Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months(bbc.com)
bbc.com
Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-54239180
302 comments
Everytime i turn on my fan, my computer screen goes black for 2 seconds, only when used on same outlet.
That's not RF interference, but a phenomenon known as brownout [0].
When the fan spins up it draws more power, this causes the voltage to drop at the outlet, which causes the powersupply in the monitor to (temporarily) shut down.
Normally, this shouldn't happen. So either the monitor is badly designed or old (the capacitors may have dried out), or you have a wiring issue in your house. The latter is a fire hazard. You should test the same scenario with other outlets in your house. If it does not happen there, then there may be something wrong with the wiring to your computer outlet, have an electrician look at it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownout_(electricity)
When the fan spins up it draws more power, this causes the voltage to drop at the outlet, which causes the powersupply in the monitor to (temporarily) shut down.
Normally, this shouldn't happen. So either the monitor is badly designed or old (the capacitors may have dried out), or you have a wiring issue in your house. The latter is a fire hazard. You should test the same scenario with other outlets in your house. If it does not happen there, then there may be something wrong with the wiring to your computer outlet, have an electrician look at it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownout_(electricity)
Weird its a newish monitor 1 yr, also the pc is connected there and no issue. The one not usual thing is that they are all connected to a tplink powerline. ill try without the powerline.
Note to armchair troubleshooters nearby: It seems to be a passthrough connection from one of these:
https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/powerline/tl-pa70...
There are two types of fan motors, AC and DC. A lot of small fans would be DC fans, which have their own power supply/converter. Larger ceiling fans are often AC fans. Depending on where you are in the world, one or the other type might be common for some applications. In my experience, a small desktop fan would be a DC fan.
Both fan types have transient behavior at startup. It takes more energy to get the fan moving than to keep it moving. In principle, a basic fan looks something like a short circuit when the blades aren't turning.
This startup behavior manifests differently for AC vs DC fans. For more, here's a good summary showing steady-state current draw (figs. 3/4) and startup (fig. 5).
https://www.digikey.com/Web%20Export/Supplier%20Content/Coma...
Maybe the passthru connection on the TP-link doesn't like the inrush current demand -- and it's not the outlet itself.
https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/powerline/tl-pa70...
There are two types of fan motors, AC and DC. A lot of small fans would be DC fans, which have their own power supply/converter. Larger ceiling fans are often AC fans. Depending on where you are in the world, one or the other type might be common for some applications. In my experience, a small desktop fan would be a DC fan.
Both fan types have transient behavior at startup. It takes more energy to get the fan moving than to keep it moving. In principle, a basic fan looks something like a short circuit when the blades aren't turning.
This startup behavior manifests differently for AC vs DC fans. For more, here's a good summary showing steady-state current draw (figs. 3/4) and startup (fig. 5).
https://www.digikey.com/Web%20Export/Supplier%20Content/Coma...
Maybe the passthru connection on the TP-link doesn't like the inrush current demand -- and it's not the outlet itself.
Thats the one. Took it out no more blackouts.
Electrician here. Measure voltage at the outlet. It should be +/- 10% of nominal voltage. Eg. 207-253 in 230 volt land. You have to measure under load, so plug in some high current device. If voltage drops below 207 while a resistive heater is running, call somebody.
Back in Windows 98 times, I had bought a new halogen desk lamp. I put it on my desk, turned it on, and my machine promptly BSODed. It was reproducible as well. The switch on that lamp was effectively a "push here for BSOD" device.
What probably happened was high inrush current on the iron core transformer, and shitty 90s chinese power supply caused the opposite of a voltage spike, which I don't know the english term for.
The lamp became my bedside table lamp. A duty it serves to this day.
What probably happened was high inrush current on the iron core transformer, and shitty 90s chinese power supply caused the opposite of a voltage spike, which I don't know the english term for.
The lamp became my bedside table lamp. A duty it serves to this day.
> opposite of a voltage spike
"Voltage drop" or "brownout"
"Voltage drop" or "brownout"
The joys of shared medium. IIRC, AVM FritzBox'es with cable modems are ridiculously locked down compared to their DSL counterparts to prevent people from hacking the DOCSIS transmitters to flood the cable with junk.
> hacking the DOCSIS transmitters to flood the cable with junk
Can't any other modem (on which you have root access) be used to flood it? Furthermore why are they even worried about a modem when someone with malicious intent can just ground the cable or even send mains electricity into it and permanently damage all the equipment on the line?
Can't any other modem (on which you have root access) be used to flood it? Furthermore why are they even worried about a modem when someone with malicious intent can just ground the cable or even send mains electricity into it and permanently damage all the equipment on the line?
Why mains?
https://youtu.be/9M_OX-O9JKk
> Furthermore why are they even worried about a modem when someone with malicious intent can just ground the cable or even send mains electricity into it and permanently damage all the equipment on the line?
At least as far as I know, cable-tv networks and devices are protected against both of these failure modes: grounding should trigger a fuse in the amplifier which means at worst it's one's own house that is cut off, sending mains on the line should not be problematic as overvoltage protection is present anywhere across the line because of lightning strike protection, and customer-side equipment should be capacitively coupled only.
Sending crap on intended frequencies that have no protection across the network however is a real problem.
At least as far as I know, cable-tv networks and devices are protected against both of these failure modes: grounding should trigger a fuse in the amplifier which means at worst it's one's own house that is cut off, sending mains on the line should not be problematic as overvoltage protection is present anywhere across the line because of lightning strike protection, and customer-side equipment should be capacitively coupled only.
Sending crap on intended frequencies that have no protection across the network however is a real problem.
Fiber is immune to this kind of thing isn't it?
So it's posssibly more of a story about the ISP being cheap.
So it's posssibly more of a story about the ISP being cheap.
There might be fiber running up the village.
If the speed doesn't saturate DSL or coax standards, running fiber to every home is not very wise, even for long term.
Until recently, fiber was not even that cheap to distribute in larger cities. It's been 3-4 years since the city I live in switched to FTTX distribution.
If the speed doesn't saturate DSL or coax standards, running fiber to every home is not very wise, even for long term.
Until recently, fiber was not even that cheap to distribute in larger cities. It's been 3-4 years since the city I live in switched to FTTX distribution.
> running fiber to every home is not very wise, even for long term.
Why not?
Old copper will keep deteriorating and spending money repairing it is a waste. Fiber on the other hand is future-proof for the next ~50 years provided it's kept in good condition as you can increase bandwidth by upgrading equipment at both ends without replacing the actual glass.
Why not?
Old copper will keep deteriorating and spending money repairing it is a waste. Fiber on the other hand is future-proof for the next ~50 years provided it's kept in good condition as you can increase bandwidth by upgrading equipment at both ends without replacing the actual glass.
> Old copper will keep deteriorating and spending money repairing it is a waste.
Because until fiber becomes economical, you can use your existing infrastructure and keep it up for minimal expense. A carefully installed outdoor cable is extremely resilient to elements, even over long term.
Then, after a certain point, instead of running two infrastructures, you can piggyback everything to even higher capacity fiber and distribute with it only. Break it out with FTTX infra or so-called pizza boxes so, you can provide the same services with less strands and maintenance (presuming your netops team is competent).
Because until fiber becomes economical, you can use your existing infrastructure and keep it up for minimal expense. A carefully installed outdoor cable is extremely resilient to elements, even over long term.
Then, after a certain point, instead of running two infrastructures, you can piggyback everything to even higher capacity fiber and distribute with it only. Break it out with FTTX infra or so-called pizza boxes so, you can provide the same services with less strands and maintenance (presuming your netops team is competent).
How deploying fiber more becomes economical? I expect the cost won't decrease much unlike semiconductor. So If it won't be more economical, faster replacement is better strategy.
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Chișinău - the capital of Moldova, the poorest country in Europe - had fiber Internet back in 2008. I don't think North America couldn't afford fiber earlier too, it's just why do it when your current infrastructure works and you can milk the customers as you please due to lack of competition.
If you cannot provide the network speeds to saturate the network you install, using smaller pipes, investing in uplink speeds and then replacing the infra is cheaper on the longer term because since higher speeds become the standard, the equipment gets cheaper and better built.
Telco class equipment is not exactly cheap in any standard.
Telco class equipment is not exactly cheap in any standard.
"The Capital" is the key here - I bet service to small remote villages not so much.
> If the speed doesn't saturate DSL or coax standards, running fiber to every home is not very wise, even for long term.
Why not? Fiber is fast, less prone to rust, doesn't have the shared media problem of cable internet and is cheap to maintain. If the uplink gets saturated you can replace one big fiber instead of putting additional hardware in the local POP to get just a little bit more speed out of DSL.
It was economical enough to put fiber down in the 20k village where I was born about a decade ago even though there was already cable and 30mbps DSL. I can understand the US being hard to get fiber down due to exclusivity contracts with ISPs for buildings or even cities as well as the distances you need to dig to reach a city, but as far as I know the UK is not affected by any of that.
Why not? Fiber is fast, less prone to rust, doesn't have the shared media problem of cable internet and is cheap to maintain. If the uplink gets saturated you can replace one big fiber instead of putting additional hardware in the local POP to get just a little bit more speed out of DSL.
It was economical enough to put fiber down in the 20k village where I was born about a decade ago even though there was already cable and 30mbps DSL. I can understand the US being hard to get fiber down due to exclusivity contracts with ISPs for buildings or even cities as well as the distances you need to dig to reach a city, but as far as I know the UK is not affected by any of that.
"as far as I know the UK is not affected by any of that."
The UK is affected by pig-ignorant landords refusing to give wayleave to carriers to install fibre. IIRC the problem affects 70% of fibre installs.
Westminster are working on an amendment to the law which will address this very problem.
The UK is affected by pig-ignorant landords refusing to give wayleave to carriers to install fibre. IIRC the problem affects 70% of fibre installs.
Westminster are working on an amendment to the law which will address this very problem.
Yeah, funny how ISPs in rich countries can't afford infrastructure upgrades.
Until some competition shows up. Too bad Google Fiber stopped expanding in the US, i remember reading that everywhere they showed up the "traditional" ISPs suddenly found money to upgrade their infrastructure and reduce prices.
Until some competition shows up. Too bad Google Fiber stopped expanding in the US, i remember reading that everywhere they showed up the "traditional" ISPs suddenly found money to upgrade their infrastructure and reduce prices.
> Yeah, funny how ISPs in rich countries can't afford infrastructure upgrades.
Yeah, you're right. I'm writing my answers with pure naivety. There's also "Meh, we're earning enough money, no need to make customers happier" mentality which I find really, really wrong.
Yeah, you're right. I'm writing my answers with pure naivety. There's also "Meh, we're earning enough money, no need to make customers happier" mentality which I find really, really wrong.
Oh no. They never feel they're earning enough money. But they can just add another unjustified fee to your bill whenever they feel like it to increase profits :)
This happened in SF. Sonic ran fiber out in Sunset. Suddenly, and by coincidence I'm sure, AT&T found the money to start upgrading to fiber in the exact same neighborhoods.
If you live in SF definitely check if Sonic's own fiber is available to you. Most of Sunset and Richmond have it. Some parts of Castro, Mission, and SOMA (I think) last I checked. $60/month for gigabit symmetric.
If you live in SF definitely check if Sonic's own fiber is available to you. Most of Sunset and Richmond have it. Some parts of Castro, Mission, and SOMA (I think) last I checked. $60/month for gigabit symmetric.
Not funny, but real: the price is a lot higher in rich countries than in poor countries. Fiber itself is almost dirt cheap, installing it makes a huge difference: in my area everybody hanged fiber to the existing light poles with almost no cost, it looks like a forest but you have fiber anywhere. If you want to dig and put fiber the cost is several orders of magnitude higher.
The company where my brother works linked 2 branches a few miles away with fiber almost 10 years ago for less than $1,000 in a single night in the middle of a capital city. Permits? No. Rent to the pole owners? No. This is how most of the city got 1 Gbps internet for ~ $10/month.
The company where my brother works linked 2 branches a few miles away with fiber almost 10 years ago for less than $1,000 in a single night in the middle of a capital city. Permits? No. Rent to the pole owners? No. This is how most of the city got 1 Gbps internet for ~ $10/month.
The only thing saving rural areas are cooperatives. Our cooperative committed to running true gigabit fiber to all members within two years of announcing it as an option (and lifetime price locks!!!).
Then they committed to running it to all non-members living in the service area who sign up within 5 more years.
If it weren't for cooperatives, we'd be left in the dirt for decades. Our local township signed an agreement with AT&T back in the day for AT&T to offer high speed internet. So, their high speed is dial-up that they have never upgraded, but the agreement grants them a monopoly.
I blame the local township government for not knowing what the hell they were doing, and I blame AT&T for sitting on a monopoly and never doing anything with it.
Either way, Fiber now!!
Then they committed to running it to all non-members living in the service area who sign up within 5 more years.
If it weren't for cooperatives, we'd be left in the dirt for decades. Our local township signed an agreement with AT&T back in the day for AT&T to offer high speed internet. So, their high speed is dial-up that they have never upgraded, but the agreement grants them a monopoly.
I blame the local township government for not knowing what the hell they were doing, and I blame AT&T for sitting on a monopoly and never doing anything with it.
Either way, Fiber now!!
Fiber is immune to this kind of interference yes. However fiber is not immune to the ISP being incompetent and taking 18 months to figure out a relatively simple problem, so I suspect the same ISP will also manage to screw things up when it comes to diagnosing fiber issues.
[deleted]
There's a push in the UK over the last few years to get broadband out to the small villages, who've been stuck on pathetically slow due to their distance from telephone exchanges.
How it's being pushed out is a hodge-podge of technologies, Microwave, FTTx, Wi-fi repeaters - and mixtures of those and more. My guess is that it was the latter that was being interfered with in this case.
As to why it took so long to diagnose, well telcos being useless is pretty common (although 18 months is quite impressive).
Maybe they were just blaming the backhaul, but once that was fixed, was obvious problem was on the last-mile (and may have been different providers)
How it's being pushed out is a hodge-podge of technologies, Microwave, FTTx, Wi-fi repeaters - and mixtures of those and more. My guess is that it was the latter that was being interfered with in this case.
As to why it took so long to diagnose, well telcos being useless is pretty common (although 18 months is quite impressive).
Maybe they were just blaming the backhaul, but once that was fixed, was obvious problem was on the last-mile (and may have been different providers)
> a hodge-podge of technologies, Microwave, FTTx, Wi-fi repeaters - and mixtures of those and more
Most of which is being falsely advertised as fibre and peppered with bullshit marketing terms like "superfast" or "ultrafast" which means consumers have a very hard time comparing the different offers and understanding what they're actually getting.
Most of which is being falsely advertised as fibre and peppered with bullshit marketing terms like "superfast" or "ultrafast" which means consumers have a very hard time comparing the different offers and understanding what they're actually getting.
What do you expect every out of the way place has its own challenges.
> Most of which is being falsely advertised as fibre
Last I checked If part of the journey is fibre (to the cabinet etc), they can legally advertise as fibre. They can’t advertise a service as fibre if non of the journey uses fibre.
These days the advertisements need to make performance claims, so they can’t just say “it’s fibre” they need to say what speed you’ll get.
Last I checked If part of the journey is fibre (to the cabinet etc), they can legally advertise as fibre. They can’t advertise a service as fibre if non of the journey uses fibre.
These days the advertisements need to make performance claims, so they can’t just say “it’s fibre” they need to say what speed you’ll get.
In this case wouldn't pretty much any technology qualify as eventually there would be fibre back at the datacenter, even in case of 56k dial-up?
Regardless of whether it's legal it is still a scummy thing to do and a major failure from the regulators. Calling crap like cable or DSL as "fibre" not only muddies the waters (DSL performance highly depends on wire quality, so one "fibre" might be 10x faster than your "fibre" despite them both being "fibre") and makes it super hard for people to know what they're actually getting.
When it comes to speeds, how is that determined considering DSL speeds are unknown until you actually try it (and by that time you're already in a contract)? Is it just a meaningless "up to <theoretical maximum>" figure?
Regardless of whether it's legal it is still a scummy thing to do and a major failure from the regulators. Calling crap like cable or DSL as "fibre" not only muddies the waters (DSL performance highly depends on wire quality, so one "fibre" might be 10x faster than your "fibre" despite them both being "fibre") and makes it super hard for people to know what they're actually getting.
When it comes to speeds, how is that determined considering DSL speeds are unknown until you actually try it (and by that time you're already in a contract)? Is it just a meaningless "up to <theoretical maximum>" figure?
Most egregious example I've seen of this is Eir (formerly Eircom), the main Irish telco. They used to advertise some of their _ADSL_ as fibre! By this they meant the exchange had fibre backhaul; back in the day many exchanges had microwave backhaul, in some cases as low as 8Mbit/sec for a whole town.
One of the more curious ones is FTTrN (Fibre to the Remote Node) - which is essentially a miniature VDSL DSLAM at the top of a telegraph pole. Well, that's how it started out - but it seems they're using it as a local node to run FTTP as well now - the only issue being that they want to run the fibre in the ground from the pole to the property, rather than taking the existing aerial route. (And that carries associated excess construction costs).
It has been popping up in quite a few villages in East Yorkshire due to being paid for by the county rural broadband fund.
It has been popping up in quite a few villages in East Yorkshire due to being paid for by the county rural broadband fund.
In the UK we've got two levels: the ISPs (who don't put cable or fibre in the ground) and the network (who don't provide ISP services but do maintain the cables / fibre).
In this example customers would have been calling their ISP to complain, and having to go through the layers of escalation.
Also, it's a pretty remote location. Lots of rural areas in the UK have terrible Internet. I think this is the area in Google maps.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Aberhosan,+Machynlleth+S...
In this example customers would have been calling their ISP to complain, and having to go through the layers of escalation.
Also, it's a pretty remote location. Lots of rural areas in the UK have terrible Internet. I think this is the area in Google maps.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Aberhosan,+Machynlleth+S...
> In the UK we've got two levels: the ISPs (who don't put cable or fibre in the ground) and the network (who don't provide ISP services but do maintain the cables / fibre).
Mostly true, I believe Virgin put their own cables in the ground, and younger companies like hyperoptic.
Mostly true, I believe Virgin put their own cables in the ground, and younger companies like hyperoptic.
More or less, but Virgin inherited most of their legacy fibre from the likes of Telewest, NTL / Cable & Wireess, Vidoetron, & Cable London.
These days the Virgin name is just about brand recognition.
These days the Virgin name is just about brand recognition.
I’m not sure what your point is?
They still manage their own infrastructure regardless what their company name is. They don’t use another supplier like openreach for their infra which was my point.
They still manage their own infrastructure regardless what their company name is. They don’t use another supplier like openreach for their infra which was my point.
