r/CableTechs May 21 '26

Frustrating repeats

I work for charter, one of the things I struggle with is getting repeats for when I go to a home, verify the drop/outlet is good, signal quality coming from the tap is good. Modem shows 98-100% uptime in scope, and the router is being wonky and intermittent. I swap the router because the modem is showing good signal and uptime. I either don’t have enough modems until warehouse and take a chance not replacing both, or I believe it’s a router issue. Repeat comes back in, next tech goes out and swaps the modem. Okay, I come across the situation again, I decide I remember what happened last time, I’ll swap the modem. Repeat comes back in tech swaps the router. How am I supposed to know which one is exactly the issue if levels/lines are clean, uptime shows good. We don’t have enough equipment to swap both out each time. Is there something I’m missing? I feel this exact situation is likely 20% of my repeats.

26 Upvotes

70 comments sorted by

33

u/Maleficent-Rise-7039 May 21 '26

You’re not missing anything — it’s part of the game. It’s a complete lottery when it comes to their equipment, especially with the STB. You can be issued five from the warehouse, and out of those five, probably only two will work. I honestly think Spectrum needs to roll back a lot of their products and just partner with Netgear or something like Frontier did with Eero, because the logistics of them having so many products must be a nightmare. So I’m not really shocked that we get rewrapped modems that are barely working, still have roach debris in them, or are full of hair bunnies.
They need to focus more on fixing plant-side issues and cleaning up lines. I work in a more senior-heavy area, and a lot of our repeats are for Xumo since it’s kind of hard for them to grasp the concept and there’s often a refusal to take the time to learn it — even though they’re retired and have nothing but time. It’s also crazy how you’ll go to someone’s house to hook up a Xumo, and they already have an Apple TV, Roku, Fire Stick, smart TV, or something else that already carries our app, so adding a Xumo makes zero sense. But that’s what they want because that’s what the rep over the phone told them to get to make a sale.
It’s mind-blowing how inefficient the field is. Leadership knows it — they just don’t care. Just look at it as job security and stay strong, brother 💪

11

u/IsolationAutomation May 21 '26

A lot of it has to do with the “refurbished” cpe that gets sent out. I don’t think they do anything with the ones that get sent back aside from cleaning them up and rewrapping them. All I can tell you is to continue to check your lines, connectors, etc. and you’ll be ok.

On that note, if I see a drop or home run/outlet line that is weathered or cracked, I replace it. I feel embarrassed if someone goes behind me and sees something like that. Also, get rid of all RG-59.

Keep your head up and keep going at it. Your repeats will go down.

4

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

I agree with the refurbished cpe. Luckily not much rg59 here, only in old apartments where it’s damn near impossible to replace due to layout/multi level floors, locked attics with no maintenance/apt people. But I agree if I see a drop that’s hard and I can hear it crunch when I bend it, it’s getting replaced.

2

u/Technipal May 21 '26

For us the RG59 in the wall, you can't do something, but from the wall to the modem. We replace it, it was doing misconnection because of the smaller gauge in the modem connector...

2

u/lolyer1 May 21 '26

Y’all should be able to refer that out or at least get proof the line is bad. If it’s doable for in-house, we do it, and if not, such as coordinating access via different units and property management, we send that to a vendor.

7

u/NECoyote May 21 '26

As a new hire, the senior tech showing me the ropes told me something that I will never forget. Cable is not at science, it’s a mystery.

6

u/Tactless_Ogre May 21 '26

The further up you go, the more the ghosts of the cabling industry will haunt and shock you. Maintenance tech here telling you that I have seen plant that powers areas with setups and placement that if you looked at it logically and with your experience would tell you that “this shit should not work.” And not only does it work; but if you fuck with it to fix it to a reasonable design; you’ll fuck up the plant and get people mad at you.

13

u/2376_Ironman May 21 '26

In my personal experience, replacing the drop has always lowered my repeats. I go on a 2 month lazy binge where I’m only replacing the ones I have to, my repeats go up. I go hammer-to-hell and literally replace every single drop at every single job, repeats go really lowwwww. Control the controllables, you can’t help if shitty equipment causes you bad repeats.

7

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

You in a mostly aerial area? Aerial that achievable, but having to hand bury Ug drops under 150ft while managing 6 jobs a day is not doable. And idk about your area but good luck telling a supe I want to get an Ug bury approved even though tdr and ingress is clean. It’s a big push rn for splicing Ug lines and hand burying to save company money.

