Memory lane here .
My prior ISP installed a 2 way splitter.
One going to the tv's and one going to the cable modem.
However the one port was a passthu or 0 db and the port to the tv"s had like a 3db loss.
Problem was it kept failing and sometimes when they came out they did not have one to replace it..
What do you call that type of splitter?
I seem to recall it was not called a splitter.
It was not a powered device.
That's called a tap. The thru loss is as low as possible while the tap port can be had in many values. That one is kind of strange though, because when the tap port approaches 3db the thru loss winds up being 3db also. So that would really a 2-way splitter. Are you sure the port connected to the modem wasn't 10db with a 3db through? I've seen that done because the modem return signal is too hot.
You normally would use taps instead of splitters to equalize the levels from each one when they are spaced along a long line. Say you came off an amplifier with a level of +40dbm and you want to supply +10 to each house in a row of houses. Your first house would be supplied by a tap with a value of 30 (-30db on the tap port). Then the next maybe would be a 25, then 20 and so on. You calculate the tap value from the preceding tap thru level minus the cable attenuation to get you as close as possible to +10.
-Hal
