Cable Amplifier

[dungeon_master]

I was wondering if anyone would know. If you hook up a pair of cable signal amplifiers in series,if it would it actualy change cable speed or stay the same. only reason it crossed my mind, when I check differnt places for speed tests and I am just below 5 meg. Which isn't too poor.It did make me curious if there would be any if at all of a change. Thank you for your help.

[Whyzman]

As far as I am aware, a signal amplifier increases what we would refer to as volume...not speed. In my home, for example, I have a signal amplifier because my cable line passes through a couple of splitters. The signal "volume" degrades due to such splits and length of cable...the amplifier effectively raises the volume to the receiving units (TVs, and computers).

[saphalline]

A straight-up amplifier wouldn't change the frequency. For that, you'd need some type of filter or multiplexer or something.

[pangea33]

To expand on what whyzman said, your cable signal is coming into your house at *some* strength level, and the actual numbers are immaterial to the example. Every time you split the signal, you decrease it's amplitude (volume) by spreading it over the multiple paths, and introducing signal loss.

There is a degree of noise, interference, added at each of these splitters. When heading back towards the head end they have a combined effect, with a significant impact on your signal strength, translating into lower outbound transfer rates. This wasn't a big issue before broadband, because cable was essentially a one-way technology.

Take a look at a cable signal amplifier at any electronics store, and you'll notice that they're directional. They're designed to boost downstream traffic only, to help overcome the effects of signal loss from splitters. Putting a signal booster inline between your modem and wall socket, will almost definitely reduce your outbound speeds. Connecting more than one of these in sequence, can impact the signal to such a degree that you can't even use your connection anymore.

5 megs is an awesome speed, dungeon_master, and I would be pretty happy with it myself. It is possible that a low level of boost will increase your downstream speed, at the expense of reduced outbound speeds. Most people, myself included, would probably still experiment some, but putting your modem as closely as possible to the wall outlet, is likely the best way to maximize speed. Let the LAN carry the bulk of the traffic once it's inside your house.