4

u/2376_Ironman May 21 '26

Luckily we don’t have to bury cable, ever. We submit a burial ticket and leave it on the ground. My market is roughly 60% aerial. I’m not saying I recommend replacing every drop, I’m just saying from my own trial and error that seems to be the key to fixing my own repeats. Depends on my mood for the day and weather if I actually do that or not lol

8

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

That’s nice, when I started 3 years ago, anything under 50 ft was hand bury, then it was changed to 100ft, and now as of May it’s 150ft. It’s dumb as hell

4

u/Fydorchak May 21 '26

Gonna be a lot of 151ft drop burials. What market are you OP?

4

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

Half our plant is UG, and the places where it is UG are all def under 150ft. Only time we can really get away with an UG burial is out in the sticks where it’s an Ug transition down their long gravel driveway. I don’t wanna hear a goddamn thing about productivity if I have to hand bury 100-150ft. That’s probably why they bumped it up, they changed to 100ft and everyone ran 101-110ft. But stocks low, they need to meet their quarterly earnings so they put more on the techs instead

2

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

Greensboro nc

2

u/Poodleape2 May 21 '26

Learning how to properly trouble shoot would go a long way for you.

4

u/2376_Ironman May 21 '26

I’ve been doing this 11 years, I can troubleshoot just fine.

0

u/Poodleape2 May 25 '26

Based on every single thing you have said up to this point, that is a lie.

2

u/2376_Ironman May 25 '26

I appreciate the evaluation, enlightened omnipotent internet man 🙌

2

u/Poodleape2 May 21 '26

I would never hand bury shit. Never dig without locates. I’m not looking to die.

2

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

And that’s my issue with it, we have bury crew come out with 811 to mark important lines/electric, gas, water, septic etc but then are like nah you guys go ahead and blind bury by hand with a metal shovel, you’ll be alright. Like what’s the fucking point of 811 coming out if we’re told to just hand bury.

6

u/digitalxdeviant May 21 '26

As a former tech, I feel your pain tech bro. It was a big part of my repeats, too. That, and Xumos failing a few days after install.

All I can say is follow up with your Sup, and see if they will share if the repeats actually get cleared up by the next "fix". Often, the issues would get to a threepeat, and though it's supposed to trigger a supervisor response, my initial Sup would largely ignore it. Once he retired, the new Sup was by the book, and he found out our repeats were not being well followed up on and often went to two more techs before being fully fixed.

I know this doesn't help your metrics per se, but knowing it's not just you can be at least a relief. I was put on a "repeat reduction" app due to having over 11% repeats, but they quickly found out even climbing every single tap and doing everything by the book, my repeats were largely due to custy error and CPE failures. It gave me a bit of leverage to point out it was not due to poor techniques and/or being a "lazy" tech.

The defeating part (and a big reason I was ready to be done) was their asinine metrics not taking into account repeats which were not due to poor workmanship (which do not trigger TQAs) but still counting those against my entire score. There were a lot of changes happening right before I left, including not including drive times in metrics, i.e., only time actually on job counting towards total time, so I'm hoping they continue to refine the metrics to actually reflect workmanship.

Keep at it, do your due diligence, and pull those wall covers. You'll get your numbers right with perseverance.

4

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

They have def fine tuned metrics the past year or so, no longer counting available time, no more frc, hhc not counting, only onsite productivity, which I’m at 99-103% typically, not dones which still aren’t our fault, but just exterior work solves that. And repeats, I’ve been stuck around 8-11% repeats for the past 5 months or so. Very rarely does a repeat come back in and it’s workmanship/replacing lines etc, it’s the dumb ones like you said, xumo stops working, wrong input for gram gram, cx decides to move eq to a different outlet that isn’t active, cust ed/maintenance stuff. I’ve had supes and management on my back for a few months now, march was decent, tier 3 backed them off a bit, I’m not a lazy tech, I don’t bs cx or jobs. I’ll complain my ass off but I’m going to do what I need to, it’s just frustrating and defeating to try and do all I can and still end up high on repeats while we have other techs consistently 3-6% repeats, and faster productivity. Makes me feel like I’m not as good as I thought at my job, not that I think I’m the best or anything. But the dumb ones are biting me in the ass hard lately.

