Good guess.
Wrong reason. The unterminated piece of cable, either open or shorted,
creates a phenomenon called a standing wave. Depending on the length of the
offending cable and whether it is opened or shorted, the wave can raise the
dickens with the right signals. Terminating the cable in the correct
impedance doesn't let the standing wave be created.

Take a look at
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/GBSSC...es/u10l4b.html
It talks about standing waves in a string, but the concept is similar for
liquids and radio waves.

Charlie

"BruceR" wrote in message
...
The center conductor of the coax is acts a small broadcast antenna (as
well as a receiver) the outer shield serves to contain the signal on the
center conductor to prevent both radiated signal leakage and reception of
over-the-air signals. The exposed end of the cable or splitter connection
is breaks the "seal" on the system and allows for leakage and reception of
unwanted signals. The terminator acts like a lid on jar and maintains the
cables impedance.




" A caveat --

In a setup such as yours, each unused outlet should have a 75 ohm
terminator. Radio Shack has them. Unterminated cables can mess up
the signal to the active devices on the network.

SJF

That goes for any unused connections on the spliter(s) as well. "

Wow, for someone who is regulary considered by his friends as a more
or less maven, I now feel unbelievably ignorant ): I guess ignorance
is relative... I have never heard of 75 ohm terminators, nor of the
problems caused by unterminated cables and unused connections on
splitters. As I mentioned in another response - learn something new
every day.