It's only a couple of miles down the road from Staylittle, "the village cut off from the web":
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-40108145
Either broadband is truly awful out that way (probably this, TBH) or one of the local Openreach engineers is related to a BBC news reporter...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-40108145
Either broadband is truly awful out that way (probably this, TBH) or one of the local Openreach engineers is related to a BBC news reporter...
Fibre deployments are very expensive; very often it makes no sense whatsoever to deploy fibre, especially to rural communities.
Actually, it isn't!
While commercial fiber is usually point-to-point, consumer-grade fiber commonly uses a Passive Optical Network. Basically, a single fiber is split to multiple devices, and the upstream device allocates time slots to devices in which they can transmit. Just like what's happening with cable internet.
This means that, theoretically, a rogue end-user device could ignore the timeslot allocation and disrupt the signals sent by other devices. But because every user ends up using exactly the same equipment, I highly doubt this ever happens in practice. There's nobody connecting ancient analogue devices to fiberoptic cables, after all.
While commercial fiber is usually point-to-point, consumer-grade fiber commonly uses a Passive Optical Network. Basically, a single fiber is split to multiple devices, and the upstream device allocates time slots to devices in which they can transmit. Just like what's happening with cable internet.
This means that, theoretically, a rogue end-user device could ignore the timeslot allocation and disrupt the signals sent by other devices. But because every user ends up using exactly the same equipment, I highly doubt this ever happens in practice. There's nobody connecting ancient analogue devices to fiberoptic cables, after all.
Wow, that sounds like a crazy vulnerability... so could I shine a laser pointer (of the right wavelength) down a FTTH optical fibre, screw up the TDMA, and knock out network access for my village?
EDIT: my understanding isn't great here, but could I also listen outside of my time window and snoop on other traffic?
EDIT: my understanding isn't great here, but could I also listen outside of my time window and snoop on other traffic?
The GPON splitter is entirely passive, it's effectively a very fancy prism, so yes. It's a shared network. So is the road. You could just pour barrels of something nasty across the big road into the village and snarl everything up, but when they catch you I'm guessing the other villagers will be pretty unhappy about that.
In principle the technology might arrange for encryption keys between your endpoint and the smarts at a remote exchange so that it's impossible without physical access to another terminal to interpret messages for other terminals or impersonate them. In practice I doubt this is actually effective.
You should assume that traffic you send may be intercepted by an adversary. If you're confident that you don't have any adversaries then I suppose that needn't concern you, otherwise you should probably put most confidence in security at layers you can actually inspect, like TLS/ HTTPS rather than mysterious proprietary technologies like your FTTP installation.
There are standards for stuff like the encryption of GPON, but those standards aren't for implementing by us, so they leave lots of gaps that could be filled by your service provider with strong, security focused decision making, or could be "Eh, who cares just set the password as 'password' on all the terminals and stop fiddling with it". It doesn't take too much cynicism to assume the latter.
In principle the technology might arrange for encryption keys between your endpoint and the smarts at a remote exchange so that it's impossible without physical access to another terminal to interpret messages for other terminals or impersonate them. In practice I doubt this is actually effective.
You should assume that traffic you send may be intercepted by an adversary. If you're confident that you don't have any adversaries then I suppose that needn't concern you, otherwise you should probably put most confidence in security at layers you can actually inspect, like TLS/ HTTPS rather than mysterious proprietary technologies like your FTTP installation.
There are standards for stuff like the encryption of GPON, but those standards aren't for implementing by us, so they leave lots of gaps that could be filled by your service provider with strong, security focused decision making, or could be "Eh, who cares just set the password as 'password' on all the terminals and stop fiddling with it". It doesn't take too much cynicism to assume the latter.
Not necessarily. Some infrastructure providers build P2MP (point-to-multipoint) fibre topologies with passive splitters. Which means that there's a shared medium once again for some part of the way to the next switch/router. As I understand it, if one device does not honour the assigned timings and sends constantly, then this would result in the same problem as with the malfunctioning TV.
See e.g. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/ftth/ftth_epon.htm to learn more on the P2MP topic.
Someone needs to explain why it took 18 months to figure this out considering how simple it was to detect.
You have a problem that's repeatable right on schedule, that presumably shows up in the logs and affects multiple customers. It should be a no-brainer to send someone with test equipment out there to measure things in the field while the problem was happening.
You have a problem that's repeatable right on schedule, that presumably shows up in the logs and affects multiple customers. It should be a no-brainer to send someone with test equipment out there to measure things in the field while the problem was happening.
> that presumably shows up in the logs
Ah, no. SNR problems in the shared medium is not something wathced or logged. I remember losing internet connection on heavy rains sometimes because an odd cable shorted at an underground gallery. It wasn't FTTX then, so it was not easy to find.
> You have a problem that's repeatable right on schedule.
Similar problems rooted to bandwidth scarcity happened all the time, so in a village I'm not sure there's a lot of people who can discern the difference between, ah it's slow again and Oh, I lost connection, look at that SNR value. I better write a technical report to ISP.
> It should be a no-brainer to send someone with test equipment out there to measure things in the field while the problem was happening.
Even the simplest problem, if it's happening 1 in 10.000 is not a no-brainer because, you won't think that'd happen. Especially because of an old TV.
Ah, no. SNR problems in the shared medium is not something wathced or logged. I remember losing internet connection on heavy rains sometimes because an odd cable shorted at an underground gallery. It wasn't FTTX then, so it was not easy to find.
> You have a problem that's repeatable right on schedule.
Similar problems rooted to bandwidth scarcity happened all the time, so in a village I'm not sure there's a lot of people who can discern the difference between, ah it's slow again and Oh, I lost connection, look at that SNR value. I better write a technical report to ISP.
> It should be a no-brainer to send someone with test equipment out there to measure things in the field while the problem was happening.
Even the simplest problem, if it's happening 1 in 10.000 is not a no-brainer because, you won't think that'd happen. Especially because of an old TV.
> SNR problems in the shared medium is not something wathced or logged
This is a problem then and should be addressed.
> problems rooted to bandwidth scarcity happened all the time
But the ISP should be able to tell whether their uplink is saturated (and actually upgrade it if it happens too often), so if they're consistently getting complaints around a certain timeframe and the uplink is not saturated during those timeframes then it must be something else.
> Especially because of an old TV
But the diagnostic procedure had nothing to do whether it's an old TV or something else. It was caused by EMI and is detectable with readily-available test equipment which indeed detected it immediately.
Furthermore monitoring packet loss at the PPP level can be done (in fact, Andrews & Arnold - a small ISP in the UK - does it) so if an ISP doesn't have this in place to detect widespread faults then something is also wrong there - why are they operating with zero visibility on their network?
This is a problem then and should be addressed.
> problems rooted to bandwidth scarcity happened all the time
But the ISP should be able to tell whether their uplink is saturated (and actually upgrade it if it happens too often), so if they're consistently getting complaints around a certain timeframe and the uplink is not saturated during those timeframes then it must be something else.
> Especially because of an old TV
But the diagnostic procedure had nothing to do whether it's an old TV or something else. It was caused by EMI and is detectable with readily-available test equipment which indeed detected it immediately.
Furthermore monitoring packet loss at the PPP level can be done (in fact, Andrews & Arnold - a small ISP in the UK - does it) so if an ISP doesn't have this in place to detect widespread faults then something is also wrong there - why are they operating with zero visibility on their network?
> But the diagnostic procedure had nothing to do whether it's an old TV or something else. It was caused by EMI and is detectable with readily-available test equipment which indeed detected it immediately.
They concluded that something is fishy because normal procedures didn't fix anything. I'm not sure that this is a problem they diagnose 5 times a week.
> But the ISP should be able to tell whether their uplink is saturated (and actually upgrade it if it happens too often), so if they're consistently getting complaints around a certain timeframe and the uplink is not saturated during those timeframes then it must be something else.
Good luck escalating this problem from a village to correct people in a big-shiny-ISP(TM). They're too busy(!) to look for 10 customers' problem. I accept that 18 months in unacceptable but, this is the reality we're in. Support and Ops teams are always overworked because management thinks that "the load just doesn't justify more hands in that department".
> This is a problem then and should be addressed.
The backbone operators and ISPs doesn't monitor SNR levels because they're transient and doesn't provide meaningful data. If you want to do it, it's millions of connections. Also, Not everyone use the standard equipment provided by the ISP so, they cannot get info from all devices (e.g.: from mine). So, endpoint ops are complex if you're working on a WAN with random equipment.
Instead, using bandwidth graphs to find problems is more practical and reliable. Since the problem starts at 07:00, it shows like "They're not using their connections much, eh?" in the said graphs.
Disclosure: My workplace also happens to be the national academic network operator. I'm two hops away from a country-wide core router.
They concluded that something is fishy because normal procedures didn't fix anything. I'm not sure that this is a problem they diagnose 5 times a week.
> But the ISP should be able to tell whether their uplink is saturated (and actually upgrade it if it happens too often), so if they're consistently getting complaints around a certain timeframe and the uplink is not saturated during those timeframes then it must be something else.
Good luck escalating this problem from a village to correct people in a big-shiny-ISP(TM). They're too busy(!) to look for 10 customers' problem. I accept that 18 months in unacceptable but, this is the reality we're in. Support and Ops teams are always overworked because management thinks that "the load just doesn't justify more hands in that department".
> This is a problem then and should be addressed.
The backbone operators and ISPs doesn't monitor SNR levels because they're transient and doesn't provide meaningful data. If you want to do it, it's millions of connections. Also, Not everyone use the standard equipment provided by the ISP so, they cannot get info from all devices (e.g.: from mine). So, endpoint ops are complex if you're working on a WAN with random equipment.
Instead, using bandwidth graphs to find problems is more practical and reliable. Since the problem starts at 07:00, it shows like "They're not using their connections much, eh?" in the said graphs.
Disclosure: My workplace also happens to be the national academic network operator. I'm two hops away from a country-wide core router.
> because normal procedures didn't fix anything
But why did it take 18 months to realize that? You've got an issue that occurs consistently and is preventing customers from getting the service they're paying for (and are presumably in contracts so they can't even cancel without a major fight).
> They're too busy(!) to look for 10 customers' problem
So we're in agreement that this is unacceptable and resolving this problem has been grossly mismanaged and someone should be held accountable?
> doesn't monitor SNR levels because they're transient and doesn't provide meaningful data
This seems weird to me. You've got a nationwide network designed to run on old, poor quality wiring (the article doesn't specify whether it's DSL or coax, but it would apply to both). Wiring issues should be expected and automated processes in place to monitor it and quickly detect issues like this one.
> Not everyone use the standard equipment provided by the ISP
Can't this be collected at the DSLAM or CMTS level? Or in case of DSL, even at the PPP level? (Andrews & Arnold - a small DSL ISP in the UK - measures packet loss at that level and while it's not true SNR, it would be enough for these purposes as localized packet loss would pretty much always mean bad SNR or failing equipment)
But why did it take 18 months to realize that? You've got an issue that occurs consistently and is preventing customers from getting the service they're paying for (and are presumably in contracts so they can't even cancel without a major fight).
> They're too busy(!) to look for 10 customers' problem
So we're in agreement that this is unacceptable and resolving this problem has been grossly mismanaged and someone should be held accountable?
> doesn't monitor SNR levels because they're transient and doesn't provide meaningful data
This seems weird to me. You've got a nationwide network designed to run on old, poor quality wiring (the article doesn't specify whether it's DSL or coax, but it would apply to both). Wiring issues should be expected and automated processes in place to monitor it and quickly detect issues like this one.
> Not everyone use the standard equipment provided by the ISP
Can't this be collected at the DSLAM or CMTS level? Or in case of DSL, even at the PPP level? (Andrews & Arnold - a small DSL ISP in the UK - measures packet loss at that level and while it's not true SNR, it would be enough for these purposes as localized packet loss would pretty much always mean bad SNR or failing equipment)
I can guarantee that the customer reports came in as "my broadband isn't working again this morning...". And that's for the customers who called in.
Unless you had 50+% of the village calling up every morning for a week, it would not have been identified as a cluster event (and I suspect many ops orgs don't have the means to identify clusters anyway).
Unless you had 50+% of the village calling up every morning for a week, it would not have been identified as a cluster event (and I suspect many ops orgs don't have the means to identify clusters anyway).
What does the (!) after "busy" mean?
P.s. Thankyou for sharing your experience, it's very insightful.
They’re probably using it to express incredulity.
“The mechanic told me it would cost $5000(!) to fix, so I decided to scrap the car instead.”
“The mechanic told me it would cost $5000(!) to fix, so I decided to scrap the car instead.”
[deleted]
This is openretch (openreach) not Virgin so not sure where you get shared medium from
I do know people who worked in radio interference and they told me one time they traced a fault to a Budgie cage.
The Budgie had a swing and when it was in use it caused a short which effected the subs (customer) line.
I do know people who worked in radio interference and they told me one time they traced a fault to a Budgie cage.
The Budgie had a swing and when it was in use it caused a short which effected the subs (customer) line.
If you're running network over coax alongside cable TV, it's shared medium.
I'm not in the UK or US though, so regardless of their name, every ISP is equal and is indeed a bog standard ISP from my vantage point.
I'm not in the UK or US though, so regardless of their name, every ISP is equal and is indeed a bog standard ISP from my vantage point.
BT openreach mainly does DSL and FTTH, AFAIK.
edit:
Just to clarify, FTTH is by definition a shared medium, but the huge capacity in practice means that there is little congestion usually.
Also, since glass fiber is a dielectric, it is difficult to get noise in the signal, and it is immune to EMI.
DSL is by definition a dedicated medium, having a twisted pair wire from the DSLAM at the central office or street cabinet to the user premises into the [splitter and] modem. One user per twisted pair only.
However, the wires are not shielded and thus are susceptible to both crosstalk from other pairs and also EMI given that it's using electrical signals to transfer data.
And of course, the speeds are low for most users due to the local loop length and in general VDSL2 35b maxes out at 300/100 Mbps at around ~80 meters, and VDSL2 17a maxes out at 100/50 Mbps at around 100 meters.
edit:
Just to clarify, FTTH is by definition a shared medium, but the huge capacity in practice means that there is little congestion usually.
Also, since glass fiber is a dielectric, it is difficult to get noise in the signal, and it is immune to EMI.
DSL is by definition a dedicated medium, having a twisted pair wire from the DSLAM at the central office or street cabinet to the user premises into the [splitter and] modem. One user per twisted pair only.
However, the wires are not shielded and thus are susceptible to both crosstalk from other pairs and also EMI given that it's using electrical signals to transfer data.
And of course, the speeds are low for most users due to the local loop length and in general VDSL2 35b maxes out at 300/100 Mbps at around ~80 meters, and VDSL2 17a maxes out at 100/50 Mbps at around 100 meters.
By that you mean GPON, I guess? Not so here, where it is PTP. And an ISP with excellent peering.
Edit: disregard my comment, I mistook PTP to mean Ethernet while in reality it's Point to point Fiber. In any case my point about noise still stands. But PTP Fiber is really rare in the world, given how many people are stuck on coax.
Yes, with FTTH (or FTTP) I meant GPON. Refarding PTP, do you mean a residential ethernet network? (Technically FTTB, copper / ethernet to the premises)
Branding anything other than FTTH as "Fiber" is misleading.
It's like saying DOCSIS 3.0 is Fiber because its a Hybrid Fiber-Coaxial network, while in reality all cable internet networks are HFC, the difference is the number of nodes serviced by a CMTS, which when reduced by a node split will result in higher speeds and more capacity.
Or saying DSL is "Fiber" because uplink to the DSLAM is Fiber. All DSLAM uplinks are Fiber, difference is how many street cabinets are there because DSL speed is dictated by the local loop length, and with more street cabinets there is higher chance one gets built closer to you enabling you faster speeds.
Yes, with FTTH (or FTTP) I meant GPON. Refarding PTP, do you mean a residential ethernet network? (Technically FTTB, copper / ethernet to the premises)
Branding anything other than FTTH as "Fiber" is misleading.
It's like saying DOCSIS 3.0 is Fiber because its a Hybrid Fiber-Coaxial network, while in reality all cable internet networks are HFC, the difference is the number of nodes serviced by a CMTS, which when reduced by a node split will result in higher speeds and more capacity.
Or saying DSL is "Fiber" because uplink to the DSLAM is Fiber. All DSLAM uplinks are Fiber, difference is how many street cabinets are there because DSL speed is dictated by the local loop length, and with more street cabinets there is higher chance one gets built closer to you enabling you faster speeds.
I meant a residential fiber network, where the fiber really goes into the home, and the topology of that network is point-to-point. As in from some POP(point-of-presence) from ISP into the home, not over shared channels like in GPON.
My ISP is rolling that out, though with delays. They are a spin-off of a public utility.
Already rolled out the CPE looks like this:
https://genexis.eu/product/fibertwist/
and in the user-forum of that ISP there are people describing how to directly interface to fiber with a pre-fabricated cable and SFP-transceiver with the right wavelengths, from a self-owned router with SFP-cage.
But you still have to connect over PPPoE with a MTU of 1492 bytes. Multiple times actually, on different VLANs for management, VoIP, and public dynamic IPv4(CGNAT)/IPv6(native/64)
My ISP is rolling that out, though with delays. They are a spin-off of a public utility.
Already rolled out the CPE looks like this:
https://genexis.eu/product/fibertwist/
and in the user-forum of that ISP there are people describing how to directly interface to fiber with a pre-fabricated cable and SFP-transceiver with the right wavelengths, from a self-owned router with SFP-cage.
But you still have to connect over PPPoE with a MTU of 1492 bytes. Multiple times actually, on different VLANs for management, VoIP, and public dynamic IPv4(CGNAT)/IPv6(native/64)
Understood. Sorry for the confusion.
RE: PPPoE - in general most AAA systems already work with PPP and since ISPs generally have to support legacy infrastructure too, and multiple access technologies, they "force" all users to connect with PPPoE for billing and data collection for identification.
For example, a national ISP in my country uses PPP for xDSL (which is a dedicated medium) and GPON (which is a shared medium, however the authorization and speed limiting is done by the ONT S/N), none of which "need it". You can also mix GPON and DSL logins and it will work, even between users.
The only logical reason for this, from what I can see, is that they are forced to sell access to their infrastructure (being an ILEC) to other ISPs, so they use PPP to route traffic from users of other ISPs from the BRAS to the corresponding network gateway using a MPLS tunnel.
For business fiber, not based on xPON, there is no requirement for a PPP session, and instead you get assigned an IP address range that you router should use, and the fiber is connected with a SFP+ module to your router. On the ISP's side, your "port" is limited to accessing their intranet for management and remote control, and your assigned IP address range.
RE: PPPoE - in general most AAA systems already work with PPP and since ISPs generally have to support legacy infrastructure too, and multiple access technologies, they "force" all users to connect with PPPoE for billing and data collection for identification.
