Dish reciever kills my DSL

[Concillian]

I have had a DSL issue for some time and have pretty much just accepted it as a problem, but why not ask about it here.

I wired my own house. Both network and phone are Cat5e (obviously phone is using fewer pairs.)

Phone is wired from box in garage to relatively central point where it goes into this splitter.
(first on this page): http://www.homephonewiring.com/splitters.html

There are 5 phone lines and 2 DSL lines off the splitter in star topography. I wired the DSL lines as bright blue RJ45 just to keep peoplee who don't know better (my wife) from plugging a phone into the unfiltered jack. I know that RJ11 plugs in fine here, but she doesn't know that...

Phone + DSL is quite happy. Phone rings and we can talk forever with no DSL issues. I can call my broadband provider on my landline and get solid SNR (last report this was 15dB margin down and 9dB up) (this is while I'm talking on the filtered portion of the line). At one point I switched to a cell phone and asked them to run margins with the modem plugged directly into the box and margins were about the same. This suggests my filtering is okay.

The moment I plug one of my Dish network receivers into the phone line to let them "phone home," the DSL goes all to hell. The modem drops & retrains if I look at it funny.

Unplug the dish receiver from the phone line and the DSL is solid again. The receivers are definitely causing an issue.

I went to great lengths to do what I thought would be the cleanest install. But I have to plug my receivers in once a month to sync with Dish at some time when I don't need the internet. It really sucks because the receivers need to be off to call in, and the internet is flaky, which means I can't use TV or internet when this happens... makes it pretty inconvenient to find a time when me, my wife and daughter don't want to use both the TV and the internet for 30-60 minutes.

Dish swears up and down it's my filtering and my broadband provider swears up and down it's Dish. Of course they must find a scapegoat and while they point at each other, I'm stuck in the middle.

Any ideas?

 

[spidey07]

My first guess, since you did this yourself, is you didn't ground everything correctly.

 

[Concillian]

what is there to ground?
The phone box in the garage is definitely grounded properly, as that was installed by the phone company.


Splitter has screw terminals for tip and ring for the three sets of wires (unfiltered in, unfiltered out and filtered out) no terminal for ground.

My low voltage wire boxes are plastic, no need for grounding.

I should also mention that Phone and network wires are not run parallel to electrical except in the walls, and are at least one stud cavity away in that case.


The dish Receivers don't have a 3-prong plug, it's a normal 2 prong electrical plug. But I have tested ground in all my electrical sockets.

Do I need to crack open the case of the splitter and look for a place to ground it?
There is no screw marked as a ground screw on the receiver, you think I should run a wire to it anyway?

I'm a little doubtful, but I can try it.

 

[bobdole369]

Originally posted by: spidey07
My first guess, since you did this yourself, is you didn't ground everything correctly.

There is nothing to ground. Grounding either ring or tip would negate the phone line LOL.

Sounds to me like the modem in the Dish box is done. They = cheap for the most part, I'd try another one.

Hmm, as part of troubleshooting I would try the Dish box in a different phone jack and see if it happens.


Edit - Hmmm just realized you might have more than one.... kinda odd that 2 would go funky.

The dish Receivers don't have a 3-prong plug, it's a normal 2 prong electrical plug. But I have tested ground in all my electrical sockets.

Unless your picking up some SERIOUS noise somewhere - such as from the Dish box - actually the sat dish/pole/RG-6 run is the likely cause of any interference, its just a big ole antenna, but the Dish box should filter that and unless you've got a huge transformer inducing a ton of volts on the shield of the RG-6....

Hmmm, now I'm chasing things. Lets do this right and see if it happens on all outlets.

 

[spidey07]

Not the outlets, the cabling. That needs common ground or your house is nothing more than a big antenna and that's most likely what you're seeing - introduces tons of noise. How is the coax cable from the dish to the receiver grounded? How about the earth ground needed for the entrance of your phone service? Basically all of those need a true earth ground.

The site you linked to contained no mention of proper grounding so I wouldn't get any advice or info from there again.

 

[bobdole369]

Spidey... What exactly should be grounded on an unshielded twisted pair run?

I see that your talking more about the RG-6 - which of course, the Dish itself - any pole that its on, and the RG-6 shield should go directly to an 8 foot ground rod with at least 4 AWG and it should be BONDED.

You are right that the dish and the RG-6 run can easily pick up noise.

