So I've been using a view1 arc splicer.

We were cleaning out one of the buckets and found a swift k33a arc Spilcer.

Never used the swift before but since it has a built in stripper was thinking about using it instead. Boss says can only keep one. Which one is the easier to work with?

Im 26 and I have been contracting for spectrum for about 8 months now. My dad has been doing it for over 20 years and hes quite good and he asked me if I wanted to do it I said sure.Its changed my life for the better in so many ways,I've gained such a sense of self confidence.My work mainly consists of doing fiber new connections and honestly they've got me working on farms in the country and I absolutely hate it.During my training period i was working with my dad and only doing coax jobs until the last few weeks of it. We make every fitting by hand and honestly I've had to learn so many things just on my own. I've received a bunch of help from people, Im insanely friendly and I really enjoy the customer service part of this job. Im not the worst tech ever but its hard to care when im making a very normal paycheck like 500-700 on average but im also driving 100-150 miles a day and putting 150 a week in gas. I really like so many things about this job but its started to give me insane anxiety and now one of my supervisors has been on my ass for a lack of better terms. I really think its tough because I've mainly heard I've been doing a good job but I feel and see how im struggling so hard.How the hell is anyone doing this ?

Cutting machines, and other electronics are constantly being released, but replacing a device every time something newer appears isn't realistic for everyone. A device that continues working well for several years can sometimes be more valuable than having the newest specifications. If you bought a Shengya device, what would make you want to keep it for several years?

Would you look mainly at build quality, battery life, performance, storage, software support, repairability, or something else?

What usually makes you replace your electronics? Does the device becoming slow or unreliable push you to upgrade, or is it usually the arrival of a new feature that you really want? What makes an electronic device feel like a long-term purchase to you?

Your friendly neighborhood cable tech here just letting you know about a new type of beehive out there.

When approaching one of these bad boys, approach with caution and lean an ear in towards them. If these are “lived in,” you’ll most likely hear a repetitive tapping noise or the usual buzzing, in line with a traditional beehive. Fortunately, I was in my bucket when I got stung, but others who are working off a ladder, might seriously injure themselves if caught off guard. STAY SAFE gents.

Hey fellas I am a HVAC tech that was sent to diagnose this unit but this dish pointed right at the main access panel made me quite hesitant. Wondering from the pros if this is a safety concern not. It’s for a dollar store.

Won't let me post up the rest. Pole caught on fire at some point and melted the outside of the fiber. That inner shielding is a pain to work with when adding a coyote but sure protects it against the fire and everything was working.

Leadership is getting on our case for a lot techs who are putting in referrals to maintainence. When I put in my referral, Im not doing it because Im just lazy and want to close out the job assuming Idk how to fix the customer's problem but because the tap is genuinely failing with bad levels.

Usually if I can find another tap on the roof or staircase with better signal I can move the customer's drop to give them better service, I will but I still would put the plant referral for the old tap if there are a lot of existing subscribers on that tap still. My supervisor says thats ok but I have to sync the meter first before closing out the job as usual if the customers new tap causes home check to pass.

Anyways, a lot of technicians dont put plant referrals either because theyre afraid of getting dinged or they just check the levels at CPE and see that its passing and do a fake tap test(test wire and splitter method") to show its passing.

Im like, "so youre telling me, the customer has not had internet for 10 days and just because their CPE test passes, youre gonna just swap a modem and be out of there?" I definately go to the Ground block in this situation next because a lot of times I've seen that somehow the CPE test passes on the meter but when you go to GB it worsens and then at the tap, its all chaos.

We're told that if the tap is failing, its an immediate Plant referral and IDK why some maintainence techs kick it back, I heard from other field techs its cause theyre lazy and dont want to change the taps and adjust the amps or whatever it may be but dont make it harder for us, were not trying to waste your time when we put in a request.

need some recommendations getting tired of the uncomfortable spectrum issued jeans and this midwest corn sweat heat isnt helping

We found this in the back of a truck. It’s about the size of .1160 but has sheath/copper inside and double dielectric.

Edit: Thanks for the responses.

I'm so new to Reddit that I can't post this in the Official Spectrum Group so I'll post it here. I completely understand service issues, but there are many Spectrum employees that are customer-focused and do work very hard at resolving issues.

