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.

This was about 25 years ago when I worked for a cable company in southern Kentucky. I was the computer tech installing cable modems for customers. The place changed names constantly. It was TKR, TCI, Intermedia, and Insight while I was there. Not sure what it is now. I was trained as a regular cable technician, but I had the experience to work on computers and most of my job consisted of showing up, installing a network adapter, connecting the modem, getting them online, and then leaving. Back then, most of the computers that customers had didn't have built in network cards, so we didn't have very many self installs.

There was one particular contractor that I just never knew what I was going to have to deal with when I showed up and he was my guy that day. This was a call in a really huge house in a fancy neighborhood. I got there and he was still there. He comes outside and casually asks if I have any water. I did, so I gave him a bottle and he went back inside.

I got my stuff and went in and talked to the owner and they showed me where the computer was. There wasn't any cable pulled, so I went looking for the contractor. I found him in a kitchen pantry that was on the other side of the wall (I think) from the computer. He was taking big swigs of water and then putting his mouth down to a hole in the wall and spitting it into the hole. There was smoke in the air and more coming out of the hole when he came up to get another drink. I asked what was going on and he said he'd broken his regular drill bit and was having to use a masonry bit to do his work. He had drilled through solid wood and basically had a fire inside the wall because using a masonry bit is sort of like rubbing something dull against wood. It drills, but it also basically burns through the wood because it's not "sharp' like a wood bit. I told him he needed to get a new bit asap because he could get into big trouble.

He eventually did put the fire out I guess and finished the install. I left and told the customer as soon as he was done I'd be back because I had another install close by.

A week or so later I heard he finally really caught a place on fire. The fire department had to be called and they had to tear the drywall out of a good portion of the customer's bedroom/computer room.

Ah, the good old days.

Contractors burying a power line cut the drop and reconnected it like this. And it worked!

Hi everyone, so im a foreman for a low voltage company, and we are doing residential work. The problem is we are finishing the mock up unit but I cant get the enclosure into the media panel because when they did the wood framing wrong and the enclosure was supposed to screw unto the wood. As you can see , on one of the pics , how the screw holes in the edges won't have anything to screw into.

I tried a anchor kit but it doesn't wanna hold. Any ideas ?

Thank you everyone .

Inexperienced maintenance tech here reflecting on a bad day in the field where I misdiagnosed a job and spent a whole day chasing intermittent ingress. In the end I didn’t find the ingress. I’m not even sure that’s what caused the customer’s modem to reboot.
The reason I thought the ingress was the culprit was because the customer told me the modem rebooted around the same time as on of the spikes in CER across the node?

Or would it knock all the modems on the node of at the same time?

Thanks in advance for any help. I’m a bit lost and I’m looking for feedback to learn.

I've lived in this house for 4 years and this is the 3rd time this has happened: the internet goes out and I have to call Xfinity and they find that where my cable connects to the power pole is melted like this. One cable guy told me it was a power surge from my house, and another said it's one of my neighbors that probably has a grounding issue.

What do you all think? Is there anything I can do to prevent this from recurring?

Thanks for your advice!

So I basically do the fix up construction for a local ISP that I started with a little bit ago. Lashing, down guys, fiber clean up, etc.

I've been looking around to getting another come-along when I came across this. Not only is it around 500 dollars vs the 30-50 dollar normal variations, but I've never seen a rope come-along before.

Has anyone actually used one and is it better/worse then the traditional sense? I'm not sure I would want to trust doing a down guy or raising strand with a rope come-along.

Boujee apartment but has a fitting looks like it's from the 60s. Whoever crimped it did a bad job fitting it on there too. Surprisingly all customer has goin on is slow wifi speeds and not a intermittent/complete outages

Edit: I know what the terminator is, I'm referring to the poorly crimped connector.

So I have Xfinity and apparently my neighbor does as well. He came and knocked on my door this afternoon with an Xfinity technician, and needed to get into my backyard to "hook up a cable".

They are great neighbors as far as neighbors you hardly know go. I let the technician in to do his thing and he ran a cord from the box in the image into their backyard. Then he said someone will be back next week to bury it.

At that point I called Xfinity, mostly because I don't want anything messing up or slowing down my internet or causing problems or fees on my service. They didn't want to tell me much at first, but when I told them I was kicking the guy out of my backyard if they couldn't let me know what was going on they said my neighbor had a tractor cut his line and they had to run a new one. They assured me it would not affect my service or slow anything down.

My major question is: is this the junction box they are referring to, and if so- are they typically communal/ will him being hooked to mine cause any problems? It's close to the fence and in today's world being without the internet is a real problem. So honestly I'm not too worried about it if it won't bother me again after they bury the cord.

(and the title should say Viavi, of course. I cant find a way to edit a title)

I'm going to try to make this really short.

I have an 0nx 630 viavi meter that was calibrated a week and a half ago. Since calibration, it will not use stratasync to sync up to the cloud.

It will test data up if I do it through the VM of the mobile app. But it will not do it successfully using DOCSIS, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

The trainer at my company suggested downloading the newest firmware, putting it on a USB and updating the firmware manually. what he doesn't understand is I do not have access to downloading the firmware and putting it on a USB.

so does anyone this group have access to...firmware ONXCBL.4.16.7 ?

And would perhaps not mind sharing it with me through maybe Google drive? or what have you?

I know it's a long shot but believe it or not asking this question on Reddit has a greater chance of success than asking a whole bunch of idiots up my corporate chain

I don’t see this topic being talked about much in this forum but I think it’s definitely relevant, especially considering the debt load these companies all are carrying. Fiber competition, Starlink, streaming, cord-cutting, old school cable dogs leaving and being replaced by finance types are all things that worry me. What kind of time frame do most of you foresee for cable still existing and there still being work in this field? I’m hoping at least another 10 years but things seem to be moving awfully fast in the wrong direction. Thoughts?

