Broadband cable damage ??

Hi there, I have intermittent broadband and it is sending me nuts, I have run the checks vm have told me to do and even changed all ethernet cables to cat6 cables, I am at a loss socontacted vm again. This time The guy on the phone stated I have cable damage and an earth leakage fault and will send an engineer out to replace it...... Can they detect/pick up such info with their equipment?, or are am I being hoodwinked, interested to know. Thanks in advance to all for reading this and hopefully someone will enlighten me.

It is highly likely they can detect it, yes. There is all sorts of diagnostic equipment that can be pretty good at locating cable faults. Let them come out and do the fix and see if it resolves it.

In reply to a post by kopnut:

Can they detect/pick up such info with their equipment?, or are am I being hoodwinked, interested to know.

Yes, in most of the country Virgin Media use coax cabling from their cabinets to your home, and they have the tools to tell. Openreach can do this over basic twisted pair and locate a break or fault 30+ metres away from a home under a road too!

In reply to a post by ian72:

It is highly likely they can detect it, yes. There is all sorts of diagnostic equipment that can be pretty good at locating cable faults. Let them come out and do the fix and see if it resolves it.

Thanks Ian72 for your reply, much appreciated.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by kopnut:

Can they detect/pick up such info with their equipment?, or are am I being hoodwinked, interested to know.

Yes, in most of the country Virgin Media use coax cabling from their cabinets to your home, and they have the tools to tell. Openreach can do this over basic twisted pair and locate a break or fault 30+ metres away from a home under a road too!

Thanks jchamier for the reply... as they say.... everyday's a school day,

Whether it’s twisted pair, coax or optical fibre - from an engineering and physics viewpoint they are all waveguides.

Breaks can therefore be detected using a technique known as time domain reflectometry (TDR) - shoot out a pulse of energy (be that electrical or optical) and (very carefully and accurately) time and watch what comes back and when.

Hey presto a “map” of the waveguide including any discontinuities.

OP has an 'earth leakage fault' doubtful an TDR will do much.

Thanks Pheasant and FibreBubble for your replies, whatever vm have got, instrument wise, we'll find out on thurs am slot when vm come calling to replace the culprit cable.... hopefully. Will update when vm have completed the change.

In reply to a post by FibreBubble:

OP has an 'earth leakage fault' doubtful an TDR will do much.

Sounds like contact centre agent talking complete [censored] to me.

An "earth leakage fault" per se is a low voltage AC fault on a circuit with low current fault (in the tens to hundreds of milliamps range) from live to ground, detected and stopped by an residual current device (e.g an and RCD or RCBO) in the consumer unit.

If there is cable damage on the RG6 drop cable, it's probable that the sheath and foil/braid has been damaged -> resulting in RF leakage or indeed a high probability of RF noise ingress. Result SNR at the cable modem goes to [censored].

Hi to all that pitched on on this matter. VM turned up and after a lengthy inspection of the outside cable from brown box to inside house, the tech (good on him !!) found a "squashed" part of the cable. Upon finding it, everything dropped into place, recently the gas board had been and put my gas meter outside and, during the drilling and hammering and whatever else these people do, they managed to hit the aforementioned cable. Mr VM subsequently changed the cable and.... Hey Presto !!, everything is hunky dory again .... 1st class job by a very patient vm tech... I even asked this guy what tech they use to find cable faults and his reply was "Dunno, but it works ". . Thanks to all who replied.