Comcast showed up a couple weeks back saying they are proactively checking the network for the source of noise and determined my house was one of them. They came in and said they tightened the main connection from the wall to the router/modem and replaced a lot of coax in other rooms. I was telling this to a group over some beers and one of the guys stopped me dead in my tracks and said he knew why they came. Seems he had the same visit and he doubts the validity of their claim.
I used to do them years ago. Noise from bad wiring is one of the primary causes of upstream modem problems in a neighborhood. Causes random disconnects, packet loss, latency spikes, slow speeds, etc. depending on the severity.
If we weren't allowed in to fix it at some point, we would filter, pad, or disconnect the customer depending on how bad it was.
I HAVE heard of Comcast techs proactively notifying people of noise coming from homes, and I imagine in some cases they do need to enter inside. However, you & your buddy were right to be doubtful, since this would be a pretty easy way to scam/rob someone.
Did they identify themselves in a way that seemed satisfactory? Did they have a marked vehicle or other sign that they were truly official employees? If you remember their names and the date/time they came by, you MAY be able to go to a local center & verify that Comcast had techs working in your area that day.
You have the right to request credentials and contact information to assure it's a legitimate truck roll but yes, we do proactive jobs when necessary to clean up a house with severe noise issues.
One house with enough Ingress can literally cause issues for hundreds of customers because all the interference is combined at the Node and can be distributed to other residences. I worked on a proactive last month where we essentially rewired 90% of the home's internal wiring because of the massive amount of ingress present from Radio Shack jumpers, RG-59, cheap splitters and loose crimp connectors.
Just be aware that any proactive job is to solve a headache on some level (technical or customer-facing) for Comcast so they're trying their best to be done with the issue and not come back again.
Someone with that mess must have had at least a few of those twist on connectors. The ones that pull off if you sneeze in their direction, so people just sort of push the wire back in. Sort of.
Yes, there is a big push to clean up noise & ingress and there's a new internal tool that helps us to identify specifically where on the network the impairment originates. Folks will be seeing more and more of these proactive network maintenance visits across the country, as we work to make the network more and more efficient and proactively fix things before they cause outages or other impairments.
jlivingood pass this along if you can. In Florida there have been problems with people impersonating Florida Power and Light employees to gain access to homes. So the company and news media have told customers not to let people in claiming to be from FPL without following certain precautions.
It's likely that people in FL will consider these Comcast employees potential burglars and not let them into the house if they just show up randomly.
Comcast should set up a page like this on your website, and include a notice in the bill with the same information. »www.fpl.com/landing/protect.html
Customer's account should be flagged so that if a clean up crew does show up at the house, customer can call customer service if they are unsure and confirm those techs are supposed to be there.
Comcast won't bother going through all that. If a cumtomer gives them a hard time or refuses them entry they will simply disconnect there service until they call in and allow the techs access.
GCR (greater Chicago region), it's a big push for node sweeps going on our area right now. A lot of nodes have launched the fourth upstream carrier in the 15.7 MHz range, if I'm correct not in front of the computer right now. Of course getting ready for docsis 3.1 also. If we detect noise coming from your premise, we place a filter and the tech should generate a ticket in order for an appointment to be scheduled.
...if they are unsure and confirm those techs are supposed to be there.
There should be an easy way to call and verify the employee badge #/ID, which anyone who is unsure of ANYbody who shows up at their home should use. The down side is if you refuse to cooperate when they show up, they may need to cut your service/drop until they can mail you a notice and you set an appointment to complete the repairs. this becomes even more complicated if they are you phone or home security provider, but cleaning up and protecting the plant from noise is their priority. One home VS 100's who may be effected
Comcast showed up a couple weeks back saying they are proactively checking the network for the source of noise and determined my house was one of them. They came in and said they tightened the main connection from the wall to the router/modem and replaced a lot of coax in other rooms. I was telling this to a group over some beers and one of the guys stopped me dead in my tracks and said he knew why they came. Seems he had the same visit and he doubts the validity of their claim.
Is anyone familiar with visits like this?
Yes. As they add more downstream channels they are getting a ton of interference from LTE bands from cellular. When they see egress from your house they assume ingress into the whole system. This is normal, and a good thing since your market is being proactive in fixing these issues.
If I find noise I disconnect the house. Sometimes I will tell the field tech I disconnected his customer and he might want to check it out and they do most of the time. After all your home causes most of my problems.
They did this to my parents a couple of years ago. They claimed their 15 year old underground RG-11 drop had failed, which makes no logical sense, as it's 4 feet underground, so the cable itself can't cause RF ingress of the RF signals that don't exist 4' below the ground in an area with no nearby radio towers of any type. They didn't bother to just replace the ends, which are the only part that could have been an issue, since those are at grade. The techs strangely put a temporary cable in, and then put new orange RG-11 in through the conduit a few days later, but didn't bother to replace the crimped RG-6 cable going into the house that actually could reduce the signal. Go figure.
