HIC - Attenuation or Normal?

[oldengineer]

I had a HIC installed yesterday. It's installed on a Hopper RG6 drop off of a duo node with a tap. I noticed this morning that the Hopper fed from the tap has -15 dbm rx power and that the HIC reads -32dbm. The TX/RX rate of the Hopper is 293+Mbps and the HIC is down to about 253Mbps.

Everything works OK but it looks like there's a really significant power loss on the HIC side of the tap. Any ideas or is this normal?

 

[3HaloODST]

Not really sure -- Are all connectors on good? No dielectric sticking out of the center? Center conductors on all ends cleanly cut, sticking out a tad? No braid in the center of the connector? What is the length of the cable? Are your Duo Node CLIENT ports occupied? Could you try using a (good) splitter on one of the CLIENT ports (removing the tap of course?) Any RG59 in your installation?

 

[oldengineer]

Not really sure -- Are all connectors on good? No dielectric sticking out of the center? Center conductors on all ends cleanly cut, sticking out a tad? No braid in the center of the connector? What is the length of the cable? Are your Duo Node CLIENT ports occupied? Could you try using a (good) splitter on one of the CLIENT ports (removing the tap of course?) Any RG59 in your installation?

Electrically everything looks good. The new cables are only about 2 ft long and the tech used the Dish cable tool and new connecters to make them. The connections from the tap are correct, Client to HIC, Host to Hopper. The duo node has the Host connecters to the Hoppers and the Client to the Joeys.

I noticed something today. I looked at the Test Counters on all 4 boxes. The 3 boxes off the tap showed low HIC Rx power, -32 to -35 dbm, while the Hopper on the tap with the HIC showed HIC Rx power as -15 dbm. Maybe the power loss is in the feedback path thru the node to the other boxes?

 

[3HaloODST]

Sounds like the tap is the issue. Can you try a good splitter on a CLIENT port? What is your exact configuration?

 

[oldengineer]

Sounds like the tap is the issue. Can you try a good splitter on a CLIENT port? What is your exact configuration?

Standard configuration as shown in Dish Training lit. 1000.4 antenna, 3 wires to a duo node, 2 Hoppers off Host ports, 2 Joeys off Client ports, < 40 ft runs to boxes, all newer RG6 except for 1 to a Joey which has a 15 ft RG59 splice but plays fine. One Hopper drop has the tap feeding the HIC and Hopper. The unused connecter on the HIC is terminated.

 

[3HaloODST]

Are the HIC/Hopper in the same room?

 

[oldengineer]

Are the HIC/Hopper in the same room?

The HIC sits on top of the Hopper. The router is about 3 ft away. It's about as close as you can get.

I saw some posts somewhere about a Dish component being unreliable. Is there a known problem with their switches, nodes or taps? If so I can get a new tap for 5 bucks from SolidSignal, or get a revisit from Dish. The problem is that nobody at Dish knows anything about this and they (CSR, Tech Support and Broadband Tech Support) all parrot "This is normal" because it isn't showing any signs of abnormal operation.

 

[JM42]

It may just be differneces in the HIC vs Hopper/Joey chips.

My HIC is the lowest output in my system at -25db and the 253mbs range. I'm using it in a passthrough config. The HIC is connected to the node by a 3 ft cable, then passes through to a Joey, probably about 20-25 feet of cable.

The HIC is at -25, the Joey that passes through it is at -19. Everthing else on the system reads in the -15 range at 293mbps.

If my numbers are close to normal then the HIC is going to read 5 to 10 db less naturally, and the tap as a splitter/filter probably easily introduces another 3-5db degradation if not more. Add all that up, and your probably not too far off where you should be.

Bottom line, if it is all working, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Some other data points from other HIC users could probably let us know for sure.

 

[3HaloODST]

The HIC sits on top of the Hopper. The router is about 3 ft away. It's about as close as you can get.

I saw some posts somewhere about a Dish component being unreliable. Is there a known problem with their switches, nodes or taps? If so I can get a new tap for 5 bucks from SolidSignal, or get a revisit from Dish. The problem is that nobody at Dish knows anything about this and they (CSR, Tech Support and Broadband Tech Support) all parrot "This is normal" because it isn't showing any signs of abnormal operation.

You could always just remove the HIC, hook the Ethernet to the Hopper and enable bridging if it bothers you enough. More people with HICs should chime in on this thread. JM42 has similar stats so it is possible that it is normal what you are seeing.

 

[Poke]

You could always just remove the HIC, hook the Ethernet to the Hopper and enable bridging if it bothers you enough. More people with HICs should chime in on this thread. JM42 has similar stats so it is possible that it is normal what you are seeing.

HIC work the best and easy to setup plus less patch cables to mess with so forth. From what I can tell most of the people having any kind of issues are not using the HIC. For most part when people switch to the HIC it's more reliable and less issues so the HIC is what I recommend everyone to use but you don't have too.

 

[3HaloODST]

Technically it's less cabling without the HIC. No patch cables required. Back on S213 that may have been the case with HIC-less people having more issues but I don't think that's the case since S215 and on.

 

[oldengineer]

It may just be differneces in the HIC vs Hopper/Joey chips.

My HIC is the lowest output in my system at -25db and the 253mbs range. I'm using it in a passthrough config. The HIC is connected to the node by a 3 ft cable, then passes through to a Joey, probably about 20-25 feet of cable.

The HIC is at -25, the Joey that passes through it is at -19. Everthing else on the system reads in the -15 range at 293mbps.

If my numbers are close to normal then the HIC is going to read 5 to 10 db less naturally, and the tap as a splitter/filter probably easily introduces another 3-5db degradation if not more. Add all that up, and your probably not too far off where you should be.

Bottom line, if it is all working, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Some other data points from other HIC users could probably let us know for sure.

Thanks. I feel better about this now.

 

[Zaxcom]

How does one even go about finding these readings on their hoppers and joeys?

 

[3HaloODST]

YELLOW - BLUE - 3 - VIEW COUNTERS - PAGE DN until you see MoCA stats (near the bottom.)

 

[Zaxcom]

So my stats are as follows. Set up is HIC attached to Hopper #2 via a tap at the Hopper, all Hoppers(2) and Joeys(3) home run back to dual node.


Moca 1
293
-22db

Moca 2
293
-23


Moca 3
291kbs
-29db

Moca 4
293
-26

Moca 5
252
-18

 

[3HaloODST]

Looks like it's pretty normal for HIC to have ~250 range then.