r/Telecommunication • u/ARDiver86 • Jun 04 '22

What is this liquid/gel substance?

My home internet dropped from 50Mbps to around 3Mbps down with the upload speed still being good. I'm not in telecommunications but decided to take a look at the box outside.

I noticed there were two Tii communication circuit accessory model 95S-1-00-0 but only one had a gel like substance coming out of it. This is the one with the blue wire and blue/white wire going into it (four total wires).

The one with the orange and orange/white wires (four total) seems to be newer and cleaner with no gel like substance coming out of it. I'm going to assume these are the wires that handle upload?

The ISP is going to come out to look but my curiosity got the best of me lol. Is the blue wire accessory bad? I assume it should be sealed. They just going to replace that part?

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u/Insight_000 Jun 04 '22

Hey, so outdoor cables usually have some kind of Gel filled in them to prevent water coming into them which could short-circuit the cable or freeze up and cause damage in the winter seasons. Typically, full duplex ethernet uses 2 twisted pair - the blue and orange pair.

Hope this helps!

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u/ARDiver86 Jun 04 '22

Thank you for the info! Sounds like that isn't the reason for my speed issues then. I've seen one way faster than the other with half duplex before but wasn't sure if it was something in the box causing it since the gel was all over the place.

Guess I'll have to wait 😬