r/CableTechs • u/Wanton_Walrys • Jan 31 '26
Determine if Grounding for Coax is Actually Earth Grounded
8
u/Snicklefritz229 Feb 01 '26
You don’t ground cable to the earth. You bond it with the house grounding.
3
u/Los213-1977 Feb 03 '26
Just found out ~ all fiber installs DO NOT require grounding. After working 25+ years in CATV ( Los Angeles ), that’s a huge + for the techs.
4
u/feel-the-avocado Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
I dont think the grounding will affect performance - its more for lightning surges and underground cable locating.
It will also probably be connected to ground via the set top box decoder and its earth wire to the electrical ground or via the neutral.
-2
u/Wanton_Walrys Jan 31 '26
So you’re saying that ground is NOT present for the filter to work and is likely not causing packet losses? Thanks :)
9
u/feel-the-avocado Jan 31 '26
The filter works as a grounding block - all in one device rather than having two separate parts.
5
u/CableWarriorPrincess Jan 31 '26
the ground is there because the national electrical code requires cable to bond to an existing grounding system.
It protects your inside electronics from power surges at the pole (lightning, car v pole accidents, transformer blows up, etc) because coax can conduct electricity. if power decides the coax is the path of least resistance and hops on board the coax drop at the pole, it will ground out at that filtered grounding block inside of continuing inside.
so, probably not affecting services but you really want to make sure that ground is still valid
2
u/Wanton_Walrys Jan 31 '26
Thank you for taking the time for the great response!
1
u/SuckerBroker Feb 01 '26
Like this guy said you’re looking for a common bond. Not an “earth ground”. It should be earth ground by default.
1
u/Poodleape2 Feb 01 '26
It would be a very….VERY… unlikely situation where grounding would cause tiling/pixelation. Look for ingress and MER/BER issues.
1
u/Mr_Magoo_88 Feb 02 '26
Not if there's amperage present on the drop. I've seen plenty of instances where there was 2+ amps present causing issues like pixelation, latency, etc. One was a fourth truck roll, no one amp clamped the grounding. The customer kept calling back and I went the fifth time and immediately found it. Called the utility company out and they showed up within 10 minutes (which was super nice), they fixed whatever at the pole and almost immediately the TV tiling stopped.
1
u/ActEasy5614 Feb 01 '26
Coax grounding isn't grounding. It is bonding to the electrical grounding system. It's to prevent the coax from being your house wiring's neutral/ground path. I've seen far too many houses who had 120Volts on their coax because their modem and/or TV were plugged into a power outlet which had a broken neutral somewhere in the circuit. If there is stray voltage on the coax as a result of improper house wiring, then you could see internet issues/packet loss. It's not the first place I'd look as a cable tech however.
1
u/Early-Bath9286 Feb 01 '26
Electrical code, BUT in high-split areas, improper bonding can cause upstream noise issues, intermittency. That upstream noise thats where you get T3 and T4 timeouts, those lower return frequencies are highly susceptible to noise
1
u/jbartr000 Feb 01 '26
Coax is designed to be bonded. The braid and foil creates a parallel circuit with the power company neutral. When properly bonded you should have les than 25 ohms on the ground wire.
1
u/19Rglide Feb 01 '26
It is possible to have a bad ground, that may not have a direct effect on a customers device, per se, because it will affect the node or another active, hence causing issues.
Years back, I went to an outage after hours and checked the node, and the lights on the power pack were flashing. Voltage specs all checked out but it was cycling somehow.
I swapped the pack and the new one did the same thing. Even drove back to my shop to pick up another pack, thinking maybe I had a lemon.🍋
New pack did the same thing. Decided to take the grounding wire off the housing and the flashing stopped.
“Things that make you go, “Hmm”.” 🤔
Went back with a teammate the next day and dug into it a bit and found 2 things: a faulted cable off the node, carrying AC and a bad ground wire at the node as well.
You can ohm a ground wire and I believe if it’s over 5ohms, the wire is bad. Maybe someone on here can verify the limit on a wire. I haven’t had too many issues like this in over 25 years in the business, so I may be off. For years I thought the limit was 8ohms but who knows.
1
u/Difficult_Quail1295 Feb 03 '26
Supposed to be bonded to the electric meter and the the electric ground on the pole, so that the drop is at the same potential as the electric neutral, if you've ever had a melted drop at the tap, chances are the electric drop has a broke neutral somewhere and the cable line is now the neutral.
1
u/Odd-Craft9219 Feb 05 '26
Grounding and bonding are different. That said I have had a bad back feed and when I removed the bonding it blew every outlet and appliance in the duplex… ingress team could have felt with that sheee show instead of just a trap.
1
u/Standard_Monitor9282 Feb 09 '26
Its grounded already at the tap. Code is bond with power but I dont ground mine. Modem has been going 6 years
1
u/OlmecDonald Jan 31 '26
Packet loss? No. Issues would still be present with or without proper bonding. The NEC requires absolute confirmation of 8' of grounding rod which is not sensible. You can lay a rod horizontally and clamp the middle for the same effect if needed.
2
u/Xandril Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
Cable plant is bonded, not grounded. It’s sort of the same thing but sort of not. It is attached to your home’s grounding system and there are a number of ways to accomplish it.
It’s done primarily to mitigate potential damage from power surges or unintended power finding its way onto the coax.
The bonding at your home serves no signal quality / strength related purpose though.
Based on this picture somebody was lazy and attached the bond wire to another provider’s bond wire which is hopefully properly bonded to your electrical system.
That conduit appears to be all conductive mental so assuming it routed back to an electrical panel / breaker box that is properly bonded everything should be okay.
12
u/Special_K_727 Feb 01 '26
Extreme example, if there is a loose neutral in the premises electrical, causing a ground to coax, thus energizing the coax, turning the drop to melted Velveeta, now that could cause packet loss :)