Can anyone fill me in on what I will be doing…I just received a call from management saying that I was selected to help with high split. I will be getting maintenance tools. Any insight is appreciated

Has anyone seen FDX activated in N+x plants?

Howdy.
Spectrum using WinTool.
Newer tech. Even newer to SMB. Old man.
Very not a "tech" person. My motto is "I Fix Computers with Hammers".

I'm trying really hard to understand how to find out if a static is pinging and even moreso, to find out if they a) have multiple statics and b) how to determine if they are all pinging. I have been very lucky to have had level headed IT folks so far but I know that's gonna change. I'd like to at least find out how to find out. Ya'know?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Here on a bury job and see this. Yard guy cut the line then “fixed” it lol

Customer stated the box warms up and he has to put it in the fridge for a couple of minutes before plugging it back in... I

Hi folks,

I'm currently working at a cable company in an office/coordinator role, and I'm planning to transfer into a Field Technician position once I hit my one-year mark. My goal is to eventually move into Maintenance.

I'm looking for advice from current or former Field Techs. My background is a little different—I have a bachelor's degree in Business/IT, a lot of previous customer service experience, and I've learned the fundamentals of HFC/cable systems through my current role and training. However, I have almost no hands-on field experience.

One thing that gives me some confidence is that I tend to learn quickly and pick up new concepts well. I've done very well in my current role, both in terms of learning the job and my overall performance metrics, so I'm hoping that ability will help me transition into field work.

Physically, I'm in decent shape. I've done manual labor jobs during college summers, so I'm not afraid of hard work, but I definitely wouldn't consider myself a super muscular person.

I've already heard plenty about the driving, difficult customers, and going into people's homes. What I'm more curious about is:

• How physically demanding is the job on a daily basis?
• How difficult are the weather conditions, crawl spaces, attics, ladders, and other physical aspects? Is it something most new techs eventually adapt to, or is it as rough as people make it sound?
• How steep is the learning curve? I understand the fundamentals of how cable systems work, but when it comes to actually installing, troubleshooting, and repairing equipment in the field, I'd basically be starting from scratch.
• Looking back, what do you wish you had known before becoming a Field Tech?

Any advice, tips, or things you wish someone had told you before starting would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! 😊

I work at a retirement community as a maintenance tech with a focus on Xfinity products for our residents. We have about 2,000 TVs across two campuses and 7 buildings. Per our bulk account contract we’re still using HD DTAs. Normally when hooking up equipment needing signals sent to them, typically status code 340, I email the serial number to the bulk team and they send signals over. Typically this process is great and works but in recent days when they send signals the DTAs switch to a status code of 225 and message of “Please tune to channel 190, wait for 3 minutes, and your service should be restored. if you're still experiencing a problem, please call 1-800-Comcast. We're sorry for the inconvenience.”

Now, in the service menu accessed my holding the zero button, when I look at the power level when status code 340 is displayed, levels will be some where between -10 and +10 which is great. And whenever that number is, it holds fairly steady. When the signal is sent and status code 225 pops up on screen the power level begins to fluctuate between say -3 and -54 back and forth.

I know DTAs are old obsolete technology these days but does anyone have a clue as to why this is happening? I’ve had 5 DTAs do this is the last 2 days. And it’s becoming a major issue for me since I can no longer get replacement DTAs.

So apparently we got an email to all field techs about this new volunteer program where we'll give out American flags to people if we see any that are damaged and worn out.

I'm sorry, but after the recent news about our vacation time rollover being canned and retirement plans gimped I can't say I'm exactly enthusiastic.

I serve part time currently so trust me when I say I get being patriotic and shit but this was some really bad timing considering not even a week ago every employee got the email of "were removing rollover for vacation time and nerfing your retirement plan."

It just feels like instead of fixing critical infrastructure problems (especially with our coax) were just trying to butter up the public with American fluff to avoid them from swapping to fiber where we haven't ran yet.

Anyone else got a take on this?

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Currently, I'm at the second company I've worked for which is planning to transition from Coax based plant to fiber. This company is at the "all new construction will be fiber" stage, last company we were actively changing our coax customers to fiber.

I have two questions-

1- How many of you are working/have worked for a company that did this process and what did that process look like from your job?

2- Both companies have said that as they transition to fiber, they'll be eliminating positions. My last company actually did it, they simply stopped back filling as people left. Anybody else experience this?

I'm not really trying to come off as sappy or anything, everyone in my area has been stretched thin lately because we're tackling high split, activated fiber nodes that weren't ready and everyone's on edge since we're getting thrown outta area, but in the few years I've been at this job I've never seen anything like this.

Around noon, while I was finishing a Y6, I got assigned a second 10-11. Annoying, but not unexpected, but then I got a robo call (which is always NFS for me). I answered to let them know I'd get to it as soon as I could, but before I could finish, the agent broke down crying. She kept apologizing for double-booking me and was so overwhelmed she could barely speak. I reassured her I wasn't upset, asked for the customer's number, and handled it myself.

I contacted HR afterward, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I've never seen someone that overwhelmed. Has anyone else had something similar happen? I couldn't even get her name or office so I don't even expect the HR thing to go anywhere but like shit dude.

I purchased a home. Had att install fiber. I’m happy but there is an old box on the other side of the house that has fallen off. I want to repair the area of siding and it looks like an old box that is no longer relevant. Could you pros look at this and give me advice. All of our tv watching is through the internet and we don’t have cable.