Yesterday my connection started going up and down just after lunch. I figured something was going on and decided not to call, I hate calling the ISP to get that stupid user treatment. Things were fine in the evening so I didn’t think much of it. Then this morning it went down again, but didn’t come back up. So this time I called to check on outages, none in the area. I headed to a nearby coffee shop for some lunch and to check email. Since it was still down when I came back it was down to the cable modem and start testing. After swapping cables and no change I checked the television boxes and picture quality was horrible on the DVR and the HD channels were not coming in.

Since their are a number of cables running around I figured I’d go to the source and test at the junction box in the garage. When I opened it up their was a three way splitter that ran lines to separate parts of the house. This was confusing at first since the line was split again in another room in the basement, what for ? After connecting the modem directly to the line coming from the pole all was good. After replacing the splitter the DVR now had a clear picture and HD channels, the internet was up too.

I guess it pays to know what’s between you and the pole, for TV and internet. If I knew the line was split that many times at the junction box I forgot. But you can always fall back on tracing cables and eliminate connections. The ISP doesn’t do that type of Q and A over the phone, I don’t blame them. I recall the days of asking someone on the other end of the phone to trace a cable, it’s not fun for either side. I’ve been around long enough I should know better …. but we all get lazy sometimes !!!