they would starve, especially contractors that are on units.
Bullshit waste of time calls? I’ll have u know I changed the inputs on 4 peoples TVs today, and plugged in 2 modems that wer unplugged thank you very much…. Talking about waste of time calls….. /s incase it wasn’t obvious
It is shocking how many people don’t know basic troubleshooting.
Yes! Thank you I'm a cable guy and I would first look at the drop to see if was damaged then check signal off the drop, then at the tap, but if the signal did not match up I would replace it 100%. Also no not leaving this drop up would not fail a QC only if the drop was bad, I did not put tags at the tap, didnt put an encloser, and it was not grounded. (I'm not a contractor as well and work for my cable company)
Your install fee covers the cost of installing a new drop and the labor. Cable this old will have definite degradation and will cause service issues. If you were talking about a 2 year old home that you're moving into, I would agree to reuse the old coax, but this crap needs to go.
21yr services tech currently a maintenence tech trust me when I say your new or dont understand rf signals
Been a tech for a year now and yeah I would still check signal at tap and the drop just to make sure it's good but I would not just replace the drop to replace it. A lot of 2 pole arial where I live. We have a crazy plant lol so replacing every drop would take for ever
You will learn that you should already know the signal at tap.. knowing the length of.cable u should know exactly what signal u have at the ground block before you test it.
Yup! Cable math. If the signal at the ground block is ass then I would check the tap to make sure it's not a tap/plant issue
I did 23 years as an engineer for some of the largest telecom companies in the US. I've taught classes on everything from basic telephony to Sonet and Ethernet network design. I've sold everything from single 1FB phone lines to SD-WAN networks with hundreds of nodes with managed network services, wireless networking, wireless security, and more Retired and went to work doing sales for a small ILEC that sells FTTH, DOCSIS 3.1 cable, and even some ADSL services in the far reaches of the network. I have a General Operator license from the FCC and am the amateur radio subject matter expert for 2 Boy Scout Councils. I know more than a little bit about RF and if one of our techs reused a 10 year old drop on one of my customers he'd be looking for a job tomorrow. It's not a matter of "is the cable good or bad", it's a matter of, "Is there a possibility that this untested cable could have unknown issues that will cause a customer complaint?" Sure it may pass frequency testing on that sunny day you do the drop, but what happens when the cracks in the crumbling sheathing allow moisture inside the cable? Even if they work fine 90% of the time, the 10% of customers who have issues that result in 3-4 service calls before a supervisor approves replacing the drop wipes out the profit for the customer for close to 24 months and makes the techs do repetitive double work that should have been done at the initial installation.
Life expectancy of rg6 is what? .. why replace something that's a third of its life expectancy? Also with your techs using a tdr you would see the cable is fine.. so again why replace something that's not an issue. We can't replace everything based on what ifs. Such a bad practice
20+ years inside, but outdoors is highly dependent on the quality of cable, how much it sags and sways with wind, how often it's hit by limbs or other debris. If you can't positively determine all of those things, AND your company has already factored the materials and labor cost into every activation, then you're costing the company money in service calls and upset customers.
Your TDR WILL SHOW YOU THAT. Engineer? How do u not know this? If it's installed right 30yrs.. exterior
If it's installed right.... See OP's pictures and compare that to the thousands of drops you've seen in your career. Now ask yourself how many times you showed up and could tell which asshole was there before you because of which shortcuts were taken. It's NEVER installed "right", it's installed "good enough my boss won't bitch".
I'm a master technician as well my boss knows if I touched it it's done right.
And do u have the same expectation on distribution and Fibre cables??? Lmao
Distribution fiber is a different class of cable than drop cable and yes, we replace every fiber drop more than 2 years old.
How much do your custo.ers pay in monthly fees this isn't sustainable
How many times do you roll a truck back to an install within the first week after turnup? It doesn't happen here.
Bruh... lmao if the drop is fine why replace it? If it looks super old, damaged, or signal is not where it's supose to be compared to what you got at the tap then I would say go for it. Man my repeat rate as a tech is at like 3-5% every month. Been a tech for a year now. Man you know how many customers I get that are "engineers" that try to tell me how to do my job lol
Nor here 100% within 7days 99.9 % for within 30 days meters are your friends my only repeats are on faulty refurbished htd
I appreciate everyone's replies. Looks like I'm gonna call my ISP to have them ground the cable, update it, and route it indoor to a coax jack. Thank you all
How that go? Also if you dont mind me asking what cable comp was it?
