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Coaxial vs. Triaxial?


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Hello everybody!

So, I have a question I am looking for an answer for, and since networking is not my area of expertise in tech, this may seem stupid to others more experienced in networking. Any insight you could provide would be appreciated.

A little background: Recently, I have been experiencing RF noise pollution on my internet connection, which isn't noticeable for normal home use, but is noticeable when I am live streaming to my YouTube channel. It causes occasional patches of unstable connections, usually lasting 20-30 seconds, in which I drop a good chunk of frames.

I had a technician from my ISP come out to my house, and he suggested that the issue may come from the fact that my coaxial cable was going around my A/C unit, before entering the house. That the A/C could possibly be emitting a RF frequency that occasionally went over the floor and caused interference. To remedy the situation, he drilled a new hole into the house, so that the cable entered more directly instead of wrapping around the A/C, which also shorted the length of cable needed, which was another benefit.

After he left, I live streamed again. While the frame dropping was still present, it was noticeably reduced. Not to the point where it was acceptable, but still an improvement. I don't know if directing it away from the A/C unit was what did it, but that seemed to help.

So, I've been looking for an effective solution at how to minimize this interference further. After doing a little bit of research online, I found out that discovering the source of excessive ingress and noise pollution is not only difficult, but also usually impractical to get rid of. My next idea was to see if I could somehow shield the cables better to make them more protected from this interference.

After doing a little research over data cables, I found out more info about different kinds of cables, including coaxial and triaxial. From what I could see, triaxial cable is more shielded and insulated, allowing for a greater resistance to EMI and RF noise pollution. However, it is more expensive as well. What I am curious is, if I was to replace the cables with triaxial instead of using coaxial, would that potentially fix my issue?

And if so, where can I buy triaxial cables, can they be hooked up from the cable box to the modem directly, or do I need some sort of adapter/splitter? Additionally, what sort of tools would I be need to do this, as I happen to know my ISP does not uspprot, nor are they trained in the use of triaxial cables?

If anyone has any suggestions, over how to go about something like this, or to point me in a different direction entirely, I would appreciate it very much.

Thanks!

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6 hours ago, Kescarte_DeJudica said:

A little background: Recently, I have been experiencing RF noise pollution on my internet connection, which isn't noticeable for normal home use, but is noticeable when I am live streaming to my YouTube channel.

What do you mean?

I.e. it started "suddenly" and "before" you had not that issue?

Which kind of connection do you have?

Loosely, anything up to the "delivery point" of a service (i.e. normally up to the cable box/receptacle inside your house) is property of the ISP and you cannot touch it.

Changing the cable from the (ISP owned/connected) receptacle to your modem is doable, of course, but that won't help if there is RF injection before that point..

And I have never seen triaxial cable used for data transmission, they are used AFAIK in video trasmission in the aircraft industry *like*:

https://www.picwire.com/cables/video-mates/

The only thing that you can do is - I believe - to have the cable replaced (by the ISP, and only if they accept to do it) and have it put into a shield, a copper pipe would do nicely but there are also specific products *like*:

https://www.tech-etch.com/shield/install.html

jaclaz

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The common rule of thumb is to keep a coax cable at least 6 inches from an AC power source, including power cables up until DC transformers. I do not know what the range is per AC motor (what would be the culprit in the air conditioning unit example) as it will vary by device. In situations where you cannot keep a coax cable away from an interference source, that is where you would install shielding. Shielding should be easily DIY if you didn't want to buy specific items.

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13 hours ago, jaclaz said:

What do you mean?

I.e. it started "suddenly" and "before" you had not that issue?

Which kind of connection do you have?

Loosely, anything up to the "delivery point" of a service (i.e. normally up to the cable box/receptacle inside your house) is property of the ISP and you cannot touch it.

Changing the cable from the (ISP owned/connected) receptacle to your modem is doable, of course, but that won't help if there is RF injection before that point..

And I have never seen triaxial cable used for data transmission, they are used AFAIK in video trasmission in the aircraft industry *like*:

https://www.picwire.com/cables/video-mates/

The only thing that you can do is - I believe - to have the cable replaced (by the ISP, and only if they accept to do it) and have it put into a shield, a copper pipe would do nicely but there are also specific products *like*:

https://www.tech-etch.com/shield/install.html

jaclaz

Thank you for your input. I contacted them, and they are sending out a second technician tomorrow.

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4 hours ago, Tripredacus said:

The common rule of thumb is to keep a coax cable at least 6 inches from an AC power source, including power cables up until DC transformers. I do not know what the range is per AC motor (what would be the culprit in the air conditioning unit example) as it will vary by device. In situations where you cannot keep a coax cable away from an interference source, that is where you would install shielding. Shielding should be easily DIY if you didn't want to buy specific items.

I am not familiar with the various shielding projects out there. Is there anything that would make for easy DIY shielding (just in case the ISP won't help me with it?

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A simple solution would be to move on to optical fiber. In case your ISP provides it, just move over. If not, change ISP. Optical fiber all the way to the room whence you live stream wiil ignore all kinds of electromagnetic inerference, and ought to be at least as fast but usually is faster than your current connection. And the cost, at least here in Brazil, is competitive... since you're in the "1st world" instead, you may find out it can be even cheaper, depending on where in the US you're located. Good luck!

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10 hours ago, Kescarte_DeJudica said:

I am not familiar with the various shielding projects out there. Is there anything that would make for easy DIY shielding (just in case the ISP won't help me with it?

Anything that:

1) is a good conductor (i.e. copper, aluminium, iron/steel :w00t: etc,)
2) can be wrapped around the cable (i.e. metallic foil/tape)  or into which the cable can be inserted into (metallic pipe)
3) is continuous and thus can (optionally) be grounded (on one end ONLY)

will do nicely.

jaclaz

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On 8/13/2019 at 6:41 PM, dencorso said:

A simple solution would be to move on to optical fiber. In case your ISP provides it, just move over. If not, change ISP. Optical fiber all the way to the room whence you live stream wiil ignore all kinds of electromagnetic inerference, and ought to be at least as fast but usually is faster than your current connection. And the cost, at least here in Brazil, is competitive... since you're in the "1st world" instead, you may find out it can be even cheaper, depending on where in the US you're located. Good luck!

Thank you for the suggestion, but it is not available in my area. If it was available, I would have swapped over long ago.

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17 hours ago, jaclaz said:

Anything that:

1) is a good conductor (i.e. copper, aluminium, iron/steel :w00t: etc,)
2) can be wrapped around the cable (i.e. metallic foil/tape)  or into which the cable can be inserted into (metallic pipe)
3) is continuous and thus can (optionally) be grounded (on one end ONLY)

will do nicely.

jaclaz

A technician came out from the ISP earlier today. He told me that after running some tests, the company found out that interference was being created by one of the other houses in the neighborhood, and that the interference was affecting the entire node for everyone else. They are working to track down the source and correct it.

Thank you for your help, I appreciate it! Glad to finally know what the issue was.

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