Hi all,
I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this but I figured a story and reminder of my recent experience on router/modem positioning would be interesting for some.
Well, as some already know, I was busy trying to stabilise the ASUS DSL-AC68U and I had quite a deal of success until I noticed I was getting some instability which I thought was down to me messing around with a setting that made matters worse (such as the bit swapping parameters). Turns out it may have not been that, DLM intervened so I went back to the DrayTek Vigor 2860ac with an SNRM of 11 dB (deliberately) and I was still getting hundreds of error seconds at INP 4 on downstream. I noticed there was a significant amount of interference around D2, so I then wondered if my homeplug being near to the router might be causing it.
As such, I decided to take a drastic series of steps to eliminate 95% of the possibility that it was something indoors or in the room that's causing noise around the D2 band.
First step, I moved the router away from the homeplug and online UPS and placed it next to the master socket (rather than about 1.5 meters away). It was also next to the Gigaset DECT base and Ubiquiti Wifi until I moved it away from the online UPS.
Next step, I took a cardboard box and cut out most of the bottom side so the router wasn't sitting on cardboard. I used tin foil and place it around the outside edges of the cardboard box. After that I made a lot of holes in it for reasonable ventilation. I've basically made a Faraday cage around the top and sides.
Final step, using some ferrite cores and a ferrite ring I used some of them on the RJ11 cable and some of them on the router's power supply cable.
End result, from hundreds of CRC errors and error seconds on INP 4, SNRM 11 dB and plenty of fluctuation just a bit past tone 2000, I'm currently at 1 error second and 1 CRC error in 11 hours uptime. Previously I would most definitely have more than 1 by that amount of uptime.
Hope someone finds this story useful or interesting!
EDIT: P.S. Forgot to mention that D2 is also pretty stable at the moment.