For example, a national ISP in my country uses PPP for xDSL (which is a dedicated medium) and GPON (which is a shared medium, however the authorization and speed limiting is done by the ONT S/N), none of which "need it". You can also mix GPON and DSL logins and it will work, even between users.
The only logical reason for this, from what I can see, is that they are forced to sell access to their infrastructure (being an ILEC) to other ISPs, so they use PPP to route traffic from users of other ISPs from the BRAS to the corresponding network gateway using a MPLS tunnel.
For business fiber, not based on xPON, there is no requirement for a PPP session, and instead you get assigned an IP address range that you router should use, and the fiber is connected with a SFP+ module to your router. On the ISP's side, your "port" is limited to accessing their intranet for management and remote control, and your assigned IP address range.
Cable TV? Coax?
Most of the UK, especially outside of large towns, is
1) Twisted pair to the cabinet then Twisted pair to the exchange ("Normal DSL", ADSL)
2) Twisted pair to the cabinet then Fibre to the exchange ("Fibre broadband", FTTC)
3) Fibre to the cabinet then Fibre to the exchange (FTTP)
Cable TV is a minority thing in the UK, maybe 20% of TV owning households, compared with 50% on satelite of some sort, and 95% on terrestial.
Most of the UK, especially outside of large towns, is
1) Twisted pair to the cabinet then Twisted pair to the exchange ("Normal DSL", ADSL)
2) Twisted pair to the cabinet then Fibre to the exchange ("Fibre broadband", FTTC)
3) Fibre to the cabinet then Fibre to the exchange (FTTP)
Cable TV is a minority thing in the UK, maybe 20% of TV owning households, compared with 50% on satelite of some sort, and 95% on terrestial.
> 3) Fibre to the cabinet then Fibre to the exchange (FTTP)
FTTP doesn't bother going to a cabinet at all since there would be nothing interesting for it to do there. GPON splitters are low maintenance and so you can just throw one up on a telegraph pole or bury it.
Yes this means that an era of street cabinets gives way to an era in which it's just telegraph poles or the network infrastructure disappears entirely, buried in the street.
> Cable TV is a minority thing in the UK, maybe 20% of TV owning households.
This may well be, however over 50% of UK households could buy their Internet service from Virgin (the Cable TV company) and get DOCSIS over that coaxial cable, they needn't choose to buy television service (although of course Virgin would like them to do so)
FTTP doesn't bother going to a cabinet at all since there would be nothing interesting for it to do there. GPON splitters are low maintenance and so you can just throw one up on a telegraph pole or bury it.
Yes this means that an era of street cabinets gives way to an era in which it's just telegraph poles or the network infrastructure disappears entirely, buried in the street.
> Cable TV is a minority thing in the UK, maybe 20% of TV owning households.
This may well be, however over 50% of UK households could buy their Internet service from Virgin (the Cable TV company) and get DOCSIS over that coaxial cable, they needn't choose to buy television service (although of course Virgin would like them to do so)
coax ? how quaint - there may be a small number of customers on actual coax but this is about Openreach part of BT's plant which will be POTS copper.
Unless they actually mean that tv blew away everyone's wifi, which is impressive but unlikely.
Unless they actually mean that tv blew away everyone's wifi, which is impressive but unlikely.
> Ah, no. SNR problems in the shared medium is not something wathced or logged.
A good ISP definitely does monitor SNR. It's a basic metric available from each individual customer device.
A good ISP definitely does monitor SNR. It's a basic metric available from each individual customer device.
> It's a basic metric available from each individual customer device.
Not mine. Good luck accessing to the modem you provided which I reconfigured to be a dumb bridge and terminated the ADSL connection on my router. Oh, the router neither see the POTS line (it only gets Ethernet) nor have remove management capabilities.
Where endpoints are heterogeneous, there's guaranteed, real fun (Even more so if you make assumptions).
Not mine. Good luck accessing to the modem you provided which I reconfigured to be a dumb bridge and terminated the ADSL connection on my router. Oh, the router neither see the POTS line (it only gets Ethernet) nor have remove management capabilities.
Where endpoints are heterogeneous, there's guaranteed, real fun (Even more so if you make assumptions).
They still have SNR metrics on their end of the connection.
And this is why providers hate heterogeneous networks :-) Mine politely asks you to plug in the original modem before they'll help you debug a connectivity issue. But even then, there are sometimes standards like TR-069 that apply across vendors.
And this is why providers hate heterogeneous networks :-) Mine politely asks you to plug in the original modem before they'll help you debug a connectivity issue. But even then, there are sometimes standards like TR-069 that apply across vendors.
[deleted]
> Ah, no. SNR problems in the shared medium is not something wathced or logged. I remember losing internet connection on heavy rains sometimes because an odd cable shorted at an underground gallery. It wasn't FTTX then, so it was not easy to find.
Even if SNR itself isn't logged, dynamic line management would surely result in dropped speeds, which would be logged, and would stand out as anomalous?
Even if SNR itself isn't logged, dynamic line management would surely result in dropped speeds, which would be logged, and would stand out as anomalous?
This isn’t accurate. The amount of data available on a DOCSIS network is incredible. Per modem SNR, power levels, preEq data, etc. If the data is used properly it cans find a loose screw on a tap or a damaged cable down the the foot.
That being said impulse noise is one of the harder things to track down. If the modern tools don’t work most MSOs would end up doing the “unplug a leg and see if the SNR gets better” method until they found the offending house.
That being said impulse noise is one of the harder things to track down. If the modern tools don’t work most MSOs would end up doing the “unplug a leg and see if the SNR gets better” method until they found the offending house.
considering the thousands of bad ux experiences to outright bugs I encounter every day, considering that some of them are bugs that have lasted for more than a year, considering I just wrote up a 20 page proposal on fixing the search for a pretty big Scandinavian site is obviously costing them money by not having it fixed on stuff that has been the same way for years, considering the governmental sites I am forced to use that are abusively bad and that companies put up job advertisements bragging about how they made these sites and that if you come work for them you will get to work on those sites as well...
considering all that, why do they need to explain something took 18 months to fix that affected a few people again? Because I'm starting to think you must live in some sort of paradise I have been cast out of, and it's not fair!
considering all that, why do they need to explain something took 18 months to fix that affected a few people again? Because I'm starting to think you must live in some sort of paradise I have been cast out of, and it's not fair!
It's not surprising. As a software engineer I've seen bugs that took days to track down which were fixed with a single line of code.
With removing a single line of code, and in some cases even just a spurious period or comma.
You'd be surprised how hard it is to identify SHINE. In places like this, you'll probably find the fastest broadband available is actually ADSL2+ - which is highly susceptible to noise, and in some places in the UK the lines which run to peoples houses aren't even copper, they're ALU - which is obviously not ideal. Even the tiniest of things can have an enormous impact on line performance.
I worked at a UK ISP a couple years back and lets just say the 'monitoring' that ISPS have is extremely limited. Openreach (the company that manages the phone lines, which ISPs lease) almost certainly has more monitoring but the problem is the customer calls the ISP, and the ISP then tells Openreach - which means there's a fairly huge disconnect between the customer and the engineers fixing the line.
I worked at a UK ISP a couple years back and lets just say the 'monitoring' that ISPS have is extremely limited. Openreach (the company that manages the phone lines, which ISPs lease) almost certainly has more monitoring but the problem is the customer calls the ISP, and the ISP then tells Openreach - which means there's a fairly huge disconnect between the customer and the engineers fixing the line.
> I worked at a UK ISP a couple years back and lets just say the 'monitoring' that ISPS have is extremely limited.
That's a choice. Presumably a cost conscious choice, not a limit imposed by Openreach.
A&A presents each customer with a live updated chart of bandwidth usage, latency, and low-level polling of the DSL modem in the customer's home. If your line drops even if you aren't "using" it for anything, you can opt to get a SMS about that, and choose whether this applies at weekends or overnight.
They even plot the rate of "login"/ "logout" events for the modems, both as a whole and mapped onto exchange locations so that you can see if there's a problem beyond just you got unlucky this time.
That's a choice. Presumably a cost conscious choice, not a limit imposed by Openreach.
A&A presents each customer with a live updated chart of bandwidth usage, latency, and low-level polling of the DSL modem in the customer's home. If your line drops even if you aren't "using" it for anything, you can opt to get a SMS about that, and choose whether this applies at weekends or overnight.
They even plot the rate of "login"/ "logout" events for the modems, both as a whole and mapped onto exchange locations so that you can see if there's a problem beyond just you got unlucky this time.
Many years ago when I was having cable modem issues, I used to scrape the SNMP off the modem and map stuff like that locally. Was very helpful when diagnosing issues with Level 1 support. "yes... it happens 20 times a day at these times..."
Since then the firmware on devices seems to have either dropped those types of features (cost reduction) or restricted them to an ISP-accessible interface ("security"). :(
Since then the firmware on devices seems to have either dropped those types of features (cost reduction) or restricted them to an ISP-accessible interface ("security"). :(
Interference is probably way down the list of potential causes.
The first customer complaint was likely just one customer to begin with and could have reported that the issue was occurring at a different time of day depending on when they used the Internet.
It wouldn't have been until they had multiple complaints and eventually a user who could pinpoint losing connection at 7:00am that they looked at it being something external to the individual customers connection.
The first customer complaint was likely just one customer to begin with and could have reported that the issue was occurring at a different time of day depending on when they used the Internet.
It wouldn't have been until they had multiple complaints and eventually a user who could pinpoint losing connection at 7:00am that they looked at it being something external to the individual customers connection.
It says they did a cable replacement. I suspect that took some time and they thought it would resolve the problem. They were probably quite surprised when it didn't.
I guess someone who thinks 'fixing' a problem, without finding out what is causing it, has a high probability of success, would be surprised when it did not work. They are probably surprised every time it doesn't work.
Can you explain what has happened here at a technical level?
What was the TV interfering with exactly? The ISP's equipment coming into the village?
I don't understand how you know it was simple. It's not clear to me what happened in the BBC article.
> You have a problem that's repeatable right on schedule
This is incorrect, the TV had to be turned on. Hyperbolic quotes on BBC like "It turned out that at 7am every morning " are not actually going to be true in the field.
What was the TV interfering with exactly? The ISP's equipment coming into the village?
I don't understand how you know it was simple. It's not clear to me what happened in the BBC article.
> You have a problem that's repeatable right on schedule
This is incorrect, the TV had to be turned on. Hyperbolic quotes on BBC like "It turned out that at 7am every morning " are not actually going to be true in the field.
Short answer - it's BT.
From personal experience it probably took most of that time to escalate the issue high enough for someone to take it seriously, then a few visits to get the right people onsite.
It would have probably been quicker to migrate the village to FTTP
From personal experience it probably took most of that time to escalate the issue high enough for someone to take it seriously, then a few visits to get the right people onsite.
It would have probably been quicker to migrate the village to FTTP
No it is worse than that, it is Openreach. BT spun them off, and they are not the same company anymore - this was to avoid being told they had a monopoly on the lines. But in truth, BT get a lot more priority with Openreach than any other provider, but the quality of the service Openreach provides is inadequate at best anyway.
Relevant story - we moved in to a new build and waited 3 months to get ADSL. Not anything fancy, just plain old ADSL. The provider we went with was Talk Talk, and they basically had to go to Openreach and ask them to sort out the issue (turned out to be something to do with over capacity at the exchange.) This dragged on for months. I spent hours on the phone talking to someone in India, who then talked to someone in the UK who then got on to Openreach. It was a wholly terrible experience. I finally lost my proverbial s??t and complained directly to Openreach (and believe it or not actually got a response with the real reason for the delay - some infrastructure through which caballing went through had collapsed and they needed to schedule it to be fixed, but as it was under a dual carriage way, that was taking some time. Still possibly a lie, but better than the nonsense I was getting from the guy in India.) So as they had been lying to me constantly, I gave up and cancelled the contract, and we went with BT instead because we could then use the FON wireless of our neighbours in the interim. Well, one week later the ADSL came on. This was at least 2 weeks before it was scheduled by Openreach and BT, who were aware of the issue. So all we can assume is someone magically fixed it. To this day I don't know if BT and Openreach had some special relationship or if we were just lucky and BT juggled something in the exchange, but - yeah, 4 years later we have cruddy ADSL still, and no Fibre or Cable.
Relevant story - we moved in to a new build and waited 3 months to get ADSL. Not anything fancy, just plain old ADSL. The provider we went with was Talk Talk, and they basically had to go to Openreach and ask them to sort out the issue (turned out to be something to do with over capacity at the exchange.) This dragged on for months. I spent hours on the phone talking to someone in India, who then talked to someone in the UK who then got on to Openreach. It was a wholly terrible experience. I finally lost my proverbial s??t and complained directly to Openreach (and believe it or not actually got a response with the real reason for the delay - some infrastructure through which caballing went through had collapsed and they needed to schedule it to be fixed, but as it was under a dual carriage way, that was taking some time. Still possibly a lie, but better than the nonsense I was getting from the guy in India.) So as they had been lying to me constantly, I gave up and cancelled the contract, and we went with BT instead because we could then use the FON wireless of our neighbours in the interim. Well, one week later the ADSL came on. This was at least 2 weeks before it was scheduled by Openreach and BT, who were aware of the issue. So all we can assume is someone magically fixed it. To this day I don't know if BT and Openreach had some special relationship or if we were just lucky and BT juggled something in the exchange, but - yeah, 4 years later we have cruddy ADSL still, and no Fibre or Cable.
You get what you pay for from Openreach - or more precisely the service provider pays little, and tells you it's Openreach while you pay lots.
Sky and BT retail definitely pay for the top options of services.
Sky and BT retail definitely pay for the top options of services.
It probably takes 18 months to get a support case escalated to the point where a real engineer looks at it.
Probably. From the wording in article they BEGAN solving the issue after 18 months. But then, it was only after some cable has been replaced - that could have taken a while to plan, budget and actually do, then again collect feedback.
> After 18 months engineers began an investigation after a cable replacement programme failed to fix the issue.
> After 18 months engineers began an investigation after a cable replacement programme failed to fix the issue.
In Ireland, not the UK, but from what I hear the ISP market is pretty similar.
1. You have an issue with your broadband in a rural area. You call up your ISP. You get some handwavy answer about contention and they ask you to restart your router and call them back if it happens again.
2. The next time they agree to have an engineer take a look. You hear nothing back. You contact them again, they say their engineer looked at the exchange and found no issues.
3. The next time you ring them and they agree to send an engineer to your house. The engineer (contracted out) arrives at 2pm, they check your modem, rant a bit off the record about how they don't fund shit, then determines that everything's working fine at 2pm, and it's the ISP's problem that their network collapses at 6pm because they oversold the rate of your village.
4. You contact the ISP. They read the engineer's report, saw it was working fine at 2pm, and decided they didn't need to take action. They suggest using the internet at another time of day, such as when you and most of your neighbours are away from the house and at work.
5. If enough people in the area decide they complain they might finally deign to do something about their service in a few months. More likely is some other ISP comes around and signs up all the customers so pissed off with the last one, until most of the village is now on this ISP and the same problems reocur.
6. After like 4 or so years you've looped through all the ISPs, maybe there's a new generation of tech which promises higher speeds but they can't be bothered funding anything locally so your actual speed and reliability is unchanged.
1. You have an issue with your broadband in a rural area. You call up your ISP. You get some handwavy answer about contention and they ask you to restart your router and call them back if it happens again.
2. The next time they agree to have an engineer take a look. You hear nothing back. You contact them again, they say their engineer looked at the exchange and found no issues.
3. The next time you ring them and they agree to send an engineer to your house. The engineer (contracted out) arrives at 2pm, they check your modem, rant a bit off the record about how they don't fund shit, then determines that everything's working fine at 2pm, and it's the ISP's problem that their network collapses at 6pm because they oversold the rate of your village.
4. You contact the ISP. They read the engineer's report, saw it was working fine at 2pm, and decided they didn't need to take action. They suggest using the internet at another time of day, such as when you and most of your neighbours are away from the house and at work.
5. If enough people in the area decide they complain they might finally deign to do something about their service in a few months. More likely is some other ISP comes around and signs up all the customers so pissed off with the last one, until most of the village is now on this ISP and the same problems reocur.
6. After like 4 or so years you've looped through all the ISPs, maybe there's a new generation of tech which promises higher speeds but they can't be bothered funding anything locally so your actual speed and reliability is unchanged.
> You have a problem that's repeatable right on schedule, that presumably shows up in the logs and affects multiple customers. It should be a no-brainer to send someone with test equipment out there to measure things in the field while the problem was happening.
You say that, but the San Antonio Caltrain to California Avenue Caltrain stretch still has an enormous T-Mobile deadzone, even after I twice reported it to them and both times they said "they'd send someone to take a look."
You say that, but the San Antonio Caltrain to California Avenue Caltrain stretch still has an enormous T-Mobile deadzone, even after I twice reported it to them and both times they said "they'd send someone to take a look."
Here is your explanation. They didn't care.
Lol, that sounds like such a weird case :D no wonder it took so long...
Reminded me of the problem the Parkes observatory had for many years with unidentified radio signals
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2015/04...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2015/04...
It reminds me of a grocery store parking lot that seemingly prevented car key fobs from working. There's a link to the explanation in the article, but it's about as light on details as the BBC article, unfortunately.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/carstairs-westview-co...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/carstairs-westview-co...
I remember back when I worked support for a broadband supplier, long-term "unsolvable" problems were almost always related to dodgy electronic devices in the house. Most common of all was Christmas lights! (you would be surprised how many people put them up in October!)
Power sockets with built-in usb charging ports also emit a fair bit of RF interference - we had to move the kitchen radio because of it.
Ungrounded (floating) switching power supplies can emit a lot of high frequency noise. Unfortunately this is the majority of PSUs these days.
Ran into a problem in my studio (audio recording) earlier this month because of a powered USB hub with charging ports. I kept getting this faint rhythmic ticking noise in my guitars.
I stripped down, and rewired everything in my studio to track it down. Not sure if it's the PSU, or something USB specific. But, as soon as I unplugged it from the surge protector, the noise vanished.
I stripped down, and rewired everything in my studio to track it down. Not sure if it's the PSU, or something USB specific. But, as soon as I unplugged it from the surge protector, the noise vanished.
I naively thought this was going to be somewhere like rural India, not the UK (albeit relatively rural Wales).
I'm forever calling out engineers because the line crackles to the point it's difficult to take a call and my internet speed drops from ~65Mbps to ~10. Maybe I should start looking for old TVs.
Somehow, being on a road where the houses were only built 5 years ago we have copper lines and on my side of the street the houses on both sides of mine are able to sign up for g.fast but I'm not. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised it was the UK at all.
I'm forever calling out engineers because the line crackles to the point it's difficult to take a call and my internet speed drops from ~65Mbps to ~10. Maybe I should start looking for old TVs.
