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This is really a system by system question. In areas where there is potential for a lot of noise (metro areas, high population), they may be necessary. From what I've seen, generally no. I suggest that instead of leaving open jacks, that you just disconnect the line and use a smaller splitter. Not only will this prevent ingress from unused jacks, but it will also send more signal to the used jacks.

I also received this response from jkintner See Profile:

"I was just reading your cable modem wiring FAQ and bumped into this question. I'm a contractor in Las Vegas, NV. We actually require the termination of any open port or wall jack in the home because of leakage and ingress problems. Having an open port acts just like an antenna and ends up backfeeding signal back into the system.

One noted case was a customer having problems with their modem dropping off during the day time. We re-wired his house from tap to all outlets to try and fix the problem. After about 4 weeks of troubleshooting and getting an engineer involved, we found that a neighbor had an open port in a bedroom and was using a remote controlled car. The motor in the car was putting off just enough interference on the upstream carrier for the modem, that it was knocking our customer offline."


Feedback received on this FAQ entry:
  • there are none other than terminators, if you don't have none make appt for a tech to come in put them in, just point cause he should have them, we always do

    2012-01-19 14:59:05 (drcable See Profile)

  • How did you isolate it? Sniffer, Sentinal, etc?

    2011-10-08 20:22:12

  • I am a service tech for bright house networks in west volusia county, florida. We actually had a barrell at the base of a tread mill which was loose and took down an entire NODE due to the back feeding of noise onto the plant!

    2010-05-06 18:17:35



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by jmo9 See Profile edited by ergibbs See Profile
last modified: 2003-04-17 09:03:23