Home Wired Shut

From left to right: Cheap zinc alloy F-81, 3-GHz F-81, 4-GHz F-81, & F-61 After spending the day recrimping cable runs and replacing wall plates at a friend's house, I started wondering about my own setup. My coaxial wall plates were mostly 'builders grade' from Leviton, bought by the contractor to match the wall color. How much insertion loss (a bad thing) could I lose from them, and how much could I improve the return loss (a good thing)? PPC loss testing PPC claims that the F connectors in typical home networks are the most common failure point for DOCSIS signaling issues, with loss of continuity in the connectors causing RF ingress/egress, reflectivity, and impedance mismatches. What you might notice when unscrewing a wall plate is that an older RG-6 or RG-59 cable might feel very sticky, as grease oozes out between the outer jacket and shielding braids, making the crimped connector come loose. It's also possible that wear and tear to the wal...

Wiring diagram When adding an extension to my house, I began looking for a reliable, high throughput Wi-Fi solution. One of the options was to deliver Wi-Fi over coax, using coaxial cables to send Wi-Fi frequencies directly between my router and a cable outlet. I expected I would need low loss LMR cabling at 50 Ohms to cover the distance, but it turned out that several products allow me to make use of standard RG-6 cabling at 75 Ohms, which most homeowners already have in their walls. This approach has a number of pros and   cons described below, but appears   to be a promising solution for inexpensively improving Wi-Fi coverage in many homes, particularly for cord cutters. Pros and Cons Wi-Fi over coax claims to offer several advantages versus Wi-Fi meshed repeaters and distributed access points. One is that the signal avoids obstructions like concrete and drywall, losing only a fraction of its strength when reaching distant rooms. Another is that a single...