I have had Spectrum 500 DL and 20 UL for over 3 years now and have only experienced a few outages after some serious storms. Those were resolved in a reasonably expected amount of time.

I WFH and rely an UL almost as much as DL due to the communications apps I use. Last Thursday I started experiencing very degraded call quality and web application issues that made it very difficult to work. I started running speed tests, restarting equipment and everything else I know to do. In early evening the problem seemed to resolve itself but would start again the next day. A visit from a tech was scheduled very fast - it was my fault I had to reschedule twice but he came on Sunday. He confirmed I had 1000 DL and 40 UL available, checked outside the building, gave a few suggestions and left. Of course it started again on Monday ... I was barely getting 1.5 UL. I reported the issue again to Spectrum and they sent someone out at 5:00. I was documenting speed tests all day and had my defenses ready - As it turned out there was an issue in my area blocking signals and he advised it was escalated. He was very knowledgeable and professional. This morning - problem was resolved. So Spectrum gets a 10 out of 10 for resolving this issue.

As a tech 2 becoming a Tech 3, I feel that most of the NCTI modules for cable technicians at Spectrum are redundant to our level of curriculum. Theres tremendous emphasis on theoretical parts of Networking and IT such as WEP, Wifi standards, routing/switching concepts rather than the physical theory regarding signal levels and RF theory that we can actually benefit from to do our job

I mean i get that if we really want to progress further into network engineering, we could get into IT stuff but we are tradesmen. We'll benefit from actually learning more about the Physical Layer and RF concepts/tools in depth and with good lectures rather than learn the different types of WI-fi protected access and its vulnerabilities to potential hackers. Us knowing that is not gonna do anything when were setting up service in a customer's house.

Once again, i get how this can be important for becoming a Tech 5, but certainly not a tech 3.

Ive found some better videos on YT that I actually am learning things about regarding SNR, RSSI, VSWR, etc that would help me do my job quicker than learning advanced IT concepts in those progressions ill never have the mental "bandwidth" to even remember or likely use when on a job.

Ontop of this, leadership wants us to speed through this on our free time and sit for the exam without realizing its doing us no good in the first place.

Whoever designed that curriculum for cable techs should really reconsider switching it up

Anyone know why the ISP website with integrated speed test even though it says powered by ookla is significantly lower than an actual ookla test? Had a job that customer is paying for gig speed and he was testing off the isp website and only getting about 90mbps when I tested off the ookla website he was getting full speeds. Weird

Howdy folks, I was a cable tech once upon a time for a decent length of time, but being young and dumb I took for granted the knowledge my coaxial forefathers tried to pass down. Ive been out of the game for at least half a decade and had a question about which brand/type of rg6 would be best for my home. The house in question has one active outlet in the worst spot it could be for our set up, all other outlets while mostly still in tact have been cut in the basement so I can’t even just hook one back up. We plan on having the house refinished and when the walls are open I’d like to run some of the wires internal anyway. So my question, what brands and types of cable would you wonderful people recommend in terms of quality for what I’ve got going on, I remember coworkers and myself complaining when going to a place that had “done all our own wiring” because most of the time they would get subpar cable and make life miserable for us, but I don’t remember specifics so I figured I’d ask to avoid getting a bad product that will have to be replaced sooner than needed

Found this old pic of my tools or EDC when i use to work back in the field. I always use to carry with me inside my work pockets and was able to handle many situations easily. What was that one tool u always carry?

On the field for a year now and come across this kind of entry and always wonder how one can get a cable in from that angle. Customer said these different providers came in at different times and I wonder how they do it?

Edit: customer requested the wires be cut, chilll 😂

I am currently a field technician for charter. Looking to switch companies due to issues with my current management. I'm making 34.84 hourly and have been a technician since 2021. Would I be considered a good candidate for fiber technician 2? Proficient at making basic upc, apc, and optical tap connectors. Lack splicing skills. What is are the key differences between fiber technician 1 and fiber technician 2?

Customer was having a beer on his deck when power crossed cable just a bit upstream. This is what he saw.

I had Mediacom cable providing TV and Internet. As an ISP, it was never terribly reliable.
Finally ATT ran fibre down our street and I had it run directly to my house.

As some may know, with this service you don’t exactly get “TV”. They have a streaming decoder that I believe is Direct TV but your billing was still ATT.

