Update: had a chat with a retired lineman about my internet setup

2 comments

2 Comments

Did you ask him about grounding and bonding? I talked to an old phone company guy once and he set me straight on how important a good ground rod is for keeping interference down. Made a bigger difference than any fancy cable I ever bought.

oliver5232d ago

Yeah @sethanderson you're mostly right but I gotta push back a little. The ground rod is super important for safety and for keeping noise out of the system, no argument there. But if your ground path has a loop or you've got different ground potentials between your equipment, you can actually make hum worse instead of better. Had a buddy who drove a rod, tied everything to it, and ended up with a 60hz buzz that drove him nuts until he lifted the shield on one end of the signal cable. The old phone guy knew his stuff for sure, just gotta make sure you're not grounding stuff in two different places that have different voltage potentials. A single point ground is usually the way to go if you can manage it.