General: Router Cable

Because of Mrs.Coyote's continuing wireless router disconnection, I decided to move the the Netgear DG834PN closer to her workspace in the hope it would cure the problem.
To move the router I needed a much longer RJ11 cable. All I could buy locally was a Belkin "high speed" fully screend job 4.6 metres long. (yes it was horribly expensive from Staples)

All moved and reconnected, I fired up my main machine and "BEHOLD"! WOW what a difference. firstly I noticed the colour saturation was so much better, the odd red coloured letters in the text I had never really got rid of has gone completely and the general resolution has lost the very slight, but annoying blur on small text in emails and websites. Amazing! It just proves that decent cables that applies in audio, also applies as much to at least router RJ11 cables.

Mrs. C's laptop, well yes, it is ok now, but only if it's power supply is plugged in? I've checked and tested everything I can think of, it's a new machine, so the battery is OK. Strangely enough her old lappie had the same problem with this router. I must have missed something, 'cos all my desktops work fine.

Everything is running WPA2-PSK protocols and I've tried all of them, even just plain unlocked mode. None of it made any difference. The router has the latest firmware. If anyone can shed some light on this I and Mrs.C would be most grateful.

I don't get it - how can a wifi connection make any difference to the colour saturation?

Am I missing something?

Nope - doesn't really clear up the confusion I'm having, my good man.

A low quality cable can be more suseptable to interferance problems than a properly grounded, screened cable - that much is blatently true. What I don't get is how it's affecting you - digital information flows should not be affected in the manner you describe - only analogue data flows (cable Tv signals etc) should be affected that way. A digital connection with interferance will either slow down (to compensate for the interferance) or just stop working altogether. There should be no difference to the data that flows other than the speed at which it flows - so you shouldn't be seeing more saturated colours...

Which is why I think I must be missing something!

I could see why a digital audio stream might benefit from an optical cable in RF heavy environments, or even a shielded, high quality copper cable vs a cheap and nasty one - if extra data bits reach the reciever, because the RF is creating a small voltage inside the cable, then the reciever would have to try to interpret those extra data bits. It would try to "play" them, which would cause a deterioration in audio quality - theoretically. But with an IP data stream, especially TCP/IP - there is an error correcting factor. Such extra "stray" bits would be eliminated. The data that arrives at your computer would be identical whether you have a low quality cable or a high quality one - and if extra data bits did make it through the error checking, they shouldn't add quality to your images - they should cause the file to be corrupted, not improved.

The only thing I can think of is that somehow some kind of interferance from the ADSL line is/was interfering with your VGA signal and deteriorating the picture quality????

Highly unlikely given the power levels in a phone line, but not impossible - especially if something close to your phone line between you and your exchange is giving out powerful RF. Mobile phone mast, perhaps?

I almost actually LOLed. Excellent!

This whole thread is about the quality of internet content. I was not suggesting the new screened RJ 11 cable has improve all of the VGA signal, that would be totally stupid and impossible. i.e. DVD playback is obviously the same, but streamed off net content is noticeably better.

Pete, I'm glad you are amused, but I cannot see what's so funny?

CeeBee, I'm trying to work out why this is happening as well. It's not just streaming video that's better, it's all the internet including emails and websites including this one. You may remember I had a problem a while ago with some displayed characters being red in colour. It seemed to be fairly random, sometimes just capitals, then some lower case letters would display with the red hue.

It seems to have stopped doing this completely now, well I haven't seen any pages, email or otherwise doing it since. All I can say is that somehow the better cable has cleaned up the internet. (Oh if only that was literally possible)

Sorry, I assumed you were joking Coyote! If not this thread is actually quite interesting.

Streamed video does kind of make sense. Reduced error correction, reduced jitter, etc. But sharper lettering? Given that the computer either receives the letter or not and all the rendering is done locally - I agree with CB, that makes no sense.

I'm not saying you're not seeing it though.

I see Pete, all that stuff in and around my house is a bit much, but it does exist! I assumed the red hue that shows up on letters was to do with signal integrity. The fact it's now gone must somehow have something to do with a cleaner signal ? Whatever, I'm just very pleased with the results. I realise the Belkin cables are not that cheap, but perhaps you or CeeBee could be tempted to try them and see what you think. Maybe it wont make that much difference if you have a low interference levels. Sorry if I've confused you all.
(I'm only saying Belkin, 'cos that's the only one I have used, I'm not a fanboy .)

RF makes sense. I'm also wondering if this could be down to an earth loop. Could the red around the letters be the visual equivalent of a 50Hz hum? I'm not sure how changing the cable would stop this though.

I know it sounds nuts but maybe try listening to the telephone whilst the router is connected with one cable then the other. See whether you can hear the mains hum.

Incidentally, the best explanations of jitter and error corrections and other digital audio factors I've ever come across are in a book called Modern Recording Techniques by David Miles Huber and Robert E. Runstein. I was of the 'It's digital so it either works or it doesn't' opinion until I read it.

It's pretty normal for us to lose the BBC transponder on Freeview around here but that's because it's broadcast right at the top of the frequency range (ch6 where the gain curve of cheaper aerials starts to drop off. Plus being near France means they have to broadcast at lower powers.

Are you near Northolt General? According to teh internets the other use for the frequency used by the Multiplex for Channel 5 at Crystal Palace is Biomedical Telemetry!

Northwick park hospital is very near us and in line with the Crystal palace relay, so you may well be right Pete. That would explain that one.

CeeBee, as you may have gathered, we use a relay mast with a Palace feed. It's actually in the opposite direction. It all works very well apart from the Ch 5's on occasions. Although it's not been so bad lately.

CeeBee, I use a high quality DVI cables. As far as I'm aware, all decent DVI-D cables are screened. I don't think the monitor cable has anything to do with it. I just think it's the lack of digital crap in the RJ phone line connection. After all, that's all I've changed to produce the quality difference.
The BT line in to the house is underground and I'm sure that will screen out the barrage of unwanted digital signals outside. Aluminium cable is use by BT in high interference areas. (I was talking to a BT engineer working in my street)

I have no idea what is going on with this, but I had a dig around in my cable box and found three more cables. All bog standard flat usual sort, varying lengths, 1m 1.5m and 3m. all of them worked, but the difference was very noticeable compared to the Belkin. Slower page loading and e mail server connection times were much slower.

I'm totally confused about the monitor effects as I now have a Samsung Syncmaster 2333SW running at 1920 X 1080 the visual quality is superb whatever router cable I use! ?

Hmm, I will have to investigate further, maybe contact Belkin and see what BS they can come up with. Impartial is what I need. A chat on some of the other forums might reveal something. after reading up about this, I see what you mean, it shouldn't make any real difference, but it really does!

The iiama E2202WS monitor is a pile of Crap, if you will forgive the expression. It wouldn't surprise me if it was picking up noise from sources from all over the place.