Somehow, being on a road where the houses were only built 5 years ago we have copper lines and on my side of the street the houses on both sides of mine are able to sign up for g.fast but I'm not. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised it was the UK at all.
On my street, my house is one of 4 connected directly to the exchange instead of a cabinet, which means I can't get fibre (only FTTC is available here).
BT/Openreach/Whoever aren't interested in changing this, but luckily I can get Virgin Media (overpriced IMO, but better than the 20Mb alternative).
BT/Openreach/Whoever aren't interested in changing this, but luckily I can get Virgin Media (overpriced IMO, but better than the 20Mb alternative).
I have the same, but can't get Virgin.
However I just contacted BT openreach after finding some neighboring properties can get fiber and they told me they are building a new cabinet next month, hooray!
However I just contacted BT openreach after finding some neighboring properties can get fiber and they told me they are building a new cabinet next month, hooray!
Openreach certainly are interested in converting homes from EO to a street cabinet and have done this many times, but that's little comfort to you because they haven't done yours yet.
In some cases Openreach converts from EO to FTTP, so you go from only having very poor ADSL2 available to 300Mbps or better available over fibre.
In some cases Openreach converts from EO to FTTP, so you go from only having very poor ADSL2 available to 300Mbps or better available over fibre.
I think past around 20Mbit or so the returns are diminishing. My flat has 400Mbit or so from Virgin, and although the WiFi is excellent (uncontended airwaves around here), actually availing of it requires you perched within reasonable proximity of the router, and pulling from a site with a large enough outbound pipe. On average it is probably fair to expect 8Mbit/s egress from any particular Internet site, with worst case much lower than that.
Probably the faster connection has some latency benefit, but on the whole I wouldn't factor "super fast Internet" into choosing my next place to live
Probably the faster connection has some latency benefit, but on the whole I wouldn't factor "super fast Internet" into choosing my next place to live
Where fast download speeds shine are software installations and updates on hard-wired devices. The less time I have to wait for updates before I can launch a game or app the better. In the US when I had fiber I would see Steam hit 80MB (megabytes) per second.
But the really important thing is upload speed. It shouldn't take ten minutes to upload a two minute video master to YouTube. Also off-site backups of large files would be nice, but is too slow over cable modem upload speeds.
But the really important thing is upload speed. It shouldn't take ten minutes to upload a two minute video master to YouTube. Also off-site backups of large files would be nice, but is too slow over cable modem upload speeds.
Things are a little different When you have multiple people trying to work from home.
Even if a single connection is limited to 8Mbps a fatter pipe helps because you have more than one connection at any given time. Oh and fiber can do xMbps both ways I believe. Even Comcast gigabit is only 30Mbps up.
Where in the US can I get:
1. Cheap land to build a house
2. Under half an hour drive to Costco/sams club
3. Paved road to property
4. Water and sewage
5. Electricity
6. Fiber gigabit Internet
What else am I missing?
Even if a single connection is limited to 8Mbps a fatter pipe helps because you have more than one connection at any given time. Oh and fiber can do xMbps both ways I believe. Even Comcast gigabit is only 30Mbps up.
Where in the US can I get:
1. Cheap land to build a house
2. Under half an hour drive to Costco/sams club
3. Paved road to property
4. Water and sewage
5. Electricity
6. Fiber gigabit Internet
What else am I missing?
Many midwest small cities. In the Des Moines area you can get all that within an easy biking distance of costco.
A considerable part of the Portland metro area has FTTP, and it extends into the semi-rural areas past eg wilsonville
Chattanooga, Tennessee is the best bet right now, I believe. (Of course, depending on your definition of cheap land. But the internet bit is covered, and they have Sams).
Internet: https://epb.com/home-store/internet
Internet: https://epb.com/home-store/internet
Kansas City suburbs. Though Google has halted their Google Fiber expansion plans, AT&T has a fiber service.
I notice your list doesn't include a decent commute to work. You can probably find somewhere in washington state that meets that, although for cheap land, you'll need to avoid population centers. And you'll need to pick a lot carefully. Electric coverage is pretty complete on paved roads, but water, sewage, and fiber networks aren't guaranteed.
Well and septic isn't too bad, if the system is well built and the lot is appropriate (well needs an aquifer, septic needs a big enough flat patch and appropriate soils).
Well and septic isn't too bad, if the system is well built and the lot is appropriate (well needs an aquifer, septic needs a big enough flat patch and appropriate soils).
The returns are indeed diminishing. But in a multi-person household I can totally buy that 20Mbps just doesn't feel like enough. If one of you is doing a big download and then two more try to watch Netflix, that's going to suck. Some of this is made worse because of Buffer Bloat (which you should cure), but ultimately 20Mbps won't stretch very far in a typical 3-4 person household, and some British homes have half a dozen or more Internet users (a newborn isn't using the Internet, but both a toddler watching a cartoon and grandma catching up with old friends on Zoom are).
Also in practice the same services (even if with different branding) are offered to small businesses. If you can't afford to lease serious offer space that might come with dedicated fibre you'll be buying whatever the fastest broadband available to consumers is, and maybe paying extra for it. So if the best available was 20Mbps that's going to suck for an office of twenty people.
So I'm comfortable with plans that say (a) it makes sense to deploy fibre where you're going from scratch and (b) it makes sense to offer 1Gbps where practical even if most of your price sensitive customers are happy at more like 50Mbps. My scepticism is reserved for people who insist that (a) anything less than fibre to every home is a betrayal and (b) everybody "needs" gigabit or better because this will enable some mythical yet-to-be invented new service that justifies the excess.
Also in practice the same services (even if with different branding) are offered to small businesses. If you can't afford to lease serious offer space that might come with dedicated fibre you'll be buying whatever the fastest broadband available to consumers is, and maybe paying extra for it. So if the best available was 20Mbps that's going to suck for an office of twenty people.
So I'm comfortable with plans that say (a) it makes sense to deploy fibre where you're going from scratch and (b) it makes sense to offer 1Gbps where practical even if most of your price sensitive customers are happy at more like 50Mbps. My scepticism is reserved for people who insist that (a) anything less than fibre to every home is a betrayal and (b) everybody "needs" gigabit or better because this will enable some mythical yet-to-be invented new service that justifies the excess.
A quick trip to the Openreach Fibre checker yields:
“We don’t have plans to upgrade your area yet. But we’re working with Government and industry to change that.”
Along with the usual “Register your interest” form (which I’ve filled out, but am pretty sure have been done in the past).
“We don’t have plans to upgrade your area yet. But we’re working with Government and industry to change that.”
Along with the usual “Register your interest” form (which I’ve filled out, but am pretty sure have been done in the past).
Do you need fibre at all? I recently moved and didn't bother with it. Instead I'm using a 4G unlimited data SIM from Vodafone in a Huawei 4G/5G router. The speeds are normally around 80Mbps. I have no complaints whatsoever.
There are two problems - coverage (trees, other houses ect get in the way) which means that for some places it's fine, for other places no good, and contention. In 5G the bearer (radio frequencies) is very well managed and I am 50/50 thinking that realistically contention will be ok for large scale consumption. But... ultimately, you have one set of radio between everyone whereas everyone has a fibre... (this is not quite true due to GPON but sorta!)
Five years ago (assuming you weren't exaggerating) the house builder chose not to bother calling Openreach about the new homes they were building. They chose to wait until the last minute and then say "We're a house builder, just put up a few new houses, so connect them to a phone line for us OK?"
If they instead engage at the outset, Openreach says OK, you need to put in ducting to run fibre to each house from the street and then along the street itself, our engineers will turn up and actually install fibre and enable simple phone service by default. But obviously when the engineers roll up to an estate with a dozen almost-finished houses "Dig up everything and start over" is not an option, so you get legacy copper phone lines. Too bad.
If they instead engage at the outset, Openreach says OK, you need to put in ducting to run fibre to each house from the street and then along the street itself, our engineers will turn up and actually install fibre and enable simple phone service by default. But obviously when the engineers roll up to an estate with a dozen almost-finished houses "Dig up everything and start over" is not an option, so you get legacy copper phone lines. Too bad.
My last home was built about 5 years ago, and the house builder had fitted fibre ducting to the curb, but when OpenReach turned up they came with a ladder and slung up a copper cable.
Maybe on a massive development they will install brand new street cabinets, but anything smaller than a few hundred homes, copper is still the standard.
Maybe on a massive development they will install brand new street cabinets, but anything smaller than a few hundred homes, copper is still the standard.
This is our situation too. What makes it worse is we have Cable in the area too, but that stops on the public street, and doesn't come on to the estate.
We were looking to move recently and almost bought a house from a sub company of Persimmons (yeah, we pulled out after we found out they were involved), but the houses all had Fibre to the premises. Except the provider was a monopoly, and was owned by Persimmons. Apparently, you didn't eve get a BT line installed, and were completely stuck with this dodgy 3rd party provider for the life of the property. That and the quality of Persimmons workmanship was enough to make us walk away from what was actually a very "sweet" deal.
We were looking to move recently and almost bought a house from a sub company of Persimmons (yeah, we pulled out after we found out they were involved), but the houses all had Fibre to the premises. Except the provider was a monopoly, and was owned by Persimmons. Apparently, you didn't eve get a BT line installed, and were completely stuck with this dodgy 3rd party provider for the life of the property. That and the quality of Persimmons workmanship was enough to make us walk away from what was actually a very "sweet" deal.
Do you mean FibreNest (the Persimmon owned one?). I can't understand how they are allowed to get away with that!
We live on a relatively recent Persimmon estate but luckily OFNL got the contract; even that's a bit dodgy, all of the ISPs have crap websites and are a little dodgy looking (although the service has been alright).
And yeh, no BT line. It was an exclusive contract. OpenReach say they wont even install lines until the roads are adopted. Ironically, there is an independent Care Home built next door to us & OpenReach have been up and down the street and in our estate cabinet busy fitting their lines....
We live on a relatively recent Persimmon estate but luckily OFNL got the contract; even that's a bit dodgy, all of the ISPs have crap websites and are a little dodgy looking (although the service has been alright).
And yeh, no BT line. It was an exclusive contract. OpenReach say they wont even install lines until the roads are adopted. Ironically, there is an independent Care Home built next door to us & OpenReach have been up and down the street and in our estate cabinet busy fitting their lines....
There are all sorts of problems with houses built in say the last 10-15 years. The leasehold scam has headlines, but even freeholds come with things like 'estate charges' and 'management companies', which mean that nearby public spaces (open areas, playgrounds etc) are owned by a private company, and that company can charge whatever they want to house owners, without even giving them a breakdown of the costs! Note these are public facilities open to everyone, not just residents.
Half the time the roads aren't even maintained by the council, but there's no rebate on council tax.
But I have to admit this is a new one on me.
Half the time the roads aren't even maintained by the council, but there's no rebate on council tax.
But I have to admit this is a new one on me.
Look into point-to-point wireless links? Find a friend outside the estate that you can work out how to get a line-of-sight to and connect up to their connection, and pay all or half of their ISP fees.
Depends on terrain for how easy it is to do.
I really like Ubiquiti products (e.g. Litebeam, Nanostation) because they are cheap, reliable, and have great features. They do need configuration, but I worked it out from Internet and YouTube when I did it.
Depends on terrain for how easy it is to do.
I really like Ubiquiti products (e.g. Litebeam, Nanostation) because they are cheap, reliable, and have great features. They do need configuration, but I worked it out from Internet and YouTube when I did it.
> Maybe on a massive development they will install brand new street cabinets
Street cabinets would be FTTC. The cabinet is full of electronics, for FFTC there's a full VDSL modem which is you can feel and hear a working FTTC cabinet, it gets hot, so it has cooling fans that spew warm air and makes a gentle buzzing noise.
For FTTP they can and do either just bury everything (in a city or where the cables are underground for tidiness) or hang it from a pole if there are telegraph poles in your area. Because there's very little of consequence near you, the smarts are all in an exchange building that might be a full day's walk from you rather than street cabinets typically just a few hundred metres from each property.
> anything smaller than a few hundred homes, copper is still the standard.
If you're building twenty properties the fibre is free if the builder asks. Nothing to pay, just so long as you get Openreach in at the start to ensure a viable deployment.
If you're building between two and nineteen properties it's cost sharing, the builder pays part of the extra install cost over copper for their smaller site.
Street cabinets would be FTTC. The cabinet is full of electronics, for FFTC there's a full VDSL modem which is you can feel and hear a working FTTC cabinet, it gets hot, so it has cooling fans that spew warm air and makes a gentle buzzing noise.
For FTTP they can and do either just bury everything (in a city or where the cables are underground for tidiness) or hang it from a pole if there are telegraph poles in your area. Because there's very little of consequence near you, the smarts are all in an exchange building that might be a full day's walk from you rather than street cabinets typically just a few hundred metres from each property.
> anything smaller than a few hundred homes, copper is still the standard.
If you're building twenty properties the fibre is free if the builder asks. Nothing to pay, just so long as you get Openreach in at the start to ensure a viable deployment.
If you're building between two and nineteen properties it's cost sharing, the builder pays part of the extra install cost over copper for their smaller site.
May 2015 we moved in.
I've no idea what the engagement was like, but it was Redrow so I doubt they just slapped the 50 or so houses up and then thought about it.
I've no idea what the engagement was like, but it was Redrow so I doubt they just slapped the 50 or so houses up and then thought about it.
Yep but you'll need a time machine as you will need to contact BT for the new phone line 5 years before you know you are going to start building the house to be on the safe side. I know of plenty of people who tried to organise their phone line before they started their build and have moved in and are still waiting for a phone line 6 months later. It's the same with all utilities in the UK; totally chaotic constantly changing bureaucracy. You have to know the secret telephone number to call to get someone who is not working in a general call centre. Even then it's surprising how often they don't seem to know the procedure for getting a new house connected.
Had an issue with line noise when I moved house. Took a while to figure out but apparently when it rained, I'd lose Internet connection. Took a bit of back and forth with British Telecom to convince them there's an issue after their continual "our tests indicate the line is OK"- if only they tested it when it was raining here!
Line got replaced, apparently it was 60 years old. Worked a charm since.
Line got replaced, apparently it was 60 years old. Worked a charm since.
Parents had the same issue with rain before they moved to fibre (which also barely works but eh, at least it barely works reliably.) Seems to be common enough that's it's trope-y.
This was REIN not RAIN, also common enough
The magic words are "the line is crackly when I try to hear someone" which will be recorded as "interference" and cause and engineer to be sent out. Then get them to open up any junction boxes that you can see. Normally the problem is that one of these has leaked causing poor coupling.
I wouldn't know about the finer details of physical telecommunications but in this case it would seem the physical (overhead) line that was about 30 metres from my property was allowing rainwater to interfere with the signal. That was what was replaced. Voice communication was never a problem (in the assumption I never spoke to people when it rained, I didn't often use the line for voice)
Buy yourself an RTL dongle and a wide-spectrum omnidirectional antenna and run a spectrum analyser when the problems recurs. That will get you the frequency, bandwidth and modulation of the interfering signal.
I'm dismayed but not surprised that Openreach in the linked example launched straight into replacing sections of cable. They don't seem to spend much time actually analysing a problem.
I'm dismayed but not surprised that Openreach in the linked example launched straight into replacing sections of cable. They don't seem to spend much time actually analysing a problem.
RE RTL dongle.. Or tune your AM radio to ~612kHz to listen to the REIN
> houses on both sides of mine are able to sign up for g.fast but I'm not
That sounds odd and may be an error in OR's data. I would try to escalate it up to the point where it is investigated...
It is far from unheard of for one side of a street to have different options, or even one part of one side of the street, because for some reason of geography or cab capacity when the houses were first connected they are connected to different cabinets and not all of them have been upgraded to enable g.fast. But such things shouldn't be localised to one home unless you are in a mansion with massive grounds (in which case stop messing with the consumer arm of BT-OR, you can afford to have your own private leased line installed via the business arm!).
Be careful switching to g.fast if upstream throughput is important to you. I know people who had the top-end upstream offered by FTTC (~17Mbit/s) but got less after switching to g.fast (though better downstream, and for them like most that was the important factor so they were happy).
That sounds odd and may be an error in OR's data. I would try to escalate it up to the point where it is investigated...
It is far from unheard of for one side of a street to have different options, or even one part of one side of the street, because for some reason of geography or cab capacity when the houses were first connected they are connected to different cabinets and not all of them have been upgraded to enable g.fast. But such things shouldn't be localised to one home unless you are in a mansion with massive grounds (in which case stop messing with the consumer arm of BT-OR, you can afford to have your own private leased line installed via the business arm!).
Be careful switching to g.fast if upstream throughput is important to you. I know people who had the top-end upstream offered by FTTC (~17Mbit/s) but got less after switching to g.fast (though better downstream, and for them like most that was the important factor so they were happy).
I love these kind of stories. At Astron, the institute that builds and operates radio telescopes in the Netherlands, there's a story that they once gave a new TV to someone who lived a couple of villages from one of the telescopes, because the old set was causing too much radio interference. They could figure out the exact location of the old TV based on the data from the radio telescope
Or microwave ovens posing as astronomical objects [1].
[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/astrophysics/m...
[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/astrophysics/m...
they did the same thing in west virginia with a heating pad.
https://www.wired.com/2004/02/quiet/
https://www.wired.com/2004/02/quiet/
Then there’s a group of observant Jews that’ll sometimes drop by and kindly come by and fix your fence for free if it’s a part of their eruv, possibly before you know it’s broken
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-invisible-and-often...
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-invisible-and-often...
Fascinating reading about the agony of requesting permission to string the line; I would be surprised if the practitioners who established NYC's eruv jumped through the same hoops.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-manhattan-eruv-new-y...
> The Toronto eruv alone is estimated to cost $100,000 per year > But being difficult to maintain is kind of the point.
Why not implement it as an optical fibre?
Non-conducting and easy to continuously check that there are no breaks.
Why not implement it as an optical fibre?
Non-conducting and easy to continuously check that there are no breaks.
At least for fibre optic, I thought it required a carrier wire for rigidity? Dunno if they're okay with automated checking, it might make it too scalable and simple to be acceptable.
Additionally, you can't use electricity on the Sabbath [0]. Unless you come up with some very clever way to couple sunlight or candlelight (!) into the fiber-optic cable and then detect time of flight in a non-electronic and cheap way, then just going out and checking by eye is the best bet.
Great idea though! I'd always thought that looking at the phase of an electroni impluse would give you a good idea of how far along the path a break occurred, as the return signal's phase should be inverted at the break point and you can then use time of flight to infer the distance of the break.
[0] This is a hyper deep part of jewish law and there are many exceptions. Please consult your local rabbi before taking my word for anything.