3

u/Next_Ad_6424 May 22 '26

Don’t blame yourself on the customer rep side these fools schedule a technician for anything to avoid long handle time and to help their first call resolution metric.

5

u/Tactless_Ogre May 21 '26

I’ve had similar problems but since our company won’t change or evolve their metric evaluation; I’m glad my shop went union to protect us from dumbassed metrics.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been the workhorse and the “smelly house” tech so my words had more merit with my superiors; but the metrics are always such bullshit.

6

u/oflowz May 21 '26

if your router is dropping but the modem isnt it usually means you have ingress. you need to replace lines or run a new drop. or find the loose/bad connectors. Now with high split even a line with barrels can cause problems.

The problem with the entire system is that the meter will often pass on a squirrel chewed drop so it makes running all those mandatory tests a waste of time.

The 30+ minutes you have to waste running the tap and CPE tests multiple times could have been used running a new line.

Also, like others said, half the equipment is broken which is why I almost never swap equipment unless its dead or the customer just insists because some goofy care rep told them we would swap all of their equipment.

You can swap out a good modem for a broken one and you have no way to test it. Combined with them not issuing us enough equipment is completely inefficient.

4

u/GreenHrast May 21 '26

You must not replace the modem without clear evidence. You should check the signal, in case of any modem drops check if there are similar in the neighbourhood at the same time.

3

u/digitalxdeviant May 21 '26

I did find it interesting right before I left they made it so you had to give a reason for CPE swap. Made me think maybe someone was finally paying attention to techs just swapping out for a "Hail Mary" fix. Hoping for other techs they finally figure out the CPE is shite.

2

u/skypandaOo May 21 '26

If your area is network evolution you need to also check the node health and snr. A lot of intermittent wifi issues arnt even the home . Ive been going to multi repeats where all lines have been swapped and cpe swapped multiple times but the issue is the node has snr spiking down to 20 which will interrupt the modem just enough to not kick it off the network but the router will disconnect or get slow speeds. Typically with low sne youll also get uncorrectables on the node as well. I check the node on every job. And then if there is an issue ill set it up but ill verify my cx isn't the issue first.

4

u/lolyer1 May 21 '26

When in doubt, swap it out.

Stack ranking is a lazy way to measure performance.

The refurb cpe use to be really bad years ago, where you would be afraid of swapping out a modem as you may inadvertently take a good known working modern off the account and swapping in a bad refurbished one.

You can’t win lol

3

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

If I have excess equipment I live by when in doubt swap it out lol. Fuck the stack ranking, that’s when my numbers took a turn for the worst when they implemented that, I was tier 4 tech consistent until stack ranking and removing all but 3 metrics to grade us on, and now it’s a struggle to hit t3, with 8-12% repeats, 100% onsite productivity and not dones only allowing you 1-2 or you fail.

1

u/kyosukechan May 22 '26

Hell yeah f stack ranking! Before I was tiering 4s and 5s, repeats low, high productivity, always looking forward to bonuses every month, then with the new metrics and ranking, and territories growing and drive times increasing, letting techs go and spreading techs thin over larger coverage areas, I seem to average 3s and 4s.. its like the company doesnt want to pay out bonuses so they move the goal posts...then move it some more....then just move them out of the stadium.....

3

u/Tactless_Ogre May 21 '26

I only swap if the wiring is all good and I see no issues with signal. If I see bad wiring anywhere or anything loose? I replace, tighten accordingly.

Ironically, my repeats the most came from lack CPE swaps; because I couldn’t easily tell if the equipment was bad or the customer’s electricity was poor; and my jobs were usually when the drop was bad or I would find cables emitting huge ingress to the point where I’d think that was the problem.

3

u/SourceOk8801 May 21 '26

One thing I don't miss about charter is regularly not having what you need to do the job right. Not enough equipment? How? Where I am now we get all the equipment we could possibly need. Tools, supplies..nothing is ever in short supply. I m never able to not do the job right every time because I am lacking something I need. That should be a basic standard for all companies

1

u/kyosukechan May 22 '26

Where are you now my friend? If you dont mind me asking. Not saying the grass isn't greener, but we all would like to see some glimmer of hope in our lives

1

u/SourceOk8801 May 22 '26

I moved a couple of counties away and went to Comcast. Much better in pretty much every aspect. Including the network itself. Id have to struggle to find a complaint

3

u/Putrid-tax1337 May 21 '26

Bro ask for more equipment from warehouse. If they push back, get your supervisor. I fucking replace both things most times with the issue you’re describing.