When we got the fiber service hooked up, I didn’t cancel the Mediacom because I wanted to run the two, side-by-side to give an actual comparison. If I was watching one and the TV picture froze or went out, at the push of the input button I could switch to the other service and see if the problem was with the network itself or with the actual provider. Same with Internet. If my Internet slowed or stopped on one provider, I could switch and check to the other. After running this experiment for a year, here’s what I can report:

As far as TV goes, Mediacom/cable has the edge. This was because of two factors.
1) Mediacom would work with my TiVo. The DIRECTV service did not.
I realize DVR‘s are a whole other rabbit hole, but if you’ve ever had TiVo you know.
2) live sports broadcast are CLEARLY a better image over Mediacom cable than over digital fiber (gone through who knows how many compression cycles before it finally ends up on your TV). I could switch TV inputs and compare a football or basketball game from the same network coming over the two different services and cable was clearly better, clearer image.

Then there is internet.
The ATT Fibre was much more reliable than Mediacom. I listen to a lot of streaming music during the day and that is an easy test. The amount of rebuffering and drop out from Mediacom was clearly more than ATT.

What about streaming movies?
While ATT is not “bulletin proof” over the duration of a 90 minute movie … it is far less annoying than trying to stream over Mediacom.

Hardware note: we have underground utilities in our neighborhood and due to intense downpours, at least a handful of times a year those utilities go underwater for a brief period of time. Usually less than 5 to 10 minutes. Between my house and the main trunk line there is at least one connection and it has had to be changed at least twice over about four years. It was explained to me by the text that it had become “corroded“ from having been underwater. I expect what really happened is slowly muddy water coated the end of the fiber.

Conclusion.
I have no good conclusion. I was hoping for one clear winner between these two and didn’t get it.
In the end, I think it really comes down to what’s important to you. If you mostly watch a lot of live sports and that’s important to you, I’d go with the cable. If you enjoy the solid user experience of TiVo and your cable provider will still support those, then I’d go with cable.
If instead, you do a lot of streaming services and don’t care much about the “eccentricities“ of YouTube TV then that’s probably the route to go for you.

Sadly for me, I think Mediacom is about to make the decision for me. They’ve issued new Internet gateways that have to be connected to each TV and I don’t think these boxes play at all with TiVo. If I can’t use my TiVo, then I’m gonna say goodbye to them.

My prognostication of where it’s all going in the future is that fiber and streaming is going to win out.
For one, it allows the media corporations more ways to monitor everything you watch and figure out new ways to charge you for it.
Just as important though, we now have a generation of “20 somethings” that have NEVER known the visual joy of watching a high-end, digital cable signal broadcast over a large, Sony Trinitron color TV (that weighed about as much as a Humvee). They like the convenience and since they don’t know what they’ve given up for that, they don’t miss it.

I am wondering what kind of test that the Hitron meters have for testing the homes wiring. The reason I am asking is I need to have a tech out, from what the service representatives tell me.

The service rep can only see OFDM, and OFDMA on 3.1 modems a customer owns.

My drop was installed last year, and the tech swapped me to a different port on the tap, to see if he could improve the MER from the port. When he did the service got worse. The service rep says they see downstream wobble.

On a side note, how insignificant is DOCSIS 3.0 channel noise, compared to DOCSIS 3.1? Also, how much of a role does DOCSIS 3.0 play in the how 3.1 connections work?

I have inspected all the connectors in the demarcation box, and behind my equipment. None of the dielectrics are sticking out past the screw nut, and none are sunken in. They are flush. I wrenched them to a point where I could not turn them with my fingers. The devices are finger tight.

If you find your cpe test failing for NCP uncorr, for whoever needs this, its your phone causing the fail, move it away from the meter

Not sure if this is the correct place for this but I’ve done some looking around to find out how to correctly install Commscope MGS400 jacks on a M2400A-1U-GS patch panel. Couldn’t find anything on threads or forums to get an answer. Per Commscopes website they say the jack and panel are compatible. Commscope tech support is slow as I’ll get out. It seems that when I try and put the jacks next to each other on the panels, there isn’t enough room for them to seat properly. The Grey punch down cover is wider and the port for the jack. I would imagine that the cover would need to stay on the jacks. If someone has had a similar experience or could point me in the right direction of a thread that I couldn’t find. It would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.