On 2/13/2020 10:21 AM, David Huff wrote:
I have a couple of suggestions based on dealing with one of these before.
This device actually does contain a switching power supply integrated inside of
it, that is how they make it so thin. It also has a 2 pin power cord for 120V
AC (IEC 60320 C7/C8 polarized). The switcher power supply is built into the
modem box. The box is mostly plastic, not steel, so it radiates lots of noise.
The ethernet jacks on the back are probably also plastic, with no shield
connection. It also contains a battery built into the bottom.
My suggestions are:
1. The box is mostly plastic, and does not actually have a ground pin on the 120V cord. It will radiate signals onto any wires coming out of it.
Most RFI is radiated as a common mode signal on wiring, and a ground pin
does NOTHING to help.
Therefore you need to add ferrites or filtering to keep the noise
inside it if possible.
Yes. That means multiple turns on #31 cores, not just "add ferrites."
See k9yc.com/RFI-Ham.pdf and http://k9yc.com/KillingReceiveNoise.pdf
2. Add ferrites to the AC power, ethernet cables, and the phone lines if
possible. If using USB or ethernet from it, consider adding ferrites on those
cables as well.
3. You might also want to add clamp on ferrites to the coax cable connected to
the back of it as well. These devices have a habit of injecting the noise onto
the coax shield, which makes your home coax TV cables into a radiating antenna.
4. You should use shielded ethernet cables if possible when you can. That will
keep the ethernet noise contained within the ethernet cables, and hopefully
reduce any coupling from the noise in the box getting out.
5. The MoCA residential gateway stuff uses the RG-6 cable TV cables as the
transmission medium for some ethernet type of signals. One problem I have seen
is not all devices treat the shield of the TV coax the same. You may need to
clamp ferrites on the coax of those devices at the other end or in other rooms.
You've just described a Pin One Problem.
6. Check the TV coax system in the house to see if it has a ground connection
for lightning. I have done troubleshooting on a similar problem that turned
out to have a problem with grounding. Also note having multiple grounds on a
cable TV system can also lead to problems.
By law, ALL earth connections must be bonded together. See N0AX's ARRL
Book on grounding and bonding, or slides for a talk I've done at Visalia
and Pacificon. Ward and I collaborated on it.
http://k9yc.com/GroundingAndAudio.pdf
7. This device has a battery built into the modem, which means testing for RF
noise also needs to consider that turning the input power of does not always
turn off the unit.
In theory, if the person who owns it did not need to use wifi, you could put it
inside a large metal shield box, and see if that makes any difference.
Effective ONLY if every cable entering and leaving the box has its
shield bonded to the box at the point of entry/exit, and with unshielded
cables bypassed to the box at the point of entry. And proper chokes
suppress what's conducted to the cables, leaving only what's radiated by
wiring within the box itself. Probably not much on 15M.
I looked up the manuals for the XB3 below. You mentioned the residential
gateway which uses MoCA.
< https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/broadband-gateways-userguides >
< https://ciscodocs.technicolor.com/web/consumer/pdf/OL-29163-01.pdf >
That's useful!
73, Jim K9YC
Thanks,
David
W0IM
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