It makes sense to do where there are real problems, but to cut people off is just wrong, and they sometimes go nuts on stuff like this relatively new RG-11.
They claimed their 15 year old underground RG-11 drop had failed, which makes no logical sense, as it's 4 feet underground, so the cable itself can't cause RF ingress of the RF signals that don't exist 4' below the ground in an area with no nearby radio towers of any type.
If the cable or connectors are damaged at all or has water intrusion, the signal within the cable from the provider can reflect, distort, and generally cause all sorts of issues in the upstream channel path. Techs lazily call it "ingress" since it's something other than the signals that are supposed to be there. It doesn't need any sort of outside signal intrusion to be a problem.
If the cable or connectors are damaged at all or has water intrusion
And do not forget about Rodents (of Unusual Size) or other underground burrowing critters. I know that rats (apparently) like to chew cables because (it was claimed) it sharpens their teeth.
I know that rats (apparently) like to chew cables because (it was claimed) it sharpens their teeth.
Actually, I believe that rats' (and many other rodents?) front teeth grow continuously and they need to chew to wear them down so that they don't get to be real long.
Considering that the stuff is waterproof, I find it hard to believe that it lasted for 15 years and then magically failed. It's just sitting there in a flooded PVC conduit.
jlivingood, can you elaborate on the new internal tool to help pinpoint the source of noise within a node?
Not really - but maybe it will be talked about at some industry meeting in the future and I can share the info. If any of you are internal employees, hit me up on email and I can share the URL. It's actually pretty amazing, and one of a few new tools coming out for internal teams (some of which will eventually be leveraged via API calls for our speed test site).
Installing gear to record PNM measurements; overlaying the data on a map correlating modem location with plant design; then generating heat maps and daily/weekly/monthly reports used to direct plant maintenance is the hot ticket within the major MSOs the last couple of years.
Yes, there is a big push to clean up noise & ingress and there's a new internal tool that helps us to identify specifically where on the network the impairment originates. Folks will be seeing more and more of these proactive network maintenance visits across the country, as we work to make the network more and more efficient and proactively fix things before they cause outages or other impairments.
Awesome, it's good to hear that Comcast is doing this, and in a non-heavy handed way.
I wouldn't have questioned it if Comcast had instead just cut the cable to the house and waited for the call to fix it.
Considering that the stuff is waterproof, I find it hard to believe that it lasted for 15 years and then magically failed. It's just sitting there in a flooded PVC conduit.
A simple loose connector can cause horrible problems in the return path. Just smashing the cable or anything that changes the distance between the shield and center conductor can cause signals that build up due to signal reflections and interaction with the primary signal. Years of daily heating and cooling moves things, they abrade, they loosen, they wear out. Poor craftsmanship during install, tree roots, bugs, animals, ice buildup/melting, shifting conduit, corrosion, ground currents... lots of possible causes. I've seen and repaired a lot of it when I was in the field doing plant maintenance.
Anyway... something happened to capture the techs attention and bring him to that location. It's his job to find and fix problems, with noise and return signal impairments being a big part of that. He has tools to find the problems like that and often it isn't visible to the naked eye. The company replaced it all, at no money out of pocket from the subscriber right? They didn't do it for fun...
They should have just replaced the ends and called it a day. The cable was only 15 years old, and in a PVC conduit, so it had many decades of life left on it. Couldn't be any problems with the cable itself. What was even worse is that they installed a ground-level temp drop until the guys with the cable came out to fish a new one through. They could have at least left it connected with the old cable for a few days. It worked fine. They come in and replace the RG-11 drop for no good reason, and the signal levels still suck. I think they're getting about a miserable +3dB now coming in, so the eMTA sits at around -1dB if I recall correctly.
At least when they got X1, the guy actually put a zero-loss splitter in so that their levels are better now. They had a Radio Shack amp in the analog days, we put a splitter back in with digital, but when they rebuilt the plant to 860mhz, they couldn't reliably get the channels in the 650mhz-860mhz range due to high frequency losses, so we put the Radio Shack amp back in, which was used until they put in the zero loss splitter with X1 to make up for their lack of signal on the drop. 150' of RG-11, a 4 way splitter and another 50-100' of RG-6 shouldn't be an issue, but it is, so at least they made up for their crappy plant's deficiencies with the zero-loss splitter.
Comcast showed up a couple weeks back saying they are proactively checking the network for the source of noise and determined my house was one of them. They came in and said they tightened the main connection from the wall to the router/modem and replaced a lot of coax in other rooms. I was telling this to a group over some beers and one of the guys stopped me dead in my tracks and said he knew why they came. Seems he had the same visit and he doubts the validity of their claim.
I'm curious about what this guy thought was the real reason was for the visit? Did he say?