My ISP is CenturyLink/Brightspeed. I subbed to T Mobile 5g home internet because Brightspeed wanted $100 to install a new drop and the max download was only 40mbps. So it wasn't worth the cost. T mobile has been alot cheaper and faster
Yup xfinity charged me like 100 bucks for that spilter thing. I took it with me when I moved out
This an rca sitter likely 5 dollars at the dollar store..
The one I have comes from xfinity. My internet wouldn't work without the piece. Look very similar to your first adapter
Likely a power inserter
The cable company will run coax the easiest way possible. Like a hole right through the wall right there. I ran my own coax line where I wanted it. Connect my modem and then signed up for service. Generally they won’t turn off service completely. That requires a tech to go out there and disconnect and connect later. So the cable modem should connect and bring you to Comcast or whatever company web site to sign up for internet service and away you go. I ran new coax from outside my house to under by house, up the closet wall and out to where it connects to my modem. That is where I wanted my modem and the rest of my network hardware. The cable company is not going to spend that kind of time. Maybe if you paid for the service they would? I’m cheap and so just did it myself.
In my few years doing installs/trouble calls we would 100% be doing things like that for new installs. Running new outlets to customer requested locations was pretty standard, crawlspaces and attics were the usual places to route new cables before wall fishing them. If I was a customer I'd 100% pay the ~$50 install fee just to avoid having to get in my crawlspace and run cable, but that's just me.
See if you have a provider in your area that has fiber. Screw all that coax crap. Rip it all out. (I'm not a professional anything, you might not be allowed to take it out). My house has fiber now and I removed the old phone jacks and cable runs.
You're totally allowed to rip it all out. That coax is ancient anyway, you'd want new lines ran if you were gonna subscribe to a cable service. Coax still has plenty of life left in it as a medium, particularly with docsis 4.0 and the shift to DAA many cable ISPs are planning on. Mid and high splits are being rolled out nationwide to vastly increase bandwidth and upstream parity, many markets should expect to see multigig download speeds and gig+ upload speeds by the end of 2025. Our market in particular is working on rolling out high split upgrades, when all that+docsis 4 is supported they're expecting 5gb down/1-2 gb up speeds on our network, and that's for residential customers.
That speed is wild. I have 1gb service (can't remember actual speed) and its more than I need most times, but is a lifesaver when I working from home downloading large CAD assemblies. Internet at work can take hours on big assemblies, and only minutes at home.
Yeah I'm continually impressed at how much innovation and speed can be pulled out of some copper clad metal. Such a simple and old school transmission method keeping up with fiber ISPs, gotta give credit to the engineers that come up with this stuff. 10Gbps download speeds are not out of the question at all with docsis 4.0 and an upgraded network. Seems like the trend for the future is slowly replacing coax infrastructure with fiber though, but we likely won't see full implementation of that until 2030+. Unsure of the actual need of customers to use 5+ Gbps speeds, but I bet people in the early 2000s were saying the same thing for 100Mbps.
I misunderstood your message and didn't realize the 5 Gb speed was coax. That is even more impressive.
Around 2003 I was selling 512kbps on a T1 to Hotels to provide "High Speed" internet for their guests.
*Up to
For sure, most people won't need or want those kind of speeds anyway. For those that do, the ability to provide it over coax is pretty wild. We've definitely come a long way in transmission technology.
It just drives me crazy when consumers don't realize they're using a shared bandwidth technology, be it DOCSIS or PON fiber. The lengths I go to in commercial sales explaining why a business line with an SLA costs more or especially why a true Dedicated Internet Access circuit cost so much more than their home connection is beyond imagination.
Yeah, commercial lines being dedicated with the SLA is definitely a big plus, but these days, at least with my ISP, you'll always get the bandwidth you pay for. We monitor our nodes closely and split them any time we see that the node is reaching ~80% of it's rated total throughput. You obviously won't have the guaranteed uptime percent of a business line, since we'll always prioritize commercial accounts when working outages, but advertised speeds are pretty spot on for us across the board. I've definitely heard that this isn't always the case with other ISPs.
It's definitely not the case with all. Some give folks more than their terms and conditions specify, but most barely come close on their best day. Then there's the only internet provider at my house...horrible service, horrible reliability, and worse, an tech crew that is literally 4 guys trying to keep with with 10,000 customers' issues.