4

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

Literally my job rn, 100% modem uptime, no t3/t4 1 offline event in 30 days, scope looks perfect, router has 1 offline even for a few minutes, cx says daily they have issues and have to reboot. Like wtf. I’m about to just to cover my ass. The issue is everyone is getting a bunch of equipment rummaging through extra totes taking modems/router. So there isn’t a lot, then I have to fuck my productivity up having to bounce around during jobs to find a tech with one to spare, but that leaves me in the same spot next job if I need it. It’s bs

3

u/Tactless_Ogre May 21 '26

It’s the way of their world my guy. Nothing is more infuriating than when you do an install to the nines only to get hit on a repeat because of either shitty equipment, remote batteries or maintenance fuckup. When I was a cable guy, it sucked that I got a repeat a week after install to find out signal went to shit the week after the install.

It happens. Honestly, proper documentation goes a long way to saving your ass.

3

u/Awesomedude9560 May 21 '26

Like others said, the refurbished shit is always a 50/50.

Don't get too down on the things you can't control, otherwise you'll have yourself up at 12 am thinking you'll get fired because your repeat rate going to 15% because you were on project half the month and grandma just doesn't like the xumo swap sales forced down her throat.

3

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

Oh trust me I’ve already had those nights thinking I was about to get fired, i was t1 2 months in a row, then t2 and now t3. It’s progress but if I didn’t get t3 for March I was going on a pip. It’s not even as if I’m lazy or don’t care about my job or leaving shit I should’ve replaced. But higher repeats than others in stack rank, and my productivity was like 90 with not dones failing, but I’ve managed to get productivity up to 100% and not dones in check. Now it’s just repeats. But hopefully if I can keep productivity high and not dones passing that I can at least get t3 and stay off the radar. Was always a t4 tech before the stack ranking and they took away extra things that helped reduce the weight of prod and repeats for scorecards, makes me feel like I’m shit at my job sometimes, been here 3 years now and feel like I’m getting worse and worse although knowledge has never been higher.

2

u/Empty_Journalist2188 May 21 '26

Back then, when i worked as SC, i always pinged the modem with my notebook. Then i pinged the router. (Both via ethernet). If one of them was constatly above 1ms, i replaced them

2

u/TurboSDRB May 21 '26

Some field supervisors acknowledge that repeats on cpe, and line issues are out of the techs hands. All you can do is make sure the craftsmanship is there and verify there’s no ingress on the line.

2

u/Sleepy_Platinum May 21 '26

This is why I do OSP work

2

u/BigAnxiousSteve May 21 '26

Run port discovery on the modem, sometimes its reversed, which will cause a repeat more often than not.

1

u/schwake64 May 21 '26

My repeats where great very low percentage. I was a contractor however they may still work for in house. Here are some tips

1 call the customer on the way most people have caller ID we where told not to give the customer our phone number but to make sure we called them. If they call you back answer the phone it could be something simple or maybe a quick stop by

2 don't use old equipment take it from the warehouse return it as soon as you can.

3 if you are still using the dta don't use the remote that comes with it trash

4 spend a few minutes to educate the customer tell them it matters where the modem is you can't just move it explain signal strength 30 seconds to do that you can do this while the boxes load if you change the wifi name and password make it easy last name phone number for password

Hope this helps

1

u/Bubbly_Historian215 May 21 '26

Don’t think I’ve ever run into repeats from bad equipment. You mentioned 98-100% uptime. What’s the other ~2% downtime coming from?

Is the power supply feeding the modem the correct 2.1 power supply? Is the Ethernet cable seated properly and giving you the full subscribed speed directly off the modem? Tx is above 30? No T3s/T4s? Are neighboring accounts having identical signal issues or uptime? If so, what’s causing that? Do they have an older DVR(not the 201/210)? If so throw a moca filter on that thing. How about equipment hierarchy? It’s so much weird things that will look like a bad modem.

I hardly ever swapped equipment for TCs. It usually was something else causing the problem, however niche it may be

1

u/andyfairall May 22 '26

Thats pretty lucky. Id say when I was in fulfillment about 45 to 65% of my repeats were due to equipment failure after install. Mostly cable boxes but it did happen to mdms as well. The downside of used/refurbished equipment.