However, as I'm sure the Dish box is FCC type-approved - It should NOT be putting that noise out onto the phone line!

In fact a good modem is optically isolated from the phone line to its innards. Unless someone is running 100W transmitter wrapped around the RG-6 - I can't see a ton of noise getting in.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: bobdole369

Sounds to me like the modem in the DirecTV box is done. They = cheap for the most part, I'd try another one.

I've had it happen with both of my DSL modems. At one point I got a new modem because when it first happened I thought it was the modem, but then I made the connection that it started happening when I got Dish.

It happens with either of my two receivers and has since I got Dish network (maybe about 3 years ago? Not exactly sure, but ever since the receivers were new anyway.)

Like I say, I've been just living with it for a long time, because I never figured out a solution.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Not the outlets, the cabling. That needs common ground or your house is nothing more than a big antenna and that's most likely what you're seeing - introduces tons of noise. How is the coax cable from the dish to the receiver grounded? How about the earth ground needed for the entrance of your phone service? Basically all of those need a true earth ground.

The site you linked to contained no mention of proper grounding so I wouldn't get any advice or info from there again.

The dish and RG6 was installed by whoever Dish Network farmed out installs to in my area 3 or 4 years ago. The only part of the RG6 run that's mine is the coax keystone inserts on the wall plates. They even gave me 10 foot RG6 cables to go from the wall to the receiver. They did it for free, so no need for me to do it myself.

I'm not sure there's a ground up where the dish is, I can check that. It's bolted to the eaves with cabling through the gable vent and into the attic.

I've since installed an attic fan on that vent, so there is now an electrical box nearby. Ground is pretty accessible. If I ground the dish, that should ground the mesh in the coax right? Would grounding the receivers also be necessary?

As far as no grounding listed on the site I linked.... they don't sell products that need grounded. You ground the NID (which is usually installed exclusively by the phone company,) everything after it is cat 3 and not grounded.

My NID is definitely grounded properly. It's only a few feet from my subpanel and there is a 12 gauge bare ground wire straight from that subpanel over to the water heater & natural gas pipes on the other side of the garage. The phone guy just put a tap onto that ground wire for the NID ground.

 

[bobdole369]

I've since installed an attic fan on that vent, so there is now an electrical box nearby. Ground is pretty accessible.

That is not a proper ground - as far as NEC code goes.

A proper ground requires either driving an 8 foot rod into the ground/or connecting to an existing ground rod - and running 4 AWG or greater directly to the mast/dish/RG-6 shield. Going through the entire house the roundabout way through your box all through the attic, eventually making it to ground somewhere - just won't cut it. In fact that will tend to INCREASE noise.

Think about it - if lightning hits the dish - that bolt will seek the least resistive path to ground. Without a ground - that path is probably down the coax - into your dish box, into the power supply of the dish box - into the power outlet and eventually to ground through your fusebox/circuit breaker panel.

If you ground it to the box in the attic, now the least path is through Romex into the fusebox/circuit breaker panel.

Both of the above will result in equipment loss - or likely a fire in the attic.

Grounding it to an independent rod ensures that the least resistive path to ground is via a thick cable than never enters your house.

I'm willing to bet - the underpaid contractor did not install your dish to code, which requires a ground rod as above. That is unless your dish is on the balcony or under the roof line, then its a bit different. I know a bunch of people that did this, and they barely know how to terminate a cable, let alone understand lightning, NEC, and RF interference.

 

[bobdole369]

My NID is definitely grounded properly. It's only a few feet from my subpanel and there is a 12 gauge bare ground wire straight from that subpanel over to the water heater & natural gas pipes on the other side of the garage. The phone guy just put a tap onto that ground wire for the NID ground.

Now we're talking. If you aren't properly grounded - you could tap that yourself - water heater/gas lines are usually bare metal in the ground until the street. I'd run a 4 AWG up to the dish myself just to be sure.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: bobdole369
My NID is definitely grounded properly. It's only a few feet from my subpanel and there is a 12 gauge bare ground wire straight from that subpanel over to the water heater & natural gas pipes on the other side of the garage. The phone guy just put a tap onto that ground wire for the NID ground.

Now we're talking. If you aren't properly grounded - you could tap that yourself - water heater/gas lines are usually bare metal in the ground until the street. I'd run a 4 AWG up to the dish myself just to be sure.

Yeah, I'm not talking about just lightning protection. I'm talking about noise.

