Hey Gang,

Thought I would come to the forum and see if you had any tips for me. For almost 3 months I have been having intermittent cable and internet issues, this after 9 years with no problems. They have been out 6 times in 3 months, below are the details.

INTERNET ISSUE
Most of the time my internet is about 90/15, but for a few hours a day my speed drops to 90/0.15 or less. You read that right, 0.15 upload speed. This happens at random times with no consistency. I might get 1-2 days without issues, but it happens several days a week. I work from home and constantly send artwork and large files, this upload speed kills my outbound emails and file uploads. It also stops me from being able to use my Internet phone. It has nothing to do with peak hours as it is constantly a different time, like right now at almost 1am I have less than 1 MB upload. It is always an upload issue, never a download issue. I have hooked up my laptop directly to the modem and confirmed it is not a router specific issue.

CABLE ISSUE
The only issue is with On Demand. My wife and I binge watch old shows on HBO and STARZ and a few months ago we started getting code SM-8001 which tells us to check our cable connection. This started the same week I started seeing internet issues. We can get the on demand to work maybe 2-3 days a week. The rest of the cable and HD is fine, just the on demand. Sometimes we also get really bad pixelation with the on demand content.

WHAT WE HAVE DONE
- Restarted the cable modem and DVR 438 times in the last 3 months.
- replaced the DVR and I went and bought a new modem since I owned the old one, wish I didn't now as it was only 2 years old.
- replaced every splitter and connection in the house, multiple times actually. Splitter is apparently the go to answer for a tech.
- replaced the line from the house all the way to the tower, which is only about 40 yards from the house.
- replaced the wiring from the bottom tower to the top, they were out on a ladder yesterday replacing everything.


Where do we go from here? Is there anything else they can actually do? I would love to have some questions or suggestions to ask when I call tomorrow. If they come out and replace another splitter I am going to go postal on someone.

Thanks for the help!

If you know how to change the MTU settings on your router, try setting to 1200 and see what happens over some time.

The you can see if jumbo frames are supported by both your edge gear and the service.

Trying 1500, 4000, 9000, but you need to have GigLAN capability.

If the above is "gobbldygook" post back.

The issues that can affect service are many, but there are a few things you can do to eliminate things under your control, and that helps when talking to support folks.

Unfortunately, the support folks are typically "reading scripts" and not really cognizant of "how any of this works", like in the old days...

Thanks Sigmonkey for the reply! I am using an Apple Extreme so I don't think that is possible. However, I think I forgot to mention it above that I have hooked my laptop directly to the modem and confirmed it is not a router issue.

quote:

Is there anything else they can actually do?

At the risk of seeming sarcastic let me say, yes, there is. I've had to do this a couple of times over the years and it worked. Good luck.

https://www.tn.gov/tpuc/topic/...-complaint-resources

Contact Comcast. Push the issue. Ask for someone up the chain. It will be a PIA and take time but you should get some results. Might be weeks down the road.

I had a similar issue. The Internet would be super slow at random times and OnDemand wouldn't work.

I went through hours of shit with Comcast. Be warned they will lie to you. I started using the chat feature to communicate. This way I could do it while doing something else. Also, you can print a copy of the chat. I would print to a PDF file.

On more than one occasion I would copy part of an older chat when Comcast would try and pull some BS and paste it in the chat window. I offered to send them pages of our chats as reminders that we already tried the simple fixes. Every person always wanted to start with stuff I had done multiple times to fix the issue.

First I would have a tech come out. This is where they want to start anyway. Have him/her check strength coming into your house. Then check it at the box/router. See if there is any loss in the wires in your house.

Then when the house wiring is fine, tell them to fix their crap outside. My problem ended up being a node somewhere in the area. Took weeks of complaining and techs. Then another set of different techs. They did fix it but it was a real PIA. Talk to the techs that come out. They were often much more forth coming than anyone else.

Suggest you get a login over on DSLReports/BroadBandReports and visit the Comcast XFINITY forum. If they can't help you, visit the recently-revived Comcast Direct forum. (The guys in the former forum will usually let you know when it's time to escalate to the latter one.)