Great idea though! I'd always thought that looking at the phase of an electroni impluse would give you a good idea of how far along the path a break occurred, as the return signal's phase should be inverted at the break point and you can then use time of flight to infer the distance of the break.
[0] This is a hyper deep part of jewish law and there are many exceptions. Please consult your local rabbi before taking my word for anything.
Might be okay to use electricity if they're validating before the Sabbath? Isn't that how it works?
Dunno how they handle breaks during the Sabbath...
But I'm 100% out of my league here.
Dunno how they handle breaks during the Sabbath...
But I'm 100% out of my league here.
I had a running machine that reliably took out ADSL in my house. I didn't find out if it did that for the neighbours too, but it wouldn't surprise me. Cured by using a mains conditioner / RF filter (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000PS5700)
The embarrassed householder promised not to use the television again.
I hope the cable company bought the "mortified" TV owner (possibly old/poor) a new TV because they've done nothing obviously wrong.
I hope the cable company bought the "mortified" TV owner (possibly old/poor) a new TV because they've done nothing obviously wrong.
> I hope the cable company bought the "mortified" TV owner (possibly old/poor) a new TV because they've done nothing obviously wrong.
I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to jam public signals village-wide: https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement
I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to jam public signals village-wide: https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement
If they clicked on the "jam public signals village-wide" labelled button rather than the "on" button, fair enough.
When's the last time you checked if any of your electronics were emitting a jamming signal?
Never, you? If I did though and found that one of my devices was harming my neighbors I wouldn't expect gifts.
It's not just that, its the way they have been made to feel they are at fault for using a device in good faith presumably for many years, with a news story plastered all over the world about how they've caused problems (even though they are - as yet - anonymous).
It's a funny story but sounds like a potentially harsh impact on them - and why should they just be told to stop using something with no alternative option presented?
Anyway, good PR for the company given the story has got traction.
It's a funny story but sounds like a potentially harsh impact on them - and why should they just be told to stop using something with no alternative option presented?
Anyway, good PR for the company given the story has got traction.
I’m an amateur radio operator, so about 3 years ago, I spent the weekend going through the house getting rid of items that interfere with the HF spectrum. I found:
Two network switches, laptop power supply, dishwasher, streaming music device.
My receive antenna (active loop) is about 50 feet from the house. I’m still not satisfied with the interference levels, but it’s not coming from me.
Two network switches, laptop power supply, dishwasher, streaming music device.
My receive antenna (active loop) is about 50 feet from the house. I’m still not satisfied with the interference levels, but it’s not coming from me.
I should be rather surprised if the FCC were the relevant body in Wales.
Yes, but Ofcom is, and has very similar legislation - https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/interference-enforcement/s...
The TV isn’t a jammer though, it’s a misbehaving device. Both Ofcom, the FCC, and most regulatory bodies handle intentional interference differently than accidental interference. You still aren’t supposed to operate misbehaving devices, but regulators generally realize you might not know your device is bad.
Sure.
I was curious so I looked up UKs regulations. The phrasing that UK’s regulatory authority uses regarding interference is very similar to the FCCs part 15 regulations.
> Anyone using electrical apparatus is responsible for ensuring that it does not cause harmful interference to others. If this happens, we may require the user to rectify the situation.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/interference-enforcement
> Anyone using electrical apparatus is responsible for ensuring that it does not cause harmful interference to others. If this happens, we may require the user to rectify the situation.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/interference-enforcement
Law concerning radio is very close to universal law.
Amazingly so! Even HAM radio regulations are remarkably harmonized internationally thanks to the IARU[1].
[1]: https://www.iaru.org
[1]: https://www.iaru.org
[deleted]
Nor did the cable company, did they?
Given the owner has been described as "mortified" and "promising" never to turn a device used in good faith on again, nothing has been offered in return and the story is round the world, it sounds like its been handled quite badly, yes.
Operating "an illegal radiator" maybe - that I believe is the technical term.
I think from a comment on the El Reg version of the story its the BBC that has jurisdiction - id have thought it was Ofcom my self.
I think from a comment on the El Reg version of the story its the BBC that has jurisdiction - id have thought it was Ofcom my self.
Relevant story time!
The neighbor would often complain about his cable and ask if I had the same problems. I did. One day, he'd had enough, and switched to DSL and satellite.
My house's connectivity issues vanished.
The neighbor would often complain about his cable and ask if I had the same problems. I did. One day, he'd had enough, and switched to DSL and satellite.
My house's connectivity issues vanished.
Sounds like fitting either house (or ideally both) with a $15 POE filter from Amazon would have fixed the problem.
(POE in this case is point-of-entry not power-over-ethernet.)
I had to get one to make MOCA (ethernet over cable) work in my current house.
I had to get one to make MOCA (ethernet over cable) work in my current house.
It's interesting comparing the stories on this from various sources.
Sometimes M. Jones is an engineer for OpenReach; sometimes xe is an unspecified engineer.
The television is sometimes "old"; sometimes "second-hand" (which doesn't necessarily mean old).
Sometimes it is the householder who is old, referred to in some newspapers as an Old Age Pensioner.
A few reports say things that the BBC does not, which have come up in this discussion. The Wolverhampton Express and Star points out, for example, that Aberhosan is not on fibre yet.
* https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2020/09/22/old-t...
And almost no-one acknowledges that this light-on-details story is light on details because they took it, word for word in some cases, from an OpenReach press release.
* https://www.openreach.com/news/second-hand-tv-wipes-out-broa...
Sometimes M. Jones is an engineer for OpenReach; sometimes xe is an unspecified engineer.
The television is sometimes "old"; sometimes "second-hand" (which doesn't necessarily mean old).
Sometimes it is the householder who is old, referred to in some newspapers as an Old Age Pensioner.
A few reports say things that the BBC does not, which have come up in this discussion. The Wolverhampton Express and Star points out, for example, that Aberhosan is not on fibre yet.
* https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2020/09/22/old-t...
And almost no-one acknowledges that this light-on-details story is light on details because they took it, word for word in some cases, from an OpenReach press release.
* https://www.openreach.com/news/second-hand-tv-wipes-out-broa...
Addendum: The only major exception here, to just recycling a press release with no other sources and no attribution (and making up things like "pensioner") or recyling the BBC report, seems to be Simon Sharwood of The Register, who did some legwork to obtain from an ISP a quote explaining SHINE, and that a AM radio can detect it; and attributed things to "Openreach's statement".
* https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/22/old_tv_broke_broadban...
* https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/22/old_tv_broke_broadban...
Eye roll at their advice:
"We'd just advise the public to make sure that their electric appliances are properly certified and meet current British standards," she said.
"And if you have a fault, report it to your service provider in the first instance so that we can investigate."
It made me imagine the person going to buy an old tube tv on the black market and just laughing maniacally as it "faulted", whatever that means.
"We'd just advise the public to make sure that their electric appliances are properly certified and meet current British standards," she said.
"And if you have a fault, report it to your service provider in the first instance so that we can investigate."
It made me imagine the person going to buy an old tube tv on the black market and just laughing maniacally as it "faulted", whatever that means.
Just imagine what happens with political stories.
Is the broadband ASDL, fiber or something else?
I can tell from the news report.
I can tell from the news report.
I recently had my own host of cable internet issues.
So about 3 months ago the RJ45 cable in my cable modem melted. I thought it was a freak accident. I checked all of my networking equipment, checked my outlets, etc. No problems. So I installed a new cable and then everything was fine.
Cue 2 weeks ago. Connectivity became intermittent and then finally I had no internet for almost a week. Comcast wouldn't be able to send anyone out for a month. So I started digging around for the problem. A little over a year ago they sent out techs to work on my neighbors internet and in the process foolishly cut my coax. So I started from the cable tap and worked my way backwards.
There wasn't a continuity problem from what I could tell, no one either intentionally or unintentionally cut the cable. Then I look on the back of my house where the coax from the street is bonded to my home's grounding rod. Everything to the right of the bond was completely melted and still super hot. NOT GOOD.
So I did some testing of the bonding wire to the ground, the resistance was 37 ohms (should be much less than this). And there were no other electrical problems. My thought at the time was somehow power was being backfed from the cable tap to my home. So I removed the cable from the street and disconnected everything inside that was touch this cable.
Almost immediately I start getting voltage drops in my house, can't even run the microwave. That's when I realized what was really going on. The cable line was being used as a return path because the neutral for my neighborhood was at least partially severed.
It was so bad that if I increased voltage load in my home past a certain point then the streetlights in the front of my home would completely turn off.. Yes I could turn city infrastructure off and on by toggling the voltage load in my home.
The power company within a few hours had a crew come out to diagnose and fix the issue since it's actually potentially dangerous. They confirmed for me it was indeed a bad neutral. As soon as they replaced it I spliced my coax line, reconnected it, and everything worked perfectly.
So about 3 months ago the RJ45 cable in my cable modem melted. I thought it was a freak accident. I checked all of my networking equipment, checked my outlets, etc. No problems. So I installed a new cable and then everything was fine.
Cue 2 weeks ago. Connectivity became intermittent and then finally I had no internet for almost a week. Comcast wouldn't be able to send anyone out for a month. So I started digging around for the problem. A little over a year ago they sent out techs to work on my neighbors internet and in the process foolishly cut my coax. So I started from the cable tap and worked my way backwards.
There wasn't a continuity problem from what I could tell, no one either intentionally or unintentionally cut the cable. Then I look on the back of my house where the coax from the street is bonded to my home's grounding rod. Everything to the right of the bond was completely melted and still super hot. NOT GOOD.
So I did some testing of the bonding wire to the ground, the resistance was 37 ohms (should be much less than this). And there were no other electrical problems. My thought at the time was somehow power was being backfed from the cable tap to my home. So I removed the cable from the street and disconnected everything inside that was touch this cable.
Almost immediately I start getting voltage drops in my house, can't even run the microwave. That's when I realized what was really going on. The cable line was being used as a return path because the neutral for my neighborhood was at least partially severed.
It was so bad that if I increased voltage load in my home past a certain point then the streetlights in the front of my home would completely turn off.. Yes I could turn city infrastructure off and on by toggling the voltage load in my home.
The power company within a few hours had a crew come out to diagnose and fix the issue since it's actually potentially dangerous. They confirmed for me it was indeed a bad neutral. As soon as they replaced it I spliced my coax line, reconnected it, and everything worked perfectly.
This is one of the most interesting and intriguing yet improbable stories I have ever read. Thanks for sharing.
I had a vanilla problem of power from neighbor's faulty set top box that was backfeeding into the cable network and killed my modem (and I think some other people's) one day.
I was told by the ISP's technician what had happened, I assumed the modem died by itself (i.e. bad OS) since it wouldn't fully turn on, only shows the power LED. In reality the tuner and some electronics probably died.
I had a vanilla problem of power from neighbor's faulty set top box that was backfeeding into the cable network and killed my modem (and I think some other people's) one day.
I was told by the ISP's technician what had happened, I assumed the modem died by itself (i.e. bad OS) since it wouldn't fully turn on, only shows the power LED. In reality the tuner and some electronics probably died.
The electricity neutral for your home used the internet cable line? The amount of macguyvering to get that to work at all in the first place boggles the mind.
It wouldn't be done deliberately. If anything, it's an example
of how electricity's invisibility and sometimes very counterintuitive behavior make it never wholly trustworthy, no matter how we've come to rely on it. I wouldn't change that reliance on a bet! Electrical power infrastructure is the most revolutionary human application of energy since the discovery of fire. But, like fire, there's only so far you ever want to trust it.
I agree that electricity has unintuitive behaviour though it is trustworthy, at least as far as you would trust a water system, if one understands why electricity doesn’t behave the same as water.
You can see water. It's a lot less potentially lethal, too.
I understand how electricity works well enough to handle it safely - and, at least as important, to know when I can't handle it safely and it's time to call in a professional - but that's not the same as trusting it. Honestly, it's a lot more the same as not trusting it. I can and do prototype line-voltage filament LED lamp designs on my bench without a problem, but I think more than anything else it's maintaining a lively awareness of the danger involved that helps there not be a problem.
What's really scary is stuff that's as dangerous as those prototypes and doesn't look it - a condition that I think only ionizing radiation excels electricity in making it possible to create. All anyone has to do is screw up wiring an appliance with exposed metal parts, and the whole thing can be live at potentially lethal mains voltage - and I'll freely admit that having had my batteries very unpleasantly charged that way once, thanks to a miswired ceiling fan, strongly informs my perspective on the subject.
As with fire, so with electricity: an indispensably useful servant, but also an ineluctably dangerous one, to be regarded with respectful mistrust at all times lest a moment's carelessness end in tragedy.
I understand how electricity works well enough to handle it safely - and, at least as important, to know when I can't handle it safely and it's time to call in a professional - but that's not the same as trusting it. Honestly, it's a lot more the same as not trusting it. I can and do prototype line-voltage filament LED lamp designs on my bench without a problem, but I think more than anything else it's maintaining a lively awareness of the danger involved that helps there not be a problem.
What's really scary is stuff that's as dangerous as those prototypes and doesn't look it - a condition that I think only ionizing radiation excels electricity in making it possible to create. All anyone has to do is screw up wiring an appliance with exposed metal parts, and the whole thing can be live at potentially lethal mains voltage - and I'll freely admit that having had my batteries very unpleasantly charged that way once, thanks to a miswired ceiling fan, strongly informs my perspective on the subject.
As with fire, so with electricity: an indispensably useful servant, but also an ineluctably dangerous one, to be regarded with respectful mistrust at all times lest a moment's carelessness end in tragedy.
> All anyone has to do is screw up wiring an appliance with exposed metal parts, and the whole thing can be live at potentially lethal mains voltage
Or for extra fun, the wiring in the house. Lots of people think things like changing a plug are "easy" (they are), but they're also really easy to screw up.
Now you don't need some DIY'd appliance. Your Ikea stuff is now potentially deadly.
The number of DIY jobs I've run across where the hot/neutral are reversed on the plugs... It's insidious because for all intents and purposes it will _work_. Nothing you plug in will have any issues.
But that nice shiny metal lamp you've got? It's got the neutral bonded to the body so that if the hot were to come loose and contact the body it has a path to ground. What happens when the neutral and hot are reversed? The body of your lamp is now live, and when it's off it has no path to ground. Wear rubber shoes when you're turning your lamp on and off.
Your toaster? It only switches the hot. So when your toast is done and you stick your metal knife all up in there to try and dig your toast out, it's all still live with no path to ground. Whoops.
A lot of assumptions that are essential to things being safe all fall apart as soon as someone puts those black wires under the silver screws.
Or for extra fun, the wiring in the house. Lots of people think things like changing a plug are "easy" (they are), but they're also really easy to screw up.
Now you don't need some DIY'd appliance. Your Ikea stuff is now potentially deadly.
The number of DIY jobs I've run across where the hot/neutral are reversed on the plugs... It's insidious because for all intents and purposes it will _work_. Nothing you plug in will have any issues.
But that nice shiny metal lamp you've got? It's got the neutral bonded to the body so that if the hot were to come loose and contact the body it has a path to ground. What happens when the neutral and hot are reversed? The body of your lamp is now live, and when it's off it has no path to ground. Wear rubber shoes when you're turning your lamp on and off.
Your toaster? It only switches the hot. So when your toast is done and you stick your metal knife all up in there to try and dig your toast out, it's all still live with no path to ground. Whoops.
A lot of assumptions that are essential to things being safe all fall apart as soon as someone puts those black wires under the silver screws.
> But that nice shiny metal lamp you've got? It's got the neutral bonded to the body...
Another commenter pointed this out, but I have to chime in as well: no. Not true. The neutral is NOT bonded to the exterior body of a metal lamp. Not even on old fixtures built in the 1960s.
The old fixtures, if they were metal, were often not grounded, i.e. the lamp might not be connected by a 3-prong plug (hot, neutral, ground). But the neutral was definitely not bonded to the metal body.
If you inspect a new fixture, typically this means: it is either constructed with no accessible conductive parts, OR its metal case is bonded to the ground (not neutral!) and it has a 3-prong plug, OR it has a step-down transformer that converts to lower voltage before it enters the conductive lamp.
*
The thing that does happen when switching the neutral wire on a lamp is that doing so will energize the more-accessible "outer ring" of the Edison female receptacle rather than the less-accessible "center pin". This means that if you change the bulb with the switch on, you'd be more likely to contact the hot "outer ring".
Another commenter pointed this out, but I have to chime in as well: no. Not true. The neutral is NOT bonded to the exterior body of a metal lamp. Not even on old fixtures built in the 1960s.
The old fixtures, if they were metal, were often not grounded, i.e. the lamp might not be connected by a 3-prong plug (hot, neutral, ground). But the neutral was definitely not bonded to the metal body.
If you inspect a new fixture, typically this means: it is either constructed with no accessible conductive parts, OR its metal case is bonded to the ground (not neutral!) and it has a 3-prong plug, OR it has a step-down transformer that converts to lower voltage before it enters the conductive lamp.
*
The thing that does happen when switching the neutral wire on a lamp is that doing so will energize the more-accessible "outer ring" of the Edison female receptacle rather than the less-accessible "center pin". This means that if you change the bulb with the switch on, you'd be more likely to contact the hot "outer ring".
> The thing that does happen when switching the neutral wire on a lamp is that doing so will energize the more-accessible "outer ring" of the Edison female receptacle rather than the less-accessible "center pin". This means that if you change the bulb with the switch on, you'd be more likely to contact the hot "outer ring".
Also, in most cases, the switch is only across (the wire that is supposed to be) the hot lead-- with neutral and hot swapped at the plug, you're not only energizing the outer ring of the light bulb socket, but also leaving it energized when the switch is off.
This leaves a shock hazard exposed even when the switch is off-- the lamp still won't light under normal circumstances because there's no path to ground with the switch off on the neutral line, but if you provide it one (your body) by touching it, you'll still get a shock regardless of the state of the switch.
Also, in most cases, the switch is only across (the wire that is supposed to be) the hot lead-- with neutral and hot swapped at the plug, you're not only energizing the outer ring of the light bulb socket, but also leaving it energized when the switch is off.
This leaves a shock hazard exposed even when the switch is off-- the lamp still won't light under normal circumstances because there's no path to ground with the switch off on the neutral line, but if you provide it one (your body) by touching it, you'll still get a shock regardless of the state of the switch.
> This leaves a shock hazard exposed even when the switch is off
Yeah, comment kinda got downvoted into oblivion for a slightly off example, but this was kind of my point. There are a lot of appliances that become significantly less safe when you put the power into places it's not supposed to be. And the danger is non-obvious.
Yeah, comment kinda got downvoted into oblivion for a slightly off example, but this was kind of my point. There are a lot of appliances that become significantly less safe when you put the power into places it's not supposed to be. And the danger is non-obvious.
> ...you'll still get a shock regardless of the state of the switch...
oops, yes, good point.
oops, yes, good point.
