Voltages? Internet Woes?

[DoubleK]

Well the Cable tech just left after an unsucessfull modem swap. He was attempting to swap the old Motorola sb3100 out with some newer Ambit Modem but he couldnt get it to sync. He was explaining the reason for this as being the modem was dead out of the box or my old home wiring being the culprit(no ground) as the cat5 to the modem is carrying voltage (50+). Anyways he re-registered the old Motorola and it still syncs up fine. Interestingly enough I ran a Charter speedtest and my upload went from 118 on average monitored closely over the last week to nearly 240!!

The reason Iam attempting the modem swap is horrible lag/latency in any multiplayer online game. My guess is that the node was/is overloaded and now with a new ip address/node it fixes the problem again for a while

Common sense tells me that my sb3100 worked fine for two years carrying this ungrounded voltage (and still works), why shouldnt newer modems? So what, its 55 volts being dumped off into the cat5 or the case, if it isnt a safety hazard and not frying electronic equipment why bother? Its not like electricians are cheap.

Iam truly at a loss, any direction appreciated.

[jmichna]

Some modems use an 18v (house current-to-modem) transformer, and others a 12v. Was the proper power supplied to the new modem?

Also, it's easy enough to establish a ground (3rd wire) connection in older home wiring, just go to your local hardware store and explain what you want to do. There are adapters (temporary solution IMO) and permamant options.

[DoubleK]

As far as I know, yes the proper voltage was supplied. The new ambit modem has a transformer, my old motorola sb3100 doesnt have an external (usually on power cord) transformer.

Needless to say the Motorola has worked great for two years under the same situation so it boils down to humoring the ISP, I installed a grounded gfci outlet and there is no more voltage going through the cat5.

Recently they changed some of their frequencies for broadband in light of HDTV, I wonder if the stray voltage in the modem was causing interference.

My internet woes most likely results from the whole network in my area being overloaded again. They upped our downstream to 2 megs and our upstream to 256 and although it is slightly better, it is so congested on any node I switch to that it is only a temporary solution. I recall the days of watching the activity light on the old Motorola flickering frequently. Now it just stays on constantly, I might see it flicker from midnight to four am. Man, I need fiber to keep me regular.