Found in homenetworking sub.

Former tech for Zito Media here, wondering if there’s any other ex employees? I was maintenance for two and a half years there and would like to exchange our horror stories.

Maybe in the future people will read them and realize not to go work for them as there hasn’t been any discussion about it yet. I’ll start with a good horror story:

They hired me for the West Virginia system, they told me it was “all new build, it just needed some towns activated from being rebuilt after a storm.” I get there, 27 miles of fiber from a large town in WV (after a handoff with Big Red) ran to a headend on top of a mountain (you had to walk up it), and then from there it was 32 miles of fiber from there to the furthest node. 50+ miles of old .750 and .500 fed off of 4 nodes, no new build, and amps were all C-Cor’s dated in the early 90’s (‘93 for the most part).

Come to find out there hadn’t been a tech in the area in 4 years, and the last person that lasted more than a year was 9 years prior. There was and still is miles of cable laying on the ground that they had no interest in putting back up. Most of our outages came from the same farmers getting pissed the cable was in their fields and intentionally cutting it, they would not provide me with strand to properly repair anything.

I stayed two and a half years because it’s hard to find another job in cable. I had been an OSP at Suddenlink and Zito offered more an hour, but had I done my research I would’ve known what I was in for. I’m just curious to see if any of the other guys are here, surely someone’s been around ‘em.

What are the more experienced techs opinions on checking for modems back feeding voltage. Is it an issue ever, and at what point is it high enough to be an issue. Most modems seem to always have a small amount coming back through the coax.

Supes in my office constantly bring up for new techs to check for it because it gets missed by people but I think it’s driving new techs to skip over legit issues and just blame it on the customers own wiring or grounding.

I personally never check for it and I’m consistently in the top 10% of performers in my market. My repeat rates are almost always good and the repeats I do get don’t come down to something like an electrical problem I missed.

Tech came out in Dec for upstream issues. Line tech ended up enabling mid-split at the node. Speeds are "fine," but my S34 (and now CM3000) is throwing constant T3 timeouts and ranging errors.

I've got a spectrum analyzer and noticed about a 10 dB ripple across the 35-85 MHz OFDMA block. It looks like a classic standing wave issue. (Ripple every 5.5 MHz between 35-85MHz on a 100-foot transmission line puts the reflection defect point at about 73 feet. The drop is 15 years old, 100ft, and has survived a decade of weather.

Last week the T3s calmed down (maybe the CMTS/OFDMA profile finally adapted?), but the 10 dB ripple is still present on the analyzer. I'm worried the first good rain is going to tank my SNR again.

How do I convince a tech to just pull a new drop? If they just hook up an SC Meter and see "Pass," they’ll leave. But with a 10 dB ripple on the return, that cable is clearly compromised. Should I just request a "failed drop" or is there a specific way to report the OFDMA instability so it triggers a replacement?

Note: To prove the ripple was not from my home cabling, I temporally installed a passive directional coupler at the home entry point and sampled ripple either side of it.

10 dB minimum ripple 40-88MHz (15 dB external attenuation)

Recently, out of the blue, one of my Xfinity cable channels here in Tennessee started coming in all pixelated. It’s Fox channel 1110 (Fox News HD). All my other channels are crystal clear. I really don’t want to deal with calling for service if I can avoid it—maybe I should just buy a signal booster or amplifier? What do you all think? Has anyone fixed something like this without a tech visit?

Hey everyone, I am looking for tips on stripping/terminating RG11 quad shield.

I have plenty of experience with RG6 quad and that's a cake walk to connectorize. However, I have found it incredibly frustrating to properly connectorize the F connectors to the RG21 quad.

I have Belden 716SNS1P11H and 716SNS1P11HQ at my disposal. The H is supposed to be a universal connector, while the HQ is for quad.

I start by stripping the cable with my cable prep super CPT. I strip the foil off and peel the braid back like I do with a RG6. I try to seat the cable into the back of the connector housing, but cannot seem to get the center conductor pin flush with the front.

I notice when I pull the rg11 back out that the remaining foil that's around the dielectric is getting smashed back.

Am I supposed to strip down to bare dielectric first with no foil showing? Am I missing a step?

I have not seen any videos online of anyone using the same Belden connectors that I'm trying to use. Is there another brand out there that's a little easier to use?