Fair enough -- my mistake, just assumed this was kosher based off of finding a few cheap appliances with 120v on the body and finding them plugged into reverse-wired receptacles.
Don't mean to be pushy, but: Are there really toasters, of any vintage, that can have an energized case due to a reverse-wired receptacle? I'm doubtful, but I don't know.
In the toaster case I was more referring to the heating elements inside.
> But that nice shiny metal lamp you've got? It's got the neutral bonded to the body
That would be illegal where I live, and I think in most of the world too. In fact, on a standard residential outlet here, it would immediately bring the house power down.
Either the body is grounded or it's floating. It should never be linked to the neutral.
That would be illegal where I live, and I think in most of the world too. In fact, on a standard residential outlet here, it would immediately bring the house power down.
Either the body is grounded or it's floating. It should never be linked to the neutral.
> on a standard residential outlet here, it would immediately bring the house power down.
How?
How?
There's a circuit breaker designed specifically for that. In English I think it's called "residual current device".
In North America those are more commonly called a GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter).
They wouldn't trip in this case just by plugging a poorly wired appliance in. They detect an imbalance in current flow between the hot and neutral wires. If they detect more current going out than coming back in, they recognize that the current has found another path (which is bad) and trip.
Unless you have a grounded lamp (which is certainly not common here; I've never seen one) there'd be no alternate path until you provided one by being shocked, so there'd be no immediate trip. It would, however, increase safety by tripping once you were being shocked instead of simply allowing you to continue being shocked.
They wouldn't trip in this case just by plugging a poorly wired appliance in. They detect an imbalance in current flow between the hot and neutral wires. If they detect more current going out than coming back in, they recognize that the current has found another path (which is bad) and trip.
Unless you have a grounded lamp (which is certainly not common here; I've never seen one) there'd be no alternate path until you provided one by being shocked, so there'd be no immediate trip. It would, however, increase safety by tripping once you were being shocked instead of simply allowing you to continue being shocked.
An RCD/GFCI would immediately trip if anything past it is bridging ground and neutral. As well as ground to line, or line to neutral of another circuit (on a different RCD), or line to line of another circuit (on a different RCD, in single-phase or multi-phase installations), or neutral to neutral on a different circuit (on different RCDs), etc etc.
For example, if someone did indeed have a metal-cased grounded desk lamp whose body was also connected to neutral too; it would trip as soon as you plug it in, whether you turn it on or not, and you won't be able to turn the RCD back on until you unplug the lamp [1].
In the US they're called GFCIs as you point out, but this name is bad, since it implies that it only trips on ground faults. In reality they trip on /any/ current imbalance, regardless of how it's happening, over which conductors, or in which direction it is occurring (after all, we are talking about /alternating/ current here). Among other things, this means that if you take a line conductor from a non-RCD-protected circuit, and borrow the neutral from an RCD-protected circuit to power a load, that RCD will still trip, even though the fault isn't on the circuit(s) that the RCD was installed to protect.
As to tripping should the neutral-connected case develop line potential, a circuit breaker will immediately (< 40ms) trip anyway. As to tripping should the grounded-case develop line potential; circuit breakers will also do that if your earth fault loop impedance is low enough (and if it isn't, you'll have an additional single time-delayed master RCD for the entire installation, for fault protection anyway). In a properly designed, installed, and maintained electrical installation, such a fault will simply not exist for long (40-500ms), regardless of whether you have RCDs for additional protection or not. This makes it highly unlikely that you would subsequently come into contact with that mains-potential object; but on the off chance that you do, say, if it only develops a line to earth fault when you're touching it because it wasn't turned on yet; indeed, an RCD for additional protection is a nice thing to have.
[1] Sometimes, depending on design, one can manually hold the tripping latch up to prevent it from disconnecting even when it detects a fault. This is extremely bad design in my opinion, and is not the case with UK RCDs; the tripping mechanism is entirely internal, and even if you epoxy or padlock the latch in the on position, it will still trip correctly. I've seen some circuit breaker designs that suffer this flaw too, but again not in the UK.
For example, if someone did indeed have a metal-cased grounded desk lamp whose body was also connected to neutral too; it would trip as soon as you plug it in, whether you turn it on or not, and you won't be able to turn the RCD back on until you unplug the lamp [1].
In the US they're called GFCIs as you point out, but this name is bad, since it implies that it only trips on ground faults. In reality they trip on /any/ current imbalance, regardless of how it's happening, over which conductors, or in which direction it is occurring (after all, we are talking about /alternating/ current here). Among other things, this means that if you take a line conductor from a non-RCD-protected circuit, and borrow the neutral from an RCD-protected circuit to power a load, that RCD will still trip, even though the fault isn't on the circuit(s) that the RCD was installed to protect.
As to tripping should the neutral-connected case develop line potential, a circuit breaker will immediately (< 40ms) trip anyway. As to tripping should the grounded-case develop line potential; circuit breakers will also do that if your earth fault loop impedance is low enough (and if it isn't, you'll have an additional single time-delayed master RCD for the entire installation, for fault protection anyway). In a properly designed, installed, and maintained electrical installation, such a fault will simply not exist for long (40-500ms), regardless of whether you have RCDs for additional protection or not. This makes it highly unlikely that you would subsequently come into contact with that mains-potential object; but on the off chance that you do, say, if it only develops a line to earth fault when you're touching it because it wasn't turned on yet; indeed, an RCD for additional protection is a nice thing to have.
[1] Sometimes, depending on design, one can manually hold the tripping latch up to prevent it from disconnecting even when it detects a fault. This is extremely bad design in my opinion, and is not the case with UK RCDs; the tripping mechanism is entirely internal, and even if you epoxy or padlock the latch in the on position, it will still trip correctly. I've seen some circuit breaker designs that suffer this flaw too, but again not in the UK.
You're still assuming a ground where none exists, and you also seem to be assuming RCDs in the distribution panel, which is not something I have ever seen in any US residential or commercial installation - I don't think the national code would allow it. The only RCDs you see here are the GFCIs built into outlets. Those are only required in new construction, and then only in kitchens, bathrooms, and other places near water. Hell, I haven't even always lived in places that had circuit breakers instead of Edison-screw fuses, and I'm not all that old.
Thanks to Big Clive, I have a vague but reasonable sense of what UK electrical systems are like. It's not safe, metaphorically or literally, to assume the US is up to the same standard. As you might find out the hard way if you did make such an assumption, North American electrical systems in a lot of ways are shockingly poor.
Thanks to Big Clive, I have a vague but reasonable sense of what UK electrical systems are like. It's not safe, metaphorically or literally, to assume the US is up to the same standard. As you might find out the hard way if you did make such an assumption, North American electrical systems in a lot of ways are shockingly poor.
It's more that the cable line was connected to the home's ground plate which the neutral was also tied to (neutral is tied to ground so it can discharge excess current in the home's electrical system during thunderstorms or power surges).
When the neutral was cut on the service line, the return path for the mains current became residential ground->cable line->neutral in cable trunk. Since coax drops aren't designed to handle residential mains current, the cable began to heat up and melted its insulation.
When the neutral was cut on the service line, the return path for the mains current became residential ground->cable line->neutral in cable trunk. Since coax drops aren't designed to handle residential mains current, the cable began to heat up and melted its insulation.
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I’m honestly surprised the low voltage cable lasted as long as it did.
I'm surprised too, but depending on what equipment is in the house the neutral can see much less current than the hot. US residential is usually split phase power, so 240 is provided by two out of phase 120 wires. Since most large loads (air conditioner, stove, oven, etc) use 240v they don't put a load on the neutral. The 120v devices put a load on the neutral but if the house is well wired they cancel each other out since half are on one leg of the 120 and half on the other. From the power service view they act like one large 240v device.
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I'm going to be honest: until my neutral line was severed by a tree falling on the line -- while not fully severing my power -- I thought the bare metal wire was just there to support the power lines physically.
Not deliberately. The neutral from the Power co. failed, then his house power sought out another pathway. The coax was grounded to the house's service ground (as it should be), and became a return path for the electric his house was using.
> his house power sought out another pathway
Pedantically (but with the justification that this is safety-critical): Electricity always takes every path, just in inverse proportion to the impedance of the paths.
If a fleshy 1000 ohm resistor touched that service ground, you'd get some electrons there too, and possibly enough to kill.
Pedantically (but with the justification that this is safety-critical): Electricity always takes every path, just in inverse proportion to the impedance of the paths.
If a fleshy 1000 ohm resistor touched that service ground, you'd get some electrons there too, and possibly enough to kill.
>Electricity always takes every path, just in inverse proportion to the impedance of the paths
This is one of those things that are bloody obvious in retrospect, but people usually don't think about it at all
This is one of those things that are bloody obvious in retrospect, but people usually don't think about it at all
> Comcast wouldn't be able to send anyone out for a month
Is there a good explanation for how this can be the case in a developed country?
Is there a good explanation for how this can be the case in a developed country?
The invisible hand of the free market did not want anyone there for a month. We all follow the invisible hand (like, instinctively, since it's invisible). You're not questioning the wisdom of the invisible hand, are you?
Don't let the fact that it's incorporated as a private business fool you, Comcast is a government monopoly.
A deregulated ISP market would be a huge improvement for this country!
A deregulated ISP market would be a huge improvement for this country!
ISPs are a natural monopoly [1]. Deregulation is unlikely to fix the issue. Creating (or regulating) a common infrastructure, e.g. poles and/or cable tunnels looks like a better way to induce competition.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
Not to fight over terminology, but in most of the US, cable companies are given an explicit monopoly "franchise" from the local municipality.
There are some areas that might be a natural monopoly anyway due to low density population, but only way you could know is open things up. That's a tough pill to swallow since the franchise "fees" (taxes) are guaranteed so long as the cable company has a guaranteed monopoly. Yes they could pass a generic tax on cable service, but that would be a new tax.
I focus on cable companies because that seems to be the most common way to get broadband to many parts of the US.
There are some areas that might be a natural monopoly anyway due to low density population, but only way you could know is open things up. That's a tough pill to swallow since the franchise "fees" (taxes) are guaranteed so long as the cable company has a guaranteed monopoly. Yes they could pass a generic tax on cable service, but that would be a new tax.
I focus on cable companies because that seems to be the most common way to get broadband to many parts of the US.
You can make a decent natural monopoly argument for cabled ISPs. Still debatable, but it has some merit.
But in 2020, wireless ISP work great wherever they're not regulated away.
One big problem with regulations is that even if they're beneficial when enacted, they will remain in force for many decades after the underlying reality has changed.
But in 2020, wireless ISP work great wherever they're not regulated away.
One big problem with regulations is that even if they're beneficial when enacted, they will remain in force for many decades after the underlying reality has changed.
> But in 2020, wireless ISP work great wherever they're not regulated away.
Because in CURRENT_YEAR we don't have to worry about rain fade or quirks of local terrain or unintended interference?
That's quite a big statement to make, generalized over the whole world like that.
Because in CURRENT_YEAR we don't have to worry about rain fade or quirks of local terrain or unintended interference?
That's quite a big statement to make, generalized over the whole world like that.
> One big problem with regulations is that even if they're beneficial when enacted, they will remain in force for many decades after the underlying reality has changed.
We tend to avoid principles-based regulation in the US, but it's not destiny that regulations remain the same forever, even with our system. We certainly don't have to choose between that and not having any regulations at all (which isn't even an option when you're talking about radio spectrum, or use of wires at the last mile, or whatever).
We tend to avoid principles-based regulation in the US, but it's not destiny that regulations remain the same forever, even with our system. We certainly don't have to choose between that and not having any regulations at all (which isn't even an option when you're talking about radio spectrum, or use of wires at the last mile, or whatever).
My impression is that regulations turn to legacy status more often than not. Not that I've conducted any scientific study to back that up.
For radio spectrum you don't need any regulations or regulators. Just establish that radio frequencies in a certain area can be owned, and use general property right rules.
For radio spectrum you don't need any regulations or regulators. Just establish that radio frequencies in a certain area can be owned, and use general property right rules.
It's not really my area, but I feel like the distinction you're making between "regulations" and "general property right rules" is a bit like the distinction that is made at times between "fees" and "taxes."
To me, "regulations" either means there is a regulator directly issuing rules and orders to the regulated industry, or a legislature manages the rule set through occasional legislation.
This is quite different from laws protecting property, where all the state does is settle property disputes.
In slogan form, one is "rule of man" vs "rule of law".
This is quite different from laws protecting property, where all the state does is settle property disputes.
In slogan form, one is "rule of man" vs "rule of law".
I think I mentioned it upthread but principles-based regulation can at times be a nice middle ground.
The only thing to break the duopoly is some third option that requires no additional last mile infrastructure investment - either a common infrastructure that decouples provider from physical wiring or wireless Internet that isn't horrible.
Just because we want a technology to exist doesn't mean it's ever going to.
Regulation deals with the here-and-now.
Regulation deals with the here-and-now.
Fixed wireless internet and satellite internet do exist now - there have been barriers to deployment, some of which have been put up by traditional terrestrial ISPs.
There have recently been well funded pushes into satellite internet such as Starlink and Project Kuiper.
There have recently been well funded pushes into satellite internet such as Starlink and Project Kuiper.
But how would the gov't handle installing all the back-doors?
A system where large corporations handle the backbone and local ISPs and/or municipalities handle the last few miles sounds ideal for the US, but I am pretty skeptical as to whether we would get that if regulations simply ceased to exist.
("regulations simply cease to exist" seems like the casual definition for "deregulation," though the actual process of deregulation is for a bunch of people to pass a new set of regulations and if they're pandering to a certain constituency, they will call it "deregulation," regardless of the effect of the regulations they just passed. See: telecom, the airlines, banking, etc.)
("regulations simply cease to exist" seems like the casual definition for "deregulation," though the actual process of deregulation is for a bunch of people to pass a new set of regulations and if they're pandering to a certain constituency, they will call it "deregulation," regardless of the effect of the regulations they just passed. See: telecom, the airlines, banking, etc.)
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Exactly what regulations are preventing new broadband providers from entering the market?
I think it's mostly that cities hand out monopolies to Comcast or regional equivalents.
I'll admit I don't know the details well.
I'll admit I don't know the details well.
Ask Google. They couldn't put fiber in my city because AT&T told the government to tell them not to.
you can't blame the free market when comcast has a state sponsored monopoly/duopoly (with the telephone company being the other) on fast internet.
You can blame The High Priests of The Invisible Hand for keeping the members of the duopolies astonishingly poorly regulated, to go back to the original point of the grandparent post.
As an aside, it's funny, I'm not sure what qualifies for me as "the telephone company" anymore. I guess there probably is one where I live, technically, but it doesn't seem to factor in.
edit: this is evidently going to be one of those posts that fluctuates in "points" over time, bouncing up and down. It'd be fun to have a sparkline implementation that illustrates this change over time
As an aside, it's funny, I'm not sure what qualifies for me as "the telephone company" anymore. I guess there probably is one where I live, technically, but it doesn't seem to factor in.
edit: this is evidently going to be one of those posts that fluctuates in "points" over time, bouncing up and down. It'd be fun to have a sparkline implementation that illustrates this change over time
"state sponsored" only in the sense that the state hasn't stepped in to break them up. Comcast's monopoly is entirely self-created through mergers and non-competition agreements.
No, state sponsored - or more likely city sponsored. If you attempt to run wires around your neighborhood to provide TC, Telephone, and internet (you need to do all 3 to have a chance at making money) you will be shut down because Comcast already as an agreement with the city to not allow anyone else to do it.
I'm assuming a serious plan to run wires above. That is you have found deep packet backers to fund you; you have found qualified people to do the work; you have figured out all the other details to do this. There are good reasons to stop someone running cat-6 wires everywhere, but here I'm assuming you have figured out the right way to do this - whatever it is.
I'm assuming a serious plan to run wires above. That is you have found deep packet backers to fund you; you have found qualified people to do the work; you have figured out all the other details to do this. There are good reasons to stop someone running cat-6 wires everywhere, but here I'm assuming you have figured out the right way to do this - whatever it is.
And what, you think it's a complete coincidence that every single city in broad swaths of the country decided to contract with a single company to run those wires?
No, agreements between the companies ensure that only one option is available to each region. My city can offer Time Warner the right to run cable here whenever they want, but Time Warner will refuse to do so, because Time Warner has a deal with Comcast that says they will never offer cable in my city. There is no legal barrier to new cable startups like Google Fiber, only the immense cost of it and the threat of retaliatory blacklisting and throttling from the cable monopolies.
That's why the only places these companies compete are ones where the cities have decided to set up a local public broadband to buck the monopoly, or a very well resourced competitor like Google has decided to enter the market and refuses to play their anticompetition game.
No, agreements between the companies ensure that only one option is available to each region. My city can offer Time Warner the right to run cable here whenever they want, but Time Warner will refuse to do so, because Time Warner has a deal with Comcast that says they will never offer cable in my city. There is no legal barrier to new cable startups like Google Fiber, only the immense cost of it and the threat of retaliatory blacklisting and throttling from the cable monopolies.
That's why the only places these companies compete are ones where the cities have decided to set up a local public broadband to buck the monopoly, or a very well resourced competitor like Google has decided to enter the market and refuses to play their anticompetition game.
Google setup their fiber in the early days based on if they could easily get permission, not where it made the most business sense (they did have some choices, but many cities didn't give them any option).
Also, in many locations, the incumbent telcos lobby specifically to block any sort of municipal/public broadband infrastructure from being permitted when it is proposed.
Utility markets are anything but free. They're locally sanctioned monopolies or duopolies.
They are a good example of why government running things is generally a bad idea.
Regulating an industry is not the same as running it. For an industry to truly not be regulated, it needs to exist in an imaginary space, perhaps next door to physicsland with its frictionless surfaces and spherical cows.
At present the only example of governments running - or at least owning - communications utilities in the United States that I'm aware of are municipal broadband [1] providers, which tend to be much more well-liked by their users than something like Comcast. (and bitterly opposed by The High Priests of The Invisible Hand, who want competition but not that competition)
Of course, other countries have state-owned communications monopolies, which actually run the gamut in terms of quality and cost.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband
At present the only example of governments running - or at least owning - communications utilities in the United States that I'm aware of are municipal broadband [1] providers, which tend to be much more well-liked by their users than something like Comcast. (and bitterly opposed by The High Priests of The Invisible Hand, who want competition but not that competition)
Of course, other countries have state-owned communications monopolies, which actually run the gamut in terms of quality and cost.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband
Pointless bullshit that adds no information to the topic while ignoring some that is already there (note the "about 3 months ago" and try to think of what was happening in various fields of work at that time).
Focusing on new Customer acquisition drives revenue. Likely they're a monopoly or duopoly provider in the area. Theres little danger of losing Customers even if they're extremely dissatisfied, so servicing existing Customers is only a cost center.
