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Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

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Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#111

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…

> 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?

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#112

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…

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.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#113

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…

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.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#114

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.

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.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#115
post #84

Everytime i turn on my fan, my computer screen goes black for 2 seconds, only when used on same outlet.

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…

> opposite of a voltage spike

"Voltage drop" or "brownout"

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#116

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…

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.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#117

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…

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.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#118

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…

> 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?

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?

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#119
post #4

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.

> 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…

> 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?

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#120

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…

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'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.

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