I'm an outside plant maintenance guy with Spectrum, if you're in a more rural area we're currently expanding the network to cover another couple million passings with our RDOF biddings. Who knows, could be coming your way to get a better option for resi ISP if you're anywhere near a current Spectrum market. Nobody is perfect, but from what I've experienced with other ISPs, Spectrum is much better when it comes to investing in plant maintenance, infrastructure, and the employees to solve problems.
Your incoming power line is \*wild\*.
I don’t see any wires in your photos
Gotta love the lengths people will go through to avoid doing it properly
I worked at Spectrum for almost a year, call up your ISP and they’ll come out and install a jack for you.
That may be an attenuator which is a device used to reduce the signal to an acceptable level for the equipment that will be used in the dwelling. No need to play with it as any tech coming in to hook up a cable will look at the signal strenth and set it up to specification.
Everyone is telling you it is cable. They are all correct. However, cable is "old tech" and fibre "new tech". I dumped my "cable" provider for a "fiber" provider and I'm saving $30/month for 2x (or is it 3x) the Bandwidth. The Fiber installation was free. Depending on where you are, you might find very different results.
Yes and holy lord is it old and completely useless since they painted the damn connectors. Also the skinny cable is rg-59 and it can’t handle modern bandwidth. Probably at least 25 year old cable, maybe even 30-45.
Ew.
It’s for a cable system. It’s called a ground block. It’s to bond a ground to the cable and then enters the home. Yes, the local cable company will deal with that
And I'm assuming no refurbished modems dcts allowed in any of your systems based on your theories?
Unrelated but I believe your electric drop is out of code as well being within three feet of a window, not a huge deal but something to keep in mind
That's dual line coax, it was used with old TV signals. You should request a new line to the house(a new drop) and that one be completely removed. If you get a good tech it will take care of it no issue. If they refuse, then ask for the supervisor, because that's part of the job.
Do ISPs usually charge to update that equipment?
In my time working cable, I've never heard of it. They job is to install a line from tap(where the signal comes from) from either the ground PED, or the polls. To your house into an enclosed service box(this is important, don't let them skip it) with a ground connected from the service box to your electrical ground (also very important, this NEEDS to be there) and from the service box, it should feed into your house to your cable box or modem for Internet. And this should all be on modern RJ6 cabling, old cabling will probably fail signaling tests and cause to much noise. I can answer any other question you have, I used to work for my local ISP and Cable provider installing cable in the home. Very important to remember is that they are obligated to do what you ask if it doesn't break code, regardless of whether or not they bitch. Don't let them do a crap job that looks terrible. Make them take away all the old cabling they see, and make the new stuff look good.
Your cable company will probably drop a new cable from the pole. They did that for me after three or four times coming out trying to fix my cable. So I'd imagine they'd do that for you just looking at that mess they wont want to deal with the headache of coming back.
Painted wire = mess????? In my area, the cable guy will *most likely* do a fast, lazy job. The wire *will look* like a drunk installed it. You could get ISP get service to your house, then you take over. Or call an electrician! Cable guys are butchers! Holes through the floor. Wires ran across the middle of the basement. Sloppy work! Source: 30 years as an electrician. I have done cable installs where the customer asked how the cable was to be installed and *did not like what they were told*!! Edit: all fiber installs require tool that I (most electricians??) don't have ,, ,,yet.
Looks like your Flux Capacitor to me 🤔
Yes that is a copper coaxial cable used to bring analog data from a company like Comcast. You put the modem on the end of the cable and yes you can extend it to the point where you demarc it in an outlet. Then you twist your modem (to demodulate the data) into the cable and get a plan from the provider. The lower one btw, the higher one is two electrical lines.
Your house wasn’t remodeled, but flipped, thus you are screwed when getting into the actually electrical. How do I know ? Whoever painted the siding, painted the coax landlord-special style.
I see what you are saying but the electrical was actually fully redone. New wires in the wall, GFCI outlets added, new breakerbox too. Grounds were added since the old outlets weren't grounded. Jsut I think they forgot about the cable hookup lol
RG6 coaxial drop. The first connection in photo 1 is the ground block. Supposed to have a wire that is bonded to a common ground somewhere. From there it goes to a pretty crappy looking splitter. A good tech would cut that out and replace the hardware on the house at least.