I work for a European company and many of my coworkers are remote from around the world. They were surprised by this too.
My city also has regular brown outs, power outages, etc. that have greatly inconvenienced my remote work (I have done a lot of work recently over a mobile hotspot). And it's not a HUGE city, but it is sizable (600k metro, ~800,000 in the metro + surrounding areas).
But for how this can be the case: It's as another commenter says. The provider is a duopoly in my area so I have no choice. Even worse the provider doesn't have many employees who do this work, they mostly hire 3rd party consultants to do repairs/installations of infrastructure.
My city also has regular brown outs, power outages, etc. that have greatly inconvenienced my remote work (I have done a lot of work recently over a mobile hotspot). And it's not a HUGE city, but it is sizable (600k metro, ~800,000 in the metro + surrounding areas).
But for how this can be the case: It's as another commenter says. The provider is a duopoly in my area so I have no choice. Even worse the provider doesn't have many employees who do this work, they mostly hire 3rd party consultants to do repairs/installations of infrastructure.
Is there a good explanation for how this can be the case in a developed country?
Since his story is worded as if it happened recently, it could be COVID-related.
Back in April I tried to get my cable company to install its home security system where I live. I was told no, because the company wasn't sending techs into anyone's homes until the virus let up.
I tried again in August, and was told it would be a very long while, as the service guys were still catching up on the backlog.
Since his story is worded as if it happened recently, it could be COVID-related.
Back in April I tried to get my cable company to install its home security system where I live. I was told no, because the company wasn't sending techs into anyone's homes until the virus let up.
I tried again in August, and was told it would be a very long while, as the service guys were still catching up on the backlog.
> it could be COVID-related
This was certainly an issue with BT-OR in the UK for a short while when lock-down first properly started and there was a combination of OR people not being able to work and home users discovering issues (or reporting those that until now had been to minor to care about) as they tried to work from home. That caused quite a back-log of work in some areas.
This was certainly an issue with BT-OR in the UK for a short while when lock-down first properly started and there was a combination of OR people not being able to work and home users discovering issues (or reporting those that until now had been to minor to care about) as they tried to work from home. That caused quite a back-log of work in some areas.
It requires a line tech and not an install tech. I don't know why it takes 3 months instead of like a week, but things can get bad when your choices for high speed internet are the phone company or the cable company and they both suck.
Comcast has, on occasion, ranked below the IRS in terms of brand popularity...
In the UK we call this a PEN conductor fault. It's called a PEN conductor when it's used as a combined Protective Earth & Neutral, as in a TN-C-S earthing arrangement. The property earthing is bonded to the incoming neutral cable before the consumer unit ("fuse board" / breaker panel). This relies on the fact that the neutral side of the supply transformer is itself earthed (this is why it's called neutral; its potential with respect to the earth is ~0V). If the neutral supply to your property is broken, then the return current will pass through the internal neutral wiring in your home, back through any protective devices like breakers and RCDs, and then jump across your earth bond, back through the earth wiring in your home, and then to e.g. a water line or gas line bond, or in your case, coaxial; through the earth itself, and then back to the neutral side of the supply transformer, completing the circuit.
This has 3 important implications:
1) The return conductor (e.g. coaxial cable) may not be adequately-sized to carry the current you're asking it to, but your circuit breakers are rated in relation to the fixed internal wiring of your property, so they won't trip. This risks melting and subsequently breaking the conductor, leading to:
2) The exposed metalwork in your house becomes live. Screws at lightswitches, metal ceiling lighting pendants, copper water and gas lines, the works. All of it. This leads to:
3) An RCD (GFCI) or a device that contains an RCD (like an RCBO) will not save you when you come into contact with any of it, because the current is first passing back through that RCD on your internal neutral wiring, so there is no current imbalance from its perspective.
So yes, very dangerous. In the UK, we use concentric cabling for our street supplies, so it is very hard to accidentally sever the outer neutral conductor without also severing the inner line conductor.
This has 3 important implications:
1) The return conductor (e.g. coaxial cable) may not be adequately-sized to carry the current you're asking it to, but your circuit breakers are rated in relation to the fixed internal wiring of your property, so they won't trip. This risks melting and subsequently breaking the conductor, leading to:
2) The exposed metalwork in your house becomes live. Screws at lightswitches, metal ceiling lighting pendants, copper water and gas lines, the works. All of it. This leads to:
3) An RCD (GFCI) or a device that contains an RCD (like an RCBO) will not save you when you come into contact with any of it, because the current is first passing back through that RCD on your internal neutral wiring, so there is no current imbalance from its perspective.
So yes, very dangerous. In the UK, we use concentric cabling for our street supplies, so it is very hard to accidentally sever the outer neutral conductor without also severing the inner line conductor.
In a properly executed TN-C-S distribution, the TN-C and TN-S sections are separated with a 4 way single junction point where the PEN conductor coming from the station is connected to the local grounding rod and after this the separated PE and Neutral conductors are drawn into the property. Absolutely no circuit breaker is allowed on the PEN conductor upwards of this separation point.
This arrangement remains safe regardless of any single fault in any of the 4 wires. If the PEN conductor breaks but the local earthing still has decently low resistance, the internal PE protection that connects to the case of electronic appliances is still connected to the ground. If strong currents are drawn the voltage of the PE in relation to the real ground will increase, but the mains voltage will also fluctuate with the difference; so you might get a 20-30V drop in the mains voltage and the same voltage appears on the PE, not usually dangerous and you can see something is wrong with the power. Differential and overload protections still work since they have a safe return via the grounding rod.
If, on the other hand, the local grounding malfunctions, the PE is still secured to the PEN, which should be grounded at the nearest pole or local transformer. This is a harder defect to detect and periodic checks are recommended on the local ground, but at least you have single fault protection, and two things need to happen before a dangerous condition can occur (both local grounding and the PEN conductor must have a fault).
An adjacent benefit of having good local grounding in this configuration is cleaner and more stable voltage, since all groundings of all houses in an area are connected in parallel to the same PEN line, providing a path to the ground that might have a lower impedance than the PEN line feeding it.
This arrangement remains safe regardless of any single fault in any of the 4 wires. If the PEN conductor breaks but the local earthing still has decently low resistance, the internal PE protection that connects to the case of electronic appliances is still connected to the ground. If strong currents are drawn the voltage of the PE in relation to the real ground will increase, but the mains voltage will also fluctuate with the difference; so you might get a 20-30V drop in the mains voltage and the same voltage appears on the PE, not usually dangerous and you can see something is wrong with the power. Differential and overload protections still work since they have a safe return via the grounding rod.
If, on the other hand, the local grounding malfunctions, the PE is still secured to the PEN, which should be grounded at the nearest pole or local transformer. This is a harder defect to detect and periodic checks are recommended on the local ground, but at least you have single fault protection, and two things need to happen before a dangerous condition can occur (both local grounding and the PEN conductor must have a fault).
An adjacent benefit of having good local grounding in this configuration is cleaner and more stable voltage, since all groundings of all houses in an area are connected in parallel to the same PEN line, providing a path to the ground that might have a lower impedance than the PEN line feeding it.
That would be safer, yeah, and I agree that's how it should be done. However, we don't do that.
Usually, our TN-C-S supplies are just augmented with PME, where the PEN conductor is earthed at multiple points along its run. This is almost equivalent to your description of a separate earth rod in every property, but it's on the main run instead of each branch, and it's not done for every point (e.g. house), nor even every other point or perhaps not even every 5 points.
This usually saves you from the consequences of a PEN conductor fault if it's broken along its run somewhere (because there's still an earth rod after the break), but it can't save you if the neutral is broken after it splits off to feed your property, and it can't save you if your property is the last on the line.
Where we have separate property earthing rods (either as the sole earthing arrangement, as in a TT earthing arrangement, or instead, in addition to a TN-S or TN-C-S supply, for example in an outbuilding containing extraneous conductive parts like copper water pipes), these are not permitted to be connected to a TN-C-S supply earth because practically no-one else in the street will have such a setup and then a broken PEN conductor sees your earth rod carry, perhaps, half of that street's supply current, which it could obviously never safely do.
I imagine we don't mandate supplementary earth rods in TN-C-S installations here because:
1) PME is common, reducing the impact of a PEN conductor fault, and
2) As I said, TN-C-S installations here use concentric cable, which is very hard to break in such a manner as to cause a PEN conductor fault without also killing the line conductor, rendering the fault moot.
Usually, our TN-C-S supplies are just augmented with PME, where the PEN conductor is earthed at multiple points along its run. This is almost equivalent to your description of a separate earth rod in every property, but it's on the main run instead of each branch, and it's not done for every point (e.g. house), nor even every other point or perhaps not even every 5 points.
This usually saves you from the consequences of a PEN conductor fault if it's broken along its run somewhere (because there's still an earth rod after the break), but it can't save you if the neutral is broken after it splits off to feed your property, and it can't save you if your property is the last on the line.
Where we have separate property earthing rods (either as the sole earthing arrangement, as in a TT earthing arrangement, or instead, in addition to a TN-S or TN-C-S supply, for example in an outbuilding containing extraneous conductive parts like copper water pipes), these are not permitted to be connected to a TN-C-S supply earth because practically no-one else in the street will have such a setup and then a broken PEN conductor sees your earth rod carry, perhaps, half of that street's supply current, which it could obviously never safely do.
I imagine we don't mandate supplementary earth rods in TN-C-S installations here because:
1) PME is common, reducing the impact of a PEN conductor fault, and
2) As I said, TN-C-S installations here use concentric cable, which is very hard to break in such a manner as to cause a PEN conductor fault without also killing the line conductor, rendering the fault moot.
> Where we have separate property earthing rods ... these are not permitted to be connected to a TN-C-S supply earth because practically no-one else in the street will have such a setup and then a broken PEN conductor sees your earth rod carry, perhaps, half of that street's supply current, which it could obviously never safely do.
If no one on the street has an earthing rod and the PEN breaks, then all the PE internal wiring of all houses will be connected, via transformers, light-bulbs etc. to the live wire. So every grounded appliance in the area is live. This is such a dangerous scenario that a grounding rod carrying half the current of the street is the least of your worries. All differential protections are also disabled.
Additionally, houses will typically be spread around on a three phase supply with the PEN carrying the disequilibrium current. If PEN breaks uphill from such a distribution cell then you end up with two houses connected in series to two phases, giving a voltage √3 = 1.732... higher than the mains (208 vs 120V in US or 400V vs 230V in Europe). The voltage will spread depending on the resistance of the two houses. So if a house has large consumers it will see a very low voltage, while it's series pair might see a huge voltage spyke. This is an incredibly dangerous scenario from a fire hazard perspective. A similar thing can happen in a 120/240V single phase system.
So, if you want good, solid, safe voltage in TN-C-S systems, a good grounding (preferably less than 1 Ohm) should be connected at the separation point between the TN-Combined supply and your internal TN-Separated wiring. This guarantees your differential protections will work regardless of what happens uphill.
Of course, if this is an uncommon practice in the area and not allowed by local code then that's that. But I wouldn't feel very safe without, at a minimum, a ground fault detection relay (which has it's own mini-earthing rod and detects when PEN floats at a too high voltage), and also a over-voltage protection.
PEN faults are very common, it's not a question of if, it's a question of when. Coaxial supplies are used around here too, with recommended local earthing and mandatory ground fault detection relay if local earthing does not exist. Still, it happens that lighting destroys both the central conductor and the electronic ground relay, yet line voltage still finds a way to shock people (you don't need a very good connection for that). Other times, the aluminum-steel core of the coax breaks down. Other times, idiot electricians work on the network and create PEN faults, exploding all the devices of a certain home by exposing them to three phase voltage.
If no one on the street has an earthing rod and the PEN breaks, then all the PE internal wiring of all houses will be connected, via transformers, light-bulbs etc. to the live wire. So every grounded appliance in the area is live. This is such a dangerous scenario that a grounding rod carrying half the current of the street is the least of your worries. All differential protections are also disabled.
Additionally, houses will typically be spread around on a three phase supply with the PEN carrying the disequilibrium current. If PEN breaks uphill from such a distribution cell then you end up with two houses connected in series to two phases, giving a voltage √3 = 1.732... higher than the mains (208 vs 120V in US or 400V vs 230V in Europe). The voltage will spread depending on the resistance of the two houses. So if a house has large consumers it will see a very low voltage, while it's series pair might see a huge voltage spyke. This is an incredibly dangerous scenario from a fire hazard perspective. A similar thing can happen in a 120/240V single phase system.
So, if you want good, solid, safe voltage in TN-C-S systems, a good grounding (preferably less than 1 Ohm) should be connected at the separation point between the TN-Combined supply and your internal TN-Separated wiring. This guarantees your differential protections will work regardless of what happens uphill.
Of course, if this is an uncommon practice in the area and not allowed by local code then that's that. But I wouldn't feel very safe without, at a minimum, a ground fault detection relay (which has it's own mini-earthing rod and detects when PEN floats at a too high voltage), and also a over-voltage protection.
PEN faults are very common, it's not a question of if, it's a question of when. Coaxial supplies are used around here too, with recommended local earthing and mandatory ground fault detection relay if local earthing does not exist. Still, it happens that lighting destroys both the central conductor and the electronic ground relay, yet line voltage still finds a way to shock people (you don't need a very good connection for that). Other times, the aluminum-steel core of the coax breaks down. Other times, idiot electricians work on the network and create PEN faults, exploding all the devices of a certain home by exposing them to three phase voltage.
Open neutrals are no joke, here’s a good analysis of a similar situation that caused a house fire: https://www.electrical-forensics.com/Open-Neutral/Open-Neutr...
Here in Australia the coax connection from the street typically goes through a galvanic isolator to avoid this situation, rather than being bonded to the earth.
Here in Australia the coax connection from the street typically goes through a galvanic isolator to avoid this situation, rather than being bonded to the earth.
Wow what a mess
Open neutrals are no joke but each case does give a good story every time again.
I know a guy who cut a 70mm2 neutral in a factory. They had a lot of single phase drive inverters. I think somethink like 25 inverters had to be replaced (and a lot of other stuff too).
What do you mean by “galvanic isolator”? Link to coax example device? I’ve never heard the term before and a quick google is showing something irrelevant. NZer, so the language barrier exists!
Probably an isolation transformer. A search for “cable tv isolation transformer” gives lots of results.
Hadn't heard the term before. Looks like its two diodes in parallel, pointing opposite directions, in a very-expensive box. Blocks low-voltage DC flow while allowing higher-voltage AC currents to pass. Looks like maritime usage is common.
http://www.yandina.com/galvanicIsolator.htm
http://www.yandina.com/galvanicIsolator.htm
A few years back, when we had a load of wet weather, we had a power cut. It lasted about an hour before the power came back on again, only to go off after about 30 seconds. This time it was off for about 5 minutes, then back on for 30 seconds again.
On a whim, I wandered down the road. It had stopped raining. About 50m down the road there was a dry patch of pavement and a smell of burning plastic. Another 100m down the road was the electricity substation, with a guy from the electric company who said he was trying yet another 300A fuse. He said that often the cable can be shorted out by ground water, but connecting it up again may heat it enough to drive the water out and make it fine. I asked him after breaking three fuses already, how he thought another one would solve the problem, and would he like to know where the short was? Took a bit of persuading to get him to walk 100m up the road to where the dry patch and smell of burning plastic was, and of course by then the smell had worn off a bit. Another electric company guy arrived with a smelling device, which they bashed into the tarmac to try to identify the location of the break, eventually settling with exactly where I told them it was.
Within a couple of hours after that, a team had ripped up the pavement, dug down to the cable, spliced it, wrapped it up in waterproofing, refilled the hole, and relaid the pavement.
But I think your story wins.
On a whim, I wandered down the road. It had stopped raining. About 50m down the road there was a dry patch of pavement and a smell of burning plastic. Another 100m down the road was the electricity substation, with a guy from the electric company who said he was trying yet another 300A fuse. He said that often the cable can be shorted out by ground water, but connecting it up again may heat it enough to drive the water out and make it fine. I asked him after breaking three fuses already, how he thought another one would solve the problem, and would he like to know where the short was? Took a bit of persuading to get him to walk 100m up the road to where the dry patch and smell of burning plastic was, and of course by then the smell had worn off a bit. Another electric company guy arrived with a smelling device, which they bashed into the tarmac to try to identify the location of the break, eventually settling with exactly where I told them it was.
Within a couple of hours after that, a team had ripped up the pavement, dug down to the cable, spliced it, wrapped it up in waterproofing, refilled the hole, and relaid the pavement.
But I think your story wins.
In India, ISPs intentionally cut the cables to annoy competitor's customers. It's insane how many people don't do anything but simply switch while being aware.
Don't worry, that happens in the US too. Super annoying and dishonest.
I've had friend have their lines cut by comcast or ilk.
I think it started with old cable systems where people would connect their cable themselves without paying for service. Then when the techs would go to install service they would see if any of the nearby houses were hooked up without being on the customer list, and cut their cable.
A friend of mine had her cable cut, probably for the same reason. Unfortunately the cable went to her satellite dish, not comcast.
(I guess it could have been competitors too)
I think it started with old cable systems where people would connect their cable themselves without paying for service. Then when the techs would go to install service they would see if any of the nearby houses were hooked up without being on the customer list, and cut their cable.
A friend of mine had her cable cut, probably for the same reason. Unfortunately the cable went to her satellite dish, not comcast.
(I guess it could have been competitors too)
Just FYI, I really enjoyed your story but I almost closed the tab and didn't read it due to "Read on to find out" in the first paragraph. It sets off all the clickbait alarms in my head, which make me expect to find a bunch of low-quality content. The rj45 cable melting is just as good of a hook (and is actually why I continued reading). I'd suggest sticking the first sentence onto the front of the second paragraph and removing the rest of the first paragraph.
Thanks for that feedback. I'm having to do a lot more writing for my job now so being able to improve my writing with honest feedback is super important.
I agree, I even cringed a little bit when I wrote it. But I didn't want to fully give everything away so it was just a bad edit :) Your suggestion would work a lot better.
I agree, I even cringed a little bit when I wrote it. But I didn't want to fully give everything away so it was just a bad edit :) Your suggestion would work a lot better.
Be sure to write specifically for your target audience. That clickbait would work if your target was the Lowest Common Denominator. It doesn't work so well with a highly technical audience.
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You had me hook, line and sinker at "cable in my cable modem melted". Great story and great writing, thanks!
That's an incredible story!
It's amazing what you can discover when you start back-tracing issues like this.
A few months ago, my house started having intermittent failures.
It turns out that some road works caused one of the phases in my house to leak into the other phase, which caused a whole array of problems, but only in specific areas of the house.
We discovered this by piping 40kV into the wiring and listening to crackling in the ground, where we found the faulty cabling.
