Here at VE9KK's household, my XYL has returned to part-time work from home and involves a computer and the internet to communicate regarding work. Last week while she was working and I was on the radio she told me her LAN connection kept dropping out. I did some experimenting and sure enough, it was my CW signal on 15m that was doing it. I quickly grabbed my last FT240-43 toroid and wrapped the CAT6 cable around it which did the trick!
I then did some reading and learned that the CAT cable should be loose around the toroid and not tight as this affects the small wire inside the CAT6. I also read that 7 turns were the magic number of turns. Finally and this is the question to my readers I read two thoughts on wrapping CAT cable around a toroid. One school of thought was it is perfectly fine and the other was it slowed down the internet speed? I never did a speed check on my wife's connection with and without the toroid. The reason for this is she never complained the speed dropped so why poke the bear! Has anyone out there had an issue with your HF signal dropping internet connections at home and what did you do about it?
6 comments:
Hello Mike, Oh yes I had a lot of trouble years ago and even recently. Wrapping the CAT cables around toroids didn't do the trick, it helped but still a lot of problems. In the end it was the VDSL modem that was affected. Luckely the problem has been solved by placing software notch filters by the internet company, they can do that remotely. They also had to do that at all the neighbours. Of course it will take some internetspeed but I hardly notice it. Personally I don't think it makes a lot of difference how you wind the toroid. However I think a FT240-31 would do better for overall HF RFI. 73, Bas
Good morning Bas, when I put the toroid on at the modem the connection drops stopped. I was very happy to see that but today the internet company is coming over to set up a separate modem and CAT cable for Julie. I am hoping this my be a shielded cable as well. If she still have the connection drop issue I will put the toroid on again.
Have a great week,
Mike
73
VE9KK
Hi Mike, hope you're well. I used to have an issue and I tried all sorts but just couldn't find a solution. Thankfully, it only happened on one band (can't remember which).
A couple of months later, the router was upgraded by British Telecom and I've never had a problem since. I noted that the new CAT6 cable seemed much higher quality too and the engineer told me that it was shielded much better than the one he was taking away.
The same engineer upgraded my TV Tuner box and when he saw my ferrite ring, he said "Why is the coax cable wrapped around that big magnet??" I explained to him that it was a Ferrite Ring to prevent any interference from my radio transmitter. His reply was "You should only pass the coax cable straight through the ring once and not wrap it around it". Hmmm okay mate :-)))
73, Tom, M7MCQ
www.m7mcq.com
Good morning Tom very nice to hear from you, hope all is well with you and your wife? Yes the only band that I could find was 15m. Mind you my antenna is only good for 10,15,20 and 40m non of the WARC bands so not sure if any issues could had been there.
We have a cable guy coming this week to give my wife here own DSL line for work purposes. I took the bead off as sometimes when it's found out a radio transmitter is at the location and it's recorded in the records I find that it is used as an excuse for most upcoming issues.
As for one pass of the coax (also calling it a transformer) I not sure that would do the trick at all.
I always found if your not really sure about something (cable tech vs toroid) its better to say nothing and you end up looking smarter.
73 and have a good week,
Mike
VE9KK
Using shielded CAT cable is a must for HAMradio operators I think. However in the past it did not completely remove my RFI problem. I did search in my blog archive and found this article about VDSL2 we have in the Netherlands (and probabely in many other countries). It really is a nightmare for us as radio enthousiasts.
https://pe4bas.blogspot.com/2016/09/interference-2-vdsl-ham-operators.html
73, Bas
Hello Bas, yes I do remember reading your post about the VDSL2 issues you had. I remember you had the cable company involved as well.
73,
Mike
VE9KK
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