Neighbour Sharing My Cable

Hi all

I have a Virgin Media business connection at my work premises. There are also some flats as part of the same building. One of the residents has just had a VM connection put in, and they have run the cable directly from my external brown box. So instead of running a second cable from they cabinet there's basically a single cable running from it to my box, where it then splits in two and feeds both me and the neighboring flat. We both have the same landlord, so I can understand why I didn't hear anything about it, but I'm concerned that my connection is going to be impacted. Does anyone know if I'm likely to experience issues? If so I'll get in touch with Virgin.

Thanks.

Does anyone know if I'm likely to experience issues? If so I'll get in touch with Virgin.

No.

It really is non issue. It just you are aware of it. It happen every where on the network.

It how DOCSIS works.

Nobody has a second cable running back to the cabinet, it's not how cable (and DOCSIS) works.

There is one cable running down the street and each property taps off it.

I refuse next door to use my cable in my garden. Locked the gate. Virgin Media engineer are not allow to enter my back garden without my premission. I told them don't bother to put cable in my back garden for next door as I will say NO. Not my problem.

Edited by adslmax (Fri 31-May-19 10:54:37)

OK, thanks for your help. I was just worried that the installer was being lazy and I was going to experience an impact on my service. Glad to know that it is not going to be the case.

Well you may well see an impact as you now have more connections on your segment and the contention is thus higher. However this is how DOCSIS works. You would need a leased line to avoid that and there is always contention somewhere in the system anyway.

What does your comment have to do with the OP's post?

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

Nobody has a second cable running back to the cabinet, it's not how cable (and DOCSIS) works.

There is one cable running down the street and each property taps off it.

If I am reading what you have put correctly then this is not how the Virgin Media network is installed around here.

Each property usually has it's own coaxial cable run from the outside of each house (the brown box or grey if from Telewest/Yorkshire cable days) to the nearest street cabinet (RG6 or RG11 coax dependent on distance).

The cable is pulled through the underground ducts using a "Cobra" rodding device by the pre-installation team. The little square (or triangle) access hole (called a Toby box) you see at the end of your drive is where they would rod the cable from lifting up any manhole covers to intercept the cable if it needs to go around corners. They leave the excess cable in the cabinet (or the chamber in front of the cabinet) so that when the installation team come, they can pull the slack out to run through the garden/drive etc.

Although houses usually get their own cable, there are instances on flats and other communal buildings where the same cable will be used (such as no space, not allowed to pull another cable to connect a new customer.

Local street cabinets, are connected to each other by a much large higher quality coaxial cable. This cable is not what you are teed off directly off though. This larger cable will eventually link to a fibre node that sends all data from the interconnected cabinets back to Virgin's core network.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

Well you may well see an impact as you now have more connections on your segment and the contention is thus higher. However this is how DOCSIS works. You would need a leased line to avoid that and there is always contention somewhere in the system anyway.

Nothing really to do with the cable being split there, though. Happens however the install is done.

I actually logged in to the forums to ask the same question.

I installed a Voom 500 Business line to my premises last week.
I had already a residential line cable with the Superhub2 so all the guy did was to unplug the cable from the SH, connect a splitter to the end of it, and from there two cables, one to the old SH and one to the 'Business' Hitron router.

This is DESPITE I had an unused cable hanging outside my wall ready to be used.
The technician (Virgin subcontractor company) reassured me that this the way they do it and there was no point drilling another hole to my (thick) wall.

I do have huge problems with speed on the Business line however this is due to the GRE tunnel and the static subnet I've been assigned. It's a known problem so I cannot blame the splitter practice... I do have an open ticket though...

If anyone else has solid argument that the splitting practice should NOT be happening please let us know.

Correct.

It's frowned up on because it can have a negative impact on power levels.

In a residential property where someone can have one SH3 and two V6 boxes for example, if they decided to piggy back next door onto yours, you could end up with a useless service.

It's cutting corners.

In reply to a post by wolvesmad:

Correct.

It's frowned up on because it can have a negative impact on power levels.

In a residential property where someone can have one SH3 and two V6 boxes for example, if they decided to piggy back next door onto yours, you could end up with a useless service.

It's cutting corners.

The technician had to connect two attenuators to the Business Hitron router, 1x10 Db and 1x 3Db. Does this mean that actually power is OK (in fact more) and it had to be brought down?
Is there a way of testing the power in both routers to see if they are in acceptable levels?

And what are the acceptable levels?

In reply to a post by netizen_uk:

Is there a way of testing the power in both routers to see if they are in acceptable levels?

And what are the acceptable levels?

Yes. Access the Hitron router web interface (put its IP address in a browser) and view the power levels in the DOCSIS WAN section.

I've been told that downstream power levels should be between -6 to 10 dBmV. Upstream should be between 31 to 51 dBmV. SNR should be more than 34.5db - the higher the better.

In reply to a post by gary333:

If I am reading what you have put correctly then this is not how the Virgin Media network is installed around here.

Each property usually has it's own coaxial cable run from the outside of each house (the brown box or grey if from Telewest/Yorkshire cable days) to the nearest street cabinet

That's the same setup as we have round here, which is why I questioned the fact they split a second connection from mine. I've seen inside my cabinet and there is a cable for every property, each with a tag with the relevant address on.

I've been keeping an eye on my BQM and keep running speed tests, and so far I haven't seen any noticeable difference since it got split thankfully.

The technician is correct, there is no point running two cables into a house when you can split the signal. I would have done the same thing. Essentially the cabinet you connect to is a giant splitter anyway