A few months ago, my house started having intermittent failures.
It turns out that some road works caused one of the phases in my house to leak into the other phase, which caused a whole array of problems, but only in specific areas of the house.
We discovered this by piping 40kV into the wiring and listening to crackling in the ground, where we found the faulty cabling.
I'm very intrigued--can I get any more details about how you could safely do that? Did you, e.g. disconnect the main breaker and have a spare Van de Graaff generator lying around?
It's called Insulation Resistance Testing and an electrician would typically use a device like a Megger tester.
Here's a good video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsXUuuV4_sw
Here's a good video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsXUuuV4_sw
Oh, of course. I was not thinking right. I was imagining a 'chunky' HV supply rather than a hi-pot tester, like some Stanford Research PSU, but those only went up to a few kV if I'm remembering correctly. Thanks.
I obviously had help :)
I had an electrician come and perform this step. The house was disconnected from the source, and then a "thumper" was used: https://megger.com/portable-fault-location-system-stx40- 2000
I had an electrician come and perform this step. The house was disconnected from the source, and then a "thumper" was used: https://megger.com/portable-fault-location-system-stx40- 2000
Being somewhat savvy here probably saved the Comcast tech from severe injury I could imagine them poking around and getting a shocking result.
Yes. Severed neutral lines are bad. A tree next to the house had eventually worn down the neutral line into our house and severed it. We heard buzzing and saw smoke in the house. Fortunately all the was burnt was an extension bar. It could have been a lot worse.
Send Comcast a bill for your services.
We were about to leave for vacation in August. The night before we left, the power went off, then came back on. This happened 1, 2, 3, 20 times. I switched off the main breaker and then went outside to see if I could find out what was going on. Nobody was outside and it was hard to tell if other homes had electricity - a lot of people were gone on vacation themselves and it was still bright.
I tried calling electricians but couldn't get anybody out quickly enough so I ended up calling the power company. They dispatched a guy with a small truck with a short cherry-picker.
He was able to diagnose the problem as branches rubbing on the power line. He trimmed around it so I could turn the power back on. Our house was built in 1914 and the tree wasn't there. Somewhere over 100 years the tree in our neighbor's yard was planted and grew large enough to interfere with the power line.
While we were gone the power company replaced the connection with a shorter, more direct line that avoided the tree entirely.
As another poster said, I think your story is better because of your diagnosing the problem yourself.
I tried calling electricians but couldn't get anybody out quickly enough so I ended up calling the power company. They dispatched a guy with a small truck with a short cherry-picker.
He was able to diagnose the problem as branches rubbing on the power line. He trimmed around it so I could turn the power back on. Our house was built in 1914 and the tree wasn't there. Somewhere over 100 years the tree in our neighbor's yard was planted and grew large enough to interfere with the power line.
While we were gone the power company replaced the connection with a shorter, more direct line that avoided the tree entirely.
As another poster said, I think your story is better because of your diagnosing the problem yourself.
The more I find out about professional trades involving danger, the more I realize everything is a shit show. As developers we often think our mess is the biggest but let me tell you a story about how Exxon drilled a shallow well on the site of an old refinery to recapture product that was leaking into the soil from rusty pipes.
18 month? What were they doing? A spectrum analyser is standard equipment.
This is Openreach we're talking about. Everything happens in 6 month intervals. So those 18 months were likely: 6 months to realize there's a problem, 6 months to assign a contractor to the ticket, 6 months before their next availability for the job.
Thanks. Finding out by the 3rd appointment sounds about right ;-)
I had something similar in my previous flat. The phone cable was going through the living room under the wooden floor, and passing right underneath my big plasma TV. Every time the TV would display a big white screen, the DSL would disconnect (you can imagine the experience of playing games online). Problem went away when I replaced it with an LED TV.
are you really sure the problem was caused by the TV and not just exposed by it?
I have not pulled the wires out of the floor if it is your question. But the fact that the plasma's interference was causing the disconnection was reproduceable. But I am sure the wires were old / in bad state as was the general state of broadband in London 5 years ago (and still today).
I want to know why peoples are paying high for OLD TV's these days. Whats in there?
Mostly retro gamers that want to play games/consoles designed for CRTs just as they did back then. Sometimes museums etc to replace them in installations.
This was probably just a pensioner with a 30 year old tv. Doubt gamers are getting up at 7am to play :)
Most old video game consoles render games internally in 240p and then blank every other scan line. On CRTs, this effect works since the missing lines blend together with the filled in lines but modern TVs will often try to use video processing to 'fill in' these missing lines and even when they don't the effect doesn't look nice on a modern LCD or OLED.
Also, CRTs render each scan line in real time whereas modern TVs have to receive all 480 lines before they can render a frame. This introduces a non-trivial amount of latency into the video feed which can make certain old games unpleasant to play.
Also, CRTs render each scan line in real time whereas modern TVs have to receive all 480 lines before they can render a frame. This introduces a non-trivial amount of latency into the video feed which can make certain old games unpleasant to play.
I wanted to own a Videosphere, but then again I'm not everybody.
Like clockwork at 7? Seems impossible. Who turns on their tv exactly at 7.00 every day? Something does not add up here.
I have a television that's about 20 years old with a built in timer to turn it on. I used it as an alarm clock back in school because I wanted to watch the news every morning anyway and it was much harder to "snooze" than a normal alarm clock.
Older generations that use TV magazines to plan their schedule.
This old TV doesn't have chromecast or netflix built in for on demand streaming
This old TV doesn't have chromecast or netflix built in for on demand streaming
Why it seems impossible? If you're a fan of a show that starts at 7:00 every day but you don't care about other shows before that, you'd end up in that pattern.
Even without watching scheduled TV, if you have a normal day things usually follow the same pattern. Finish work at 17:00, arrive home at 17:30 and all chores done by 19:00, time to watch TV!
Doesn't seem too impossible.
Even without watching scheduled TV, if you have a normal day things usually follow the same pattern. Finish work at 17:00, arrive home at 17:30 and all chores done by 19:00, time to watch TV!
Doesn't seem too impossible.
7am, not 7pm, so I'd go with morning news or weather, rather than a scheduled TV show.
It's called a routine, it's not really unheard of...
Little old ladies.
We sell gear to find these kinds of issues. The best story so far, was a little old lady with an ancient table-side lamp, which had a faulty connection, which would sometimes arc, with just the right shape of wire attached to it to broadcast noise all over the GSM bands.
Now GSM is (from the perspective of the phone's broadcasts), pretty weak, so that enough to periodically wipe out cell service for a couple of neighbourhood blocks.
Now GSM is (from the perspective of the phone's broadcasts), pretty weak, so that enough to periodically wipe out cell service for a couple of neighbourhood blocks.
I have heard - possibly apocryphal about intermittent interference coming from a budgie swing.
The Engineer only noticed this when the little old lady offered him a cuppa and he saw the budgie swing away.
The Engineer only noticed this when the little old lady offered him a cuppa and he saw the budgie swing away.
Is newsworthy because of the Tv or because openreach actually found the problem?
I bet he can sell that TV at a high price online.
«Watch Tv while disrupting your neighbours internet! «
18 months? Wouldn't you use the "monitoring device" earlier to diagnose such issues?
Interference can happen from many other devices and it is not uncommon for the providers and state to find these devices and sometimes fine the individual for using/installing them. People install all kinds of stuff without knowing it can cause problems. Cell repeaters and devices that are not in spec or not even FCC approved etc.
Interference can happen from many other devices and it is not uncommon for the providers and state to find these devices and sometimes fine the individual for using/installing them. People install all kinds of stuff without knowing it can cause problems. Cell repeaters and devices that are not in spec or not even FCC approved etc.
One of my favourite outages was my TV cable - I was sat in a government NOC and called them during lunch. Was lucky I had a phone that had a loudspeaker (was late 90's) and was able to share the excuse for poor intermittent reception - "Sir, your signal is poor as you live on a hill and the it has problems going up hill thru the cable".
Another one around same time same government building and was running Videoconferencing over 2Mbps circuits. Would get intermittent glitches - turned out the Q bearer for the line comming in was old and whilst other networking was fine running over that and the odd few bits messed up on networking could be retransmitted alas TCP/IP, for video, such hits stood out. Replaced that and worked lovely.
But weather related issue for networking would always be the go to, often heavy rain would mess up some microwave link or CAB unit and cause issues.
Another favourite was TZ spikes and had issue which saw call congestion around 3pm every day in the UK on these batch of modems - turned out that was when America woke up and would see a surge in calls, saturating/spiking the capacity for the telco provider and artificially capping our incoming call lines before we hit our capacity.
Then the seasonal ones like birds nesting or tree's growing or a tree ok but when the wind was north west over a certain speed it would blip between the microwave link - microwave links can be so much fun for the gotcha issues that can happen.
Another one around same time same government building and was running Videoconferencing over 2Mbps circuits. Would get intermittent glitches - turned out the Q bearer for the line comming in was old and whilst other networking was fine running over that and the odd few bits messed up on networking could be retransmitted alas TCP/IP, for video, such hits stood out. Replaced that and worked lovely.
But weather related issue for networking would always be the go to, often heavy rain would mess up some microwave link or CAB unit and cause issues.
Another favourite was TZ spikes and had issue which saw call congestion around 3pm every day in the UK on these batch of modems - turned out that was when America woke up and would see a surge in calls, saturating/spiking the capacity for the telco provider and artificially capping our incoming call lines before we hit our capacity.
Then the seasonal ones like birds nesting or tree's growing or a tree ok but when the wind was north west over a certain speed it would blip between the microwave link - microwave links can be so much fun for the gotcha issues that can happen.
Some many years ago, I was the source of interference.
Newly hired by a federal employer who considered morse code an asset, I practiced in my hotel room. Bored, I decided to go live with a small tune-able antenna inside my hotel room, ground to a sink pipe. Yes, I was an idiot, and still am, but older and wiser.
Anyway, every time I keyed, every television in the hotel went green in sync with my keying. Green-green-green. Green green.
The cleaning lady ratted me out and I got a deserved earful from the hotel.
Newly hired by a federal employer who considered morse code an asset, I practiced in my hotel room. Bored, I decided to go live with a small tune-able antenna inside my hotel room, ground to a sink pipe. Yes, I was an idiot, and still am, but older and wiser.
Anyway, every time I keyed, every television in the hotel went green in sync with my keying. Green-green-green. Green green.
The cleaning lady ratted me out and I got a deserved earful from the hotel.
> Newly hired by a federal employer who considered morse code an asset, I practiced in my hotel room. Bored, I decided to go live with a small tune-able antenna inside my hotel room, ground to a sink pipe. Yes, I was an idiot, and still am, but older and wiser.
Being ignorant in this area, I am rather curious now: What exactly was your error, and how did it interfere with the TVs? Did the sink pipe become part of your antenna because of it's size, thus turning what you thought was a tiny antenna into a massive antenna with orders of magnitude more gain than you thought? Did you connecting your antenna to the piping end up dumping a bunch of noise into the electrical grounds of the hotel's wiring, enough to mess up the demodulation circuits in the hotels? Something else?
Being ignorant in this area, I am rather curious now: What exactly was your error, and how did it interfere with the TVs? Did the sink pipe become part of your antenna because of it's size, thus turning what you thought was a tiny antenna into a massive antenna with orders of magnitude more gain than you thought? Did you connecting your antenna to the piping end up dumping a bunch of noise into the electrical grounds of the hotel's wiring, enough to mess up the demodulation circuits in the hotels? Something else?
Sympathetic resonance with the internal cable network I guess. I merely knew enough to be dangerous, but radio, back in the day, was fun. Having random radio people around the world waiting to talk to another random radio stranger was quite the thrill. And radio was a useful way to learn some basic physics. I was forever disappointed I never got Jordan's King Hussain's QSL card before he died.
Do you ever imagine there was someone in the hotel who knew enough morse code to become paranoid that his TV was trying to relay secret messages to him?
Nifty. And nifty that it was a solo pulse, not continuous. I wonder what the mechanism for that interference was?
This seems something that would happen only when using friggin old devices, but it happened with me using a brand new bluetooth headphone.
Everytime I had an online meeting, my broadband would go down. After the third time I called the telco, the tech guy who was inspecting the cables asked me about my bluetooth devices. He seemed really short of knowledge about computer networks and was just trying to fool me, so I told him I had nothing at home. Later I decided to turn off my headphone and the problem never showed up again.
Turns out you can't ignore empirical knowledge.
Everytime I had an online meeting, my broadband would go down. After the third time I called the telco, the tech guy who was inspecting the cables asked me about my bluetooth devices. He seemed really short of knowledge about computer networks and was just trying to fool me, so I told him I had nothing at home. Later I decided to turn off my headphone and the problem never showed up again.
Turns out you can't ignore empirical knowledge.
Friend of mine in Toronto told me a story how a CRTC (canadian telcom/radio regulator aka like the US FCC) tech was walking around his apt bldg with a spectrum analyzer. Pin pointed an apartment down the hall and was able to make contact and remove the offending device that was bleeding into mobile frequencies. Was a Chinese manufactured baby monitor that was interfering with mobile service. Said they had this problem all over the country with shoddy imports.
I had a buddy who had this happening in rural vermont. He had to get a signal analyzer because nobody believed him and eventually he got the FCC involved which finally got the thing shut off.
> After 18 months engineers began an investigation after a
> cable replacement programme failed to fix the issue.
That sounds like the typical runaround you'll get from network engineers in the UK. It's shameful that an entire village was without proper internet for 18 months. You might think "what does it matter", but remember people run internet businesses or keep in touch with family & friends. Imagine how bad this situation would be for folks during COVID.
For myself the internet used to go down for days at a time, perhaps every couple of weeks. We had BT of speed-dial and knew how to get through the bot automation by mashing the keypad. For maybe 5 years we asked for this to be repaired and got the usual "it must be your system" or "unusually high traffic" - sometimes they would send an engineer down to try and sell us some hardware we didn't need. We even got a business line, but BT couldn't keep that going either.
Eventually we even started collecting signatures of local people willing to buy a fiber internet connection if we paid for one to be fitted and pretty much everybody backed it. Initially we were only asking local businesses, but the demand was high from everywhere. We only needed something like 10% of users to buy in to cover the original costs. After this BT was suddenly motivated to fit fiber and because of the preparations we had begun to make, it was fitted just outside our house.
> cable replacement programme failed to fix the issue.
That sounds like the typical runaround you'll get from network engineers in the UK. It's shameful that an entire village was without proper internet for 18 months. You might think "what does it matter", but remember people run internet businesses or keep in touch with family & friends. Imagine how bad this situation would be for folks during COVID.
For myself the internet used to go down for days at a time, perhaps every couple of weeks. We had BT of speed-dial and knew how to get through the bot automation by mashing the keypad. For maybe 5 years we asked for this to be repaired and got the usual "it must be your system" or "unusually high traffic" - sometimes they would send an engineer down to try and sell us some hardware we didn't need. We even got a business line, but BT couldn't keep that going either.
Eventually we even started collecting signatures of local people willing to buy a fiber internet connection if we paid for one to be fitted and pretty much everybody backed it. Initially we were only asking local businesses, but the demand was high from everywhere. We only needed something like 10% of users to buy in to cover the original costs. After this BT was suddenly motivated to fit fiber and because of the preparations we had begun to make, it was fitted just outside our house.
Hopefully this hasn't caused any beefs in the village ╰（‵□′）╯
I am a fan of old portable radios. Early radios of that time didn't come with a power supply, you had to power them with batteries. I do not want to use batteries yet pretty mich every power supply I use these days causes either bad rf via the device itself feeding into the antenna or via the power wire. Any advice for a stable low-cost stabilized dc swotching power supply which does not exhibit this terrible behaviour?
I had an electrical problem nearly turn into a life-or-death police encounter. At least it felt that way for a moment.
I lived in San Jose, California, in a neighborhood with underground utilities. One afternoon two police officers banged loud on the door and yelled "San Jose Police! Open up!"
My wife opened the door while I walked down the stairs with my Motorola StarTAC in my hand and its antenna extended. I thought "OMG, what if this looks like a gun?"
The officers said that 911 had been dialed from our address, and there was no one on the line and no one answered when the dispatcher called back, so they had to come out to investigate.
We all took a deep breath and I told the officers "I think I know what happened. Come on in and I can show you."
We went to the wall-mount phone in the kitchen. (Remember those?) I pressed the speaker button and explained.
"Do you hear all those clicks? Our underground phone line got flooded from the bad storm we just had, and the line has been shorting out off and on all day. Remember the old fashioned rotary dial phones? Those worked by making and breaking the circuit just like this. I'll bet there were nine clicks in a row, then one click, then one more click. So these short circuits dialed 911. We're all fine here other than the bad phone service. Sorry you had to come out to investigate."
After that the officers were pretty chill about it. I just wished I had some donuts to offer them to thank them for their time!
I lived in San Jose, California, in a neighborhood with underground utilities. One afternoon two police officers banged loud on the door and yelled "San Jose Police! Open up!"
My wife opened the door while I walked down the stairs with my Motorola StarTAC in my hand and its antenna extended. I thought "OMG, what if this looks like a gun?"
The officers said that 911 had been dialed from our address, and there was no one on the line and no one answered when the dispatcher called back, so they had to come out to investigate.
We all took a deep breath and I told the officers "I think I know what happened. Come on in and I can show you."
We went to the wall-mount phone in the kitchen. (Remember those?) I pressed the speaker button and explained.
"Do you hear all those clicks? Our underground phone line got flooded from the bad storm we just had, and the line has been shorting out off and on all day. Remember the old fashioned rotary dial phones? Those worked by making and breaking the circuit just like this. I'll bet there were nine clicks in a row, then one click, then one more click. So these short circuits dialed 911. We're all fine here other than the bad phone service. Sorry you had to come out to investigate."
After that the officers were pretty chill about it. I just wished I had some donuts to offer them to thank them for their time!
Back in the mid 90s the school I went to still had rotary phones, with a lock on the number 3 so that someone without the key could still dial 112 (emergency number).
I taught myself to tap-dial and managed to call a porno phone line once. My classmates thought I was some sort of super hacker.
I taught myself to tap-dial and managed to call a porno phone line once. My classmates thought I was some sort of super hacker.
I used to monitor SNR on my DSL line and my neighbours old diesel engine 200ft away would cause it to drop slightly but enough to notice
And nobody has a spectrum analyzer.
The problem is that, although they're not expensive [1], reading one is complicated. You need to know what the spectrum usage is supposed to look like.
Cell towers ought to have interference detection built in. They're already software defined radios.
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Foxtech-Portable-Hand...
The problem is that, although they're not expensive [1], reading one is complicated. You need to know what the spectrum usage is supposed to look like.
Cell towers ought to have interference detection built in. They're already software defined radios.
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Foxtech-Portable-Hand...