For twisted pair cabling that patch panel needs to be grounded, not the actual pairs. But you probably nailed it with the dish not having a good ground.

You know that first page of all electronics where they show the picture of grounding that everybody ignores? It's important.

I am not kidding when I say I've seen entire small to medium sized data centers be plagued with noise problems all because of improper grounding. Been there, done that, seen it too many times. Hell I've seen it plague large data centers.

Concillian, have the satellite company come out and check the ground. They installed it they should do it properly and adhere to code. MANY times installers don't ground correctly. Telco is pretty good about it, cable/satellite...not so much.

 

[ScottMac]

All grounds are not created equal. Having inter-connected systems with each (or several) having it's own ground is a Bad Thing ... in some cases a Very Bad Thing (sparks, fire).

Differential between the multiple grounds can cause a ground loop and/or generate noise that otherwise wouldn't exist. Ideally, everything (except external lightning protection) should be tied to the same facilities ground.

Without a diagram & such, I'd say grounding is a good possibility, another possibility is that you have a fine collection of home-made bridge taps, maybe even something a little stranger, like too much REN (Ringer Equivelance ... load ...) from having so many active phones from one tap (which is already loaded with the whole-house splitter / filter). You can only draw so much power through that skinny lil phone wire from the CO.

Try disconnecting a phone or two when you plug in the Dish boxes and / or try running an over-the-floor phone cord back to the splitter/filter.

How do you have the existing phone lines bridged? (How are the five phone jacks connected together and then to the inbound phone line?)

 

[Concillian]

I didn't make it around to the back of the house to the dish to see if I could tell how it was grounded. It's very dark over there thanks to the neighbor's vegetation and I didn't have time to dig around for a flashlight.

I did look at the NID in the garage, and there are two lines into the NID so I must have run the DSL line separate and run a splice to split it, The DSL modem is only ever plugged in at one of these two locations.
I remember having splices that looked something like this on-hand at the time:
http://www.fourpair.com/item--...-of-100-10831X--10931X
Those aren't the ones I used, they just look mostly like them. I remember them being red, I think I got them at Home Depot or the local hardware store or whatever.

The other line runs up to the whole house filter and then into a 110 block that I used a wire pair wound through the block to make it into a splitter. The rest of the wiring is from the 110 block to the phone jacks in the various rooms.
I'm pretty sure I ran separate wires everywhere. I checked where one stud cavity has two wall plates (one plate in the living room and one plate on the other side of that wall in one of the bedrooms) and these were each run on their own cable. If I didn't splice that one, I wouldn't have spliced anywhere.

-----

On to grounding:

I don't think lightning ground is an issue. I have no idea if it's to code, but:
1) I can't remember the last time I saw lightning, let alone close enough I'd be worried about it, I'm not exactly in thunderstorm country here in California. (I know, it can happen at any time in any place, etc...)
2) there is a neighbor's tree ~5-10 feet taller than the dish very near the dish. It sits behind the dish and to the side, but it's close enough that I have to trim the forward branches that come over from their side of the fence every spring to keep them clear of the dish so I don't get signal interruptions on breezy days.
3) The dish is also not mounted on the peak of the roof line, it's down a bit. It does extend higher than the roof immediately adjacent, but not higher than the peak of the pitched roof.

Assuming I don't neeed to worry about lightning ground, what is the best way to ground it from a noise and ground loop standpoint?
Run a 14 or 12 AWG directly to the plumbing & natural gas pipes?
Run that AND stake it (seems like that may cause a loop)?

I'd rather do it myself than call Dish and have them out, which not only means paying them (I doubt I could convince them to pay for it) but also taking a vacation day that I'd rather not use to sit around the house waiting for them to show up whenever they feel like it.

Should I do any additional grounding at the dish receiver side? Or just let the RG6 ground the receiver through the dish? (at least I presume that's how they are grounded right now)

Lastly, is there an easy way to test the noise I'm getting (aside from seeing if my DSL freaks out)?

 

[boomerang]

You guys are far, far more knowledgeable than I'll ever be on this stuff. I want you to keep this in mind when I say this.

I had Dish out for an install on a 722 receiver about two months ago. The tech plugged my phone line into the back of the receiver, started up the receiver download and went out to his van to do paperwork and call in my particulars. The receiver got to the phone line test and very shortly thereafter my alarm panel started beeping. The phone line test did not pass and and the alarm panel stated there was a phone line problem.

