Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months • Hacker News Board

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#251

Post by cheese_van » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

korethr wrote: post #233

cheese_van wrote: post #213

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-…

> 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 you…

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.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#252

Post by hyperdimension » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

rosswilson wrote: post #220

hyperdimension wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#253

Post by ryanmarsh » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

ethanwillis wrote: post #93

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 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.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#254

Post by Stratoscope » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

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!

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#255

Post by zhrvoj » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

andrea92 wrote: post #27

Lol, that sounds like such a weird case :D no wonder it took so long...

Fake news with so many flaws - others listed them above. Simple goal to put blame on old analog equipment. Just buy digitaal...digitaaalll...whooo... (so that we can control every each one of you).

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#256

Post by spiritplumber » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

Stratoscope wrote: post #254

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 though…

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.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#257

Post by soylentcola » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

hannasanarion wrote: post #246

bluGill wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 th…

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.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#258

Post by robocat » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

memsom wrote: post #122

watermanio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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. App…

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.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#259

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

nucleardog wrote: post #240

throwanem wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prob…

> 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 ru…

> 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.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#260

Post by bluGill » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 7:48 PM UTC

hannasanarion wrote: post #246

bluGill wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 th…

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).