A comparison is made between the behavior of plasma in toroidal quadrupole and octopole configurations. The electron temperature is of the order 1 eV and the density109cm−3. In the octopole configuration, the fluctuations are only observed outside the stability limit predicted by theory. However, such a stability limit cannot be found in the quadrupole configuration because fluctuations are observed throughout the plasma. All the fluctuations have zero wavenumber along the field lines. Waves can be transmitted inside the quadrupole separatrix, and a dispersion relation is measured and compared with the dispersion relation for a drift wave.