I ignored common sense and did a number of things before he came in. I tested the jack - fine. I replaced the phone line - no change. I rebooted the receiver and tested the connection through it - failed again. All the while the alarm panel is beeping.

He had plugged the phone line into the RJ45 port on the receiver. The receiver is inside a console table and it's nearly impossible to differentiate between the two ports when reaching around the back. The phone line will click into the RJ45 port just like it will into the RJ11 port.

Don't beat me up here, just throwing it out there.

 

[bruceb]

You didn't say exactly which of those dsl filters you used. But first, check what Boomerang says about the phone line plugged into the wrong jack on the Dish receiver. If that is correct, then I would suggest you upgrade to this filter here which has much better filtering up to 30Mhz .. so it should isolate any noise coming from the Dish box

ADSL2+ / VDSL2 Splitter

 

[ScottMac]

Originally posted by: Concillian
I didn't make it around to the back of the house to the dish to see if I could tell how it was grounded. It's very dark over there thanks to the neighbor's vegetation and I didn't have time to dig around for a flashlight.

I did look at the NID in the garage, and there are two lines into the NID so I must have run the DSL line separate and run a splice to split it, The DSL modem is only ever plugged in at one of these two locations.
I remember having splices that looked something like this on-hand at the time:
http://www.fourpair.com/item--...-of-100-10831X--10931X
Those aren't the ones I used, they just look mostly like them. I remember them being red, I think I got them at Home Depot or the local hardware store or whatever.

The other line runs up to the whole house filter and then into a 110 block that I used a wire pair wound through the block to make it into a splitter. The rest of the wiring is from the 110 block to the phone jacks in the various rooms.
I'm pretty sure I ran separate wires everywhere. I checked where one stud cavity has two wall plates (one plate in the living room and one plate on the other side of that wall in one of the bedrooms) and these were each run on their own cable. If I didn't splice that one, I wouldn't have spliced anywhere.

-----

On to grounding:

I don't think lightning ground is an issue. I have no idea if it's to code, but:
1) I can't remember the last time I saw lightning, let alone close enough I'd be worried about it, I'm not exactly in thunderstorm country here in California. (I know, it can happen at any time in any place, etc...)
2) there is a neighbor's tree ~5-10 feet taller than the dish very near the dish. It sits behind the dish and to the side, but it's close enough that I have to trim the forward branches that come over from their side of the fence every spring to keep them clear of the dish so I don't get signal interruptions on breezy days.
3) The dish is also not mounted on the peak of the roof line, it's down a bit. It does extend higher than the roof immediately adjacent, but not higher than the peak of the pitched roof.

Assuming I don't neeed to worry about lightning ground, what is the best way to ground it from a noise and ground loop standpoint?
Run a 14 or 12 AWG directly to the plumbing & natural gas pipes?
Run that AND stake it (seems like that may cause a loop)?

I'd rather do it myself than call Dish and have them out, which not only means paying them (I doubt I could convince them to pay for it) but also taking a vacation day that I'd rather not use to sit around the house waiting for them to show up whenever they feel like it.

Should I do any additional grounding at the dish receiver side? Or just let the RG6 ground the receiver through the dish? (at least I presume that's how they are grounded right now)

Lastly, is there an easy way to test the noise I'm getting (aside from seeing if my DSL freaks out)?

Lightning is only a part of the things that entrance protection saves you from. It's possible to build static on external lines and power accidents are a couple others.

The cheap & easy way to try to track noise is an AM radio tuned off station. Most have some flavor of semi-directional antenna. Set it up near your junction with and without the Dish receivers plugged in ... rotate the radio to zero in on nose sources. Most AM radio internal antennas are oriented to pick up best in the front-to-rear plane.. You can also walk around to near your jacks, near the receiver (though I'd expect there to be more radiated noise *close* to the Dish box, as well as your monitor and probably your computer as well). Once you play with it a little, you'll get the idea.

 

[vailr]

Phone is wired from box in garage to relatively central point where it goes into this splitter.

Would changing the line splitter location help any?
That is: instead of an inside-house location, to having the line splitter located inside of the garage junction box?

 

[bruceb]

It may help. In my home I installed the whole house DSL filter at the point of entrance in the garage and then ran a CAT 5 cable up to to the DSL Modem / Router .. also in your case, you should be using the ADSL2+ / VDSL2 Splitter which you can get from the supplier you linked to. It has much better isolation and filtering is over a much wider frequency range.