Living

Does your cable modem suck? Do you randomly get booted from World of Warcraft, suffer from being knif…err “LAG!!!” in games like counter strike or team fortress 2? It could be your ISP sucks, or it could be your cable modem. But how do you know? Don’t call the company, use your modem’s built-in diagnostic webserver — http://192.168.100.1 — to troubleshoot a few things. This works on ALL DOCSIS compliant cable modems - it’s part of the standard as far as I know. Armed with the knowledge contained in this diagnostic website, you can tackle the big 4 suspects in flaky cable internet access: Signal, Splitters, Cabling and Connectors.

First thing to check is your signal strength, which is usually on a page called “Signal” for most motoLOLa cable modems, but I’ve seen it displayed on the main page too. There’s no hard and fast rule about where the number is located, but it’s almost guaranteed to be in dBmV, or decibel millivolts for those of us who aren’t engineers and managed to get laid in college. Chances are your signal will be a negative number, too. You want your signal to be better than -3dBmV or so. -4dBmV is probably fine too, but that’s about as low as I like to go. That’s fine, all the negative number means is that there is less signal at your modem than when it left the headend box at the cable company. If it’s not, there may be a line amplifier in your cable installation, which is common in apartment buildings and other shared structures.

If this number is very low, like -18dBmV (the worst I’ve ever seen), then you’ve got another problem - possibly bad cabling or too many splitters ahead of your modem. Most 2-way cable splitters will be a pair of -3.5dB outputs - meaning that each output is -3.5dB (a bit more than half) the strength than the input. This is cumulative, too. Meaning if you’ve got 10dB of signal coming into your house, and you split it twice with two 2-way splitters prior to your modem, you’re only going to have 3dB of signal left when you get to the modem. For the best connection, get the modem as close to the main cable drop as possible. Ideally, put a 2-way splitter in on the main drop, feed the cable modem with one output, and the rest of your systems with the other. This will ensure that your modem gets the maximum amount of signal. Don’t use radioshack/cheap crap cable amplifiers - they tend to cause more trouble than they’re worth.

Cabling and the quality of your coaxial cable splitters DOES matter A LOT! If you’ve got a splitter that’s gold plated, it’s probably crap. Check the back, if it’s glued on, it’s garbage. Quality cable splitters will have a back that’s been TIG welded on - like the ones that the cable company provides for you when they do the install. You can also acquire these from just about any reputable electronics dealer: monoprice, dalco, and parts-express being my favorites.

For cabling, you want to use RG-6 coax - not RG-59. RG-59 is not as well shielded and is basically inferior for data use - it was designed for use with cable TV systems when cable TV was all analog. RG-6 is a higher bandwidth cable with better shielding and should always be used with your cable modem, never RG-59. If you’re having stability problems with your modem, such as frequent disconnects or latency spikes, it could be your cabling or connections. Good RG-6 is still dependent on the quality of the connectors - using the screw-on gold-plated connectors will work, but it ultimately inferior to proper cabling done with a crimper. If you’re not comfortable with making your own cables or lack the tools (which you probably do if you got laid in college) then you’re best off purchasing the cables from one of the above mentioned dealers. Radio shack, best buy, circuit city, etc are often guilty of some heinous price gouging on cabling.

So there you have it, 4 ways to improve your cable internet access: Signal, Splitters, Cabling & Connectors. Questions? please leave a comment - I’ll do my best to answer your query.