A Splitter Headache

Recently the IT department here at Happy Valley has added staff to deal directly with internet access problems by residents..

Prior to this the work was done by Maintenance  or Renovations, or Senior TV, or outside party or tech qualified resident.

It is great now to have this competence in IT, where it belongs.

When IT sent in its new man to check my system,  he immediately found a 20 decibel deficiency in signal.     That is very bad and undoubtedly led to the many problems I have had recently.   He replaced a bad splitter at the wiring closet connection.

But wait, that deficiency was in the same place as a deficiency in db was found some time ago by Senior TV and also corrected by replacing the splitter.

Then, more recently, Renovations had uncovered a similar type of deficiency elsewhere in my apartment where I could not use my TV due to problems.   A bad splitter again.

Earlier, Maintenance had found a similar problem In yet another place.     Right,  a bad splitter!

All of these problems were related to splitters     A splitter is needed for every device,

I now believe that most problems in this complex may have been created by splitters     Cheap ones do not work well and good ones still fail frequently, and sometimes amplifiers are needed.

Here is a really good discussion of splitters...

Tap or Click for it

Splitters diminish the signal to the point of unusability, as for my second TV,  which for 4 years years could not be used because of what are called  artifacts or a little areas of bad pixelation.  

Renovations fixed this bypassing behind the wall cables and laying a long cable winding around the room and in and out of a closet across the floor.     TV finally working perfectly when thought to have been defective by Maintenance.

All apartments here using old  one-way cabling, designed way back before internet, with TV in mind, and originating in the 1950s……….all these are being replaced with so-called home run cabling which avoids splitters altogether, but only when being renovated to the point of tearing out the sheetrock down to the cinderblock wall.

So the question remains what to do about the old apartments with splitters.

In general it would be a good idea to have IT check the first splitter from the wiring closet to each apartment where trouble is indicated, then at any device that appears to be giving trouble.

If you're having problems,  just put in a work request.