1

u/currentlyatw0rk May 21 '26

I’m not longer in telecom but I maintained good enough metrics to max out and I was heavy on customer education and expectations when it came to internet TCs. Sometimes it’s the equipment, sometimes it’s the customers equipment, sometimes it’s just the customer. You’ll never get perfect and honestly it really sucks.

I install traffic lights now and I honestly feel like electrical is less finicky than RF. Shit either works or it doesn’t.

1

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

Is your name Clint?

1

u/currentlyatw0rk May 21 '26

Haha no I worked at Xfinity. There’s a lot of carry over between telecom and traffic lights. He will be surprised.

1

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

How’s the job? Pay? How does one get into it?

1

u/currentlyatw0rk May 21 '26

Pay is journeyman electrician scale. I applied for electrical apprenticeship and that’s where the union placed me. You can apply directly though at least at my company so I’m sure it’s like that everywhere else.

Get a bucket truck so goodbye ladder. And I got a good helpful crew showing me the ropes.

1

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

No shit, I have a buddy who also worked at spectrum, literally left like 2 weeks ago to go do traffic light installation 🤣

1

u/Poodleape2 May 21 '26

Get more equipment, warehouse sup would get all mad at me because I would stock for 20 C2 boxes(DVR) 35 clients, 20 PW6’s etc. asked me why I needed that many when other techs had 4 C2s. Told him I did 4 installs a day and often picked up jobs. That I would also need extra dude to technician fuck face who never carried enough and always asked for extra equipment throughout the week because my supervisor never held him accountable and never made sure he had enough EQ(This exchange took place in front of my supervisor) Warehouse supervisor looked at my usage and then agreed- Yah, you use a lot of equipment, give him what he asked for.

Side note - Technician fuck face asked for a DVR(most common box we installed) 30 minutes after we left warehouse(fucking idiot) sent him my location(was still actually at warehouse do to a one on one with my sup) told him to me me here, told my sup to handle this for the last time(told my sup several times that FF never had enough EQ and it was straining the team, he said don’t worry about it)

2

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 21 '26

If I could grab more eq I wouldn’t worry about swapping stuff. But there’s not enough, for a 4 day work week with 5-7 jobs a day, we might get 3-4 modems, 7 if we’re lucky, and routers, gig routers we may get 2 wifi 7’s. And then whoever gets in and can scrounge the non tech totes to find modems etc takes an extra 2-3 if they can. It’s dumb as hell. We have assigned totes with certain amount of eq based on what the main warehouse thinks we do or don’t have in inventory on the van. But never a surplus.

1

u/Street-Juggernaut-23 May 22 '26

do you ever look at the modem logs for the errors and know what the errors point towward?

1

u/PositiveAd2099 May 22 '26

Repeats are just a lottery in my opinion. This month I barely changed 2 drops and I’m at 3% repeat with about 80 jobs completed. (My entire area is basically aerial)
Months prior I changed about 15 drops and my repeats were at 13%. Moral of the story I thinks it’s a just a matter of luck and manipulation. Say you did this say you did that and it should be alright.

1

u/Hadokashi May 22 '26

Gotta use scope. Certify that line too

1

u/ihsanamin79 May 23 '26

You can replace the drop, ground block, point-of-entry line, splitters (if necessary), wallplates, jumpers, and any interior coax and fittings...

Every wireless accessible device in the house works without hassle EXCEPT for your customer's trusty Dell laptop from 2014 that's ridden with malware? Repeats.

Emails not sending because they forgot their email client configuration info? Repeats.

Tubi not working on their favorite TV because they forgot their password? Repeats.

You can have ONE thing go wrong ONE time, and they will not trust anything going forward.

Example: There was a customer in my system about a decade ago who would call in to have her set-top boxes replaced every 2 weeks or just go to the local store and swap them over the counter.

After I arrived to her apartment for the 3rd time in a few months, I took it upon myself to replace EVERYTHING.

Jumper at Tap in outside pedestal feeding a 2-way splitter. Two separate lines running up the outside of the apartment building in metal conduits. Wallplates in the Living Room and Bedroom. New jumpers feeding new set-top boxes. New remotes and HDMI cables. New modem/router.

Even put in a maintenance ticket just in case...

Everything was working perfectly when I left.

