[Elecraft] Internet RFI Issue

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

Since so many Hams today depend upon  their internet connection in the
"shack" I thought this might be of interest. 

 

A few weeks ago I started losing my internet service in the evenings. I have
a Charter cable connection that had provided consistent >20 MBs downloads
and >4 MBs upload speeds until then. Suddenly I was faced with evening
download rates of 1 or 2 MBs and uploads of a couple of KBps - not enough to
keep e-mail POP servers from timing out on short text messages!  The next
day everything was back to normal. 

 

I called Charter and they had a tech out to my place a couple of hours
later. He showed me the spectrum plots of my internet signal over a number
of days. Many evenings a huge surge of noise appeared that killed the S/N
ratio. 

 

He explained that they've had to chase a number of these down in recent
months. He said that it is often caused by a TV set with a direct internet
connection for watching streaming programming. He explained that poor design
causes some TVs to inject huge noise levels into the cable connection,
apparently when the cable connection is not in use so the owner never
notices it. They've had to track down a number of them in this area.

 

He made some adjustments to increase my signal levels to help offset the
effect of the high noise levels, and said they'd have a team searching all
the node connections in the evenings to find the offender.

 

It's something to consider if your operating is interrupted by poor internet
service from a cable connection, especially during "prime time" hours. A
slower connection may not be simply a heavily loaded system.  Indeed, I've
yet to notice any "system loading" my service. 

 

73, Ron AC7AC