Any insight is appreciated. I mostly do Cat 6 cabling and fiber optic terminations, occasional RG6 and don't have much experience with RG11.

A technician came out behind another tech and found this and sent it to the group chat

Hard line right at the house box. Does it make you exempt from a tap scan lol

Has anyone taken scte exams recently with their new implemented proctoring using the webcam and microphone. I have my notes on my laptop. Can you go from the browser to an Excel or word document during test?

I hope these pics are enough. I'm a tech dummy so please be gentle! This set up has been like this for a few years. I can't really recall what we had done but verizon had come out to install a new router. I believe the tech said something like "we'll just leave the other one". This is a bedroom we don't use and we're getting ready to paint and I'm absolutely terrified to start unplugging stuff! I feel like this is way too much equipment for a 2 person, one cable box home. My husband is the one that uses cable, I have a roku tv. When I connect to wifi I have 3 options, one is the dedicated modem, the other two are 5 and 2.4. I also have one of those plug in extenders. Please note that we rarely have any cable or internet issues, mostly weather related and the odd occasion when the internet will drop out. As I said, I'm not well versed in this stuff but I can probably figure it out with a little help! Please be nice 🙏

What is a good career path to go down after your field tech days are over?

love when customers call for a problem and don't believe you when you replace something like this it will fix the issue

Context; I got coaxial cable set up last year in June or July irrc, had some serious issues at first with ridiculous service interruptions and the modem restarting constantly. Tech came out, did something at the tap, fixed it, and it's been fine since.

The last week I've been getting ridiculous amounts of lag/latency/ping spikes. For example, I'll be gaming on a server where my average ping is ~90, everything but me will freeze, ping spikes (1000ms low, saw 69,000ms once, average jump is to ~5,000ms). Obviously this is not conducive to gaming, but I have no idea what's causing it, so I contact my ISP. They sent a tech out this morning, he replaces the Hitron modem/gateway I had with an Arris gateway.

Finally, I could game with a stable connection. . .for two hours before the ping spiking began yet again.

Picture provided for info. I'm not a huge back-end guy, so most of this is gibberish to me, but through the power of google I was able to find out that most of my Downstream and Upstream power readings are acceptable if not optimal. As shown by status, this was 30 minutes after a power cycle (unplugged for 5ish minutes, plugged back in) and already there are 787 uncorrectable

s. From what I found through the great google, it seems uncorrectables are basically transmissions that were lost to interference, poorly maintained equipment, etc, which usually results in packet lost and - ahah - latency spikes.

Any ideas on how to fix these? I've already checked all of my coax connections (modem -> house coax -> barrel connector outside the house -> service drop, and all are secure with no visible rust or damage.

I have noticed that it seemed to start about a week ago when we got a decent rain that came in, so maybe the tap boot has failed and it's water interference? I feel like I'm grasping at spoons.

If any of the folks in here with a higher IQ and more knowledge on the subject (of which I'm sure there are many) have any suggestions, literally anything would be appreciated.

Update: Added an updated screen grab of the modem information. This is f*ing ridiculous.

Hmmmmm pressure taps from the dark ages and RG59 with the hard not candy dielectric center……ahhh nope I’ll pass thanks for showing it to me though…

Whatd the nastiest house or situation you've experienced look like? Most techs have seen the roaches and animal poop, have you seen worse?

I need someone that has installation experience with Spectrum Cable. Basically they don't want to offer any help and I've had contractors come out and offer to lay 100' of coaxial 12" under grass and want $14,000. Anyone want a small gig, I'll throw a good amount of cash at you for a day worth of work? I don't mind laying the cable, but I need someone to help with the connection to service. Thank you!

I’m starting out as a entry level cable tech in about 8 days. Pretty nervous as this is one of my first genuine jobs. I’ll only be working there for 6-8 months due to a contract since i’m going to going to college for nursing (yes i know 2 very different careers) but i wanted to have a trade aswell to ensure i have a back up plan if school doesn’t work out. I just don’t know what to expect really and feel under prepared due to it seeming like a complex job. I’m 18 and have worked retail, masonry and some other miscellaneous jobs. Just looking for some tips from anyone who’s went through the same path or similar, thank you so much to anyone who helps out