Old TV set interfered with village's DSL Internet each day for 18 months

[steve2470]

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/old-tv-set-interfered-with-villages-dsl-internet-each-day-for-18-months/

Having exhausted all other avenues, we wanted to do one final test to see if the fault was being caused by a phenomenon known as SHINE (Single High-level Impulse Noise) where electrical interference is emitted from an appliance that can then have an impact on broadband connectivity.

By using a device called a Spectrum Analyzer we walked up and down the village in the torrential rain at 6am to see if we could find an "electrical noise" to support our theory. And at 7am, like clockwork, it happened! Our device picked up a large burst of electrical interference in the village.

The source of the "electrical noise" was traced to a property in the village. It turned out that at 7am every morning, the occupant would switch on their old TV which would in turn knock out broadband for the entire village.

As you can imagine, when we pointed this out to the resident, they were mortified that their old second-hand TV was the cause of an entire village's broadband problems, and they immediately agreed to switch it off and not use [it] again.

This occurred in Aberhosan, Wales UK. I wish we could post many more paragraphs, so I just cut to the chase. The article really explains it thoroughly, at the link at the top. Enjoy !

eta: original article here https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/09/18-months-of-village-broadband-disruption-traced-to-old-tv-set.html

[Joinfortmill]

1. Wow

[soothsayer]

2. This is why we have Part 15 of the FCC rules to limit such interference

You’ll see FCC Part 15 certifications on the back of most of your electronic gadgets.

[CloudWatcher]

3. UK has equivalent regulations

The UK has rules like that as well. That old TV set was not behaving within spec. I suspect it was seriously in danger of catching fire

I'm guessing the ISP didn't shield their high-speed link to the backbone, and the TV was close enough to lower the speed of their main link. The whole point of the original Internet was multiple links between the routers so a single bad connection wouldn't trigger an outage. But ISP's have been cutting costs and don't really care about outages.

So the broken TV is a cute story, but the scandal is that the village's ISP cut so many corners that they finally got caught. And then didn't have the knowledge or equipment to even figure it out for 18 months.