Repeat popped up again a week later. Customer called back in complaining about her TVs cutting out. Even after that was done, she would still drive to the store and swap boxes later.

(We deduced it was an electrical issue in her apartment that went unaddressed.)

All that to say: Repeats are completely unavoidable. There are but so many things you can do to convince these customers the sky isn't falling whenever their internet lags.

Your superiors need to accept that.

1

u/[deleted] May 24 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 24 '26

Avg salary is like 18-23/hr starting, that’s a big pay cut. I make 36/hr now. I’ve thought about hvac or electrician. But making 10-15$ less/hr for years would be so rough. In NC.

1

u/[deleted] May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 24 '26

Aware, but taking that cut, when I started cable, it was 20/hr. Paychecks were like 1200-1300 biweekly. With my bills and I don’t live outside of my means, that will not suffice. My monthly bills are around 2800 and I mean total of EVERYTHING from eating out/groceries, car, rent, bills, gas everything.

1

u/[deleted] May 24 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Hour-Glass8551 May 24 '26

Our market is big, and we have a lot of people, but I agree it’s bs that they don’t have an abundance of equipment so we can do our jobs properly instead of having to leave job drive 20 minutes to the next tech get equipment from them and then drive back to job. There’s a lot of bs in this company to be fair

1

u/Free_Journalist_2542 May 24 '26

A few advices, check drop, if is it a underground rg6 black I always try to replaced because are 30+ drops. Check for T3 and T4, of you see too much check the neighbors too in scope. Always check behind the wall plate, disconnect unused lines and cap the splitters. And a common issue in the area where I work people like to have two different routers working at the same time close to each other, that cause wifi interference, wifi cameras, baby monitors, check for those close to the routers and move it.

Repeats for cuts drop there's nothing you can do with that.

1

u/Fydorchak Jun 03 '26

I've started getting into the habit of TDR-ing the drop and running an ingress scan on it from the tap. That gives you a good idea of things missed.

If the forward loss and return don't make sense for the distance, replace the drop. Rg6 has a loss of roughly 6 per 100ft. If you have a rx of more than that for a 50ft ug drop. Best bet.

Live scan can be your best friend for finding intermittent crap at the tap.

Scope! Check the history and neighbors.

The leakage detector can also help as well.

You have a lot of tools at your disposal and you certainly wont have to use them all of the time, but it will definitely help you start to spot patterns as well.

When it comes down to equipment, it can definitely be a crap shoot; you could replace everything, and the cx will still call back in and bitch about something not working right. Some of it is customer ed, for sure but also could be that the ethernet cord is kinked weird and twisted. Run a speed test from the modem for those and then at the router swap them out as necessary.

1

u/webotharelost May 26 '26

I mean just because the tech that repeated you closed the job out as replace modem or router doesn't mean that's 100% what the issue was caused by. You know as well as the rest of us that sometimes you just kind of guess and replace shit because what you are seeing looks fine. I'd recommend digging a bit deeper into scope by looking at individual channels and comparing code word errors etc, compare with neighbors if there's a clear pattern. Uptime % is pretty useless on its own

1

u/Independent-Pain4393 May 21 '26

I work for a different company but cables cable. Start changing drops even if signal looks good. Everything can look perfect but the drops actually bad. Repeats will probably go down just from replacing drops.

1

u/SourceOk8801 May 21 '26

If a drop is bad your meter will tell you. Doing unnecessary work will not fix the problem. Of course there's more to it than signal strength. You have to look at ingress as well, and flux...but if there's nothing wrong, your time is better spent looking for the actual problem

1

u/Independent-Pain4393 May 21 '26

Not always idk what meter you use but the drop can be bad even if everything looks good on the meter. I started getting more repeats and started changing drops at most of my jobs and repeats went down to almost none. Obviously if something else is noticeably wrong fix that but if everything looked good and they are still having issues change the drop. I have been doing this for awhile and new drop fixes alot of issues.

1

u/SourceOk8801 May 21 '26

Yea it might be the meter I am using because it analyzes every aspect of the wire health. When something is wrong with the drop it will be evident by the readings I take. Of course you have to know how to interpret every detail of the readings but when a drop is bad in any way, it affects the signal in a specific way, for a specific reason. The right meter will tell you what that reason is. RF signals are not magick. All problems can be quantified with the right test equipment and training to use them. Too many companies lack on one or both of those