From the description of your problem I suspect you have something going awry with signal levels, signal-to-noise ratios, or a flaky bit of hardware upstream.

It's a little early to be registering a consumer complaint, IMO. It isn't as if Comcast is blowing you off. They just haven't identified the problem, yet.

And, yes: All most of the average residential service techs know how to do is replace cable and splitters. You need this escalated to somebody who can actually troubleshoot the problem. (This is one reason I pay the big bucks for a business class account.)

One of the things you may find from the users in the Comcast XFINITY forum is how to view your modem's information of signal levels, etc., which may go a long way to diagnosing your problem.

Is there a way to data log incoming signal strength over a long period of time?

Are you using your own modem or Comcast provided modem?

quote:

Originally posted by Tommydogg:
Is there a way to data log incoming signal strength over a long period of time?

Not as a rule, no. At least not of which I know. But he tends to be present to notice these issues. So, when they pop up: Quickly log on to the cable modem and check the values. Screen-shot them and save date-and-time-stamped. See if a pattern emerges.

Call Comcast support when this happens so they can get proper diagnostics.
You will get a third grader the first call so be patient until they escalate to someone with experience.
Sounds like a bad modem/router unit.
You could in fact just take to a Comcast center and have it replaced anytime you want.
Alternatively a bad/inconsistent cable connection some where ~ a tech will have to come out to find but before they send someone they have to duplicate the problem online.
So call WHEN you have the problem.
Good Luck.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
Call Comcast support when this happens so they can get proper diagnostics.

The problem with that is: He calls Comcast support. Gets residential 1st-line "tech," who mainly knows how to read from a script and has to check all the boxes, despite the fact that's been done X times already. By the time all the boxes are checked and the tech finally decides to escalate the problem to 2nd-tier support, the problem corrects itself again. Nothing to see here, move along.

Unless he's lucky.

I've had to deal with Comcast 1st-line residential tech support. At night the 1st line business class tech support switches to the residential people. At night they know this, so they're usually quick to just escalate to business class (2nd tier) support. But one time I got mistakenly sent to the residential queue during normal business hours. It was a nightmare and much confusion until they said something truly outrageous and I said "You do realize I'm a business class customer, right?" No, they had not. Difference was night-and-day.

I fully understand most people don't feel they can justify the cost of business class Internet service, but, man, I would hate having to deal with residential tech support on a regular basis. It would drive me up the wall.

Speaking of which: hunter62: If your livelihood depends upon your Internet connectivity, you really ought not be using residential class Internet services, IMO. That would be like lawn service crews using Ryobi lawn equipment, professional tree guys using Homelite chain saws or professional builders using Black & Decker power tools.

You need a Business Class account / Business Class service - since that's what you're doing...

The Residential side isn't really intended nor equipped to handle this sort of issue.

For most, regular, Residential customers such a thing would never matter much.

But in reality you need 24/7 uptime and 24/7 real support for your *Business* needs.

Maybe you can get it solved as is, maybe, but it'll take many more hoops / calls.

Thank you everyone for the replies! I had never thought about business class internet, something I can look into for sure. Would it just be better customer service? Obviously it would be the same wiring and the same node, but I might just find someone who can get it corrected?

As far as the other suggestions, I have been on the phone with them when the issue was happening. The problem is when a tech gets out here 1-2 days later, it is usually working. Out of 6 visits the On Demand wasnt working 3 times but the internet was only down once.

I own my modem and even though it was only two years, I bought a new one. This didnt solve the problem, neither did switching out the DVR.

I have not really had an issue with Comcast customer service, they have been nice and helpful and appear to be trying to fix the issue. The first two guys did the same thing, but after that they have been replacing all kinds of wiring (along with the splitters).

quote:

Originally posted by hunter62:
Thank you everyone for the replies! I had never thought about business class internet, something I can look into for sure. Would it just be better customer service?

In your case: Yes, mostly.

quote:

Originally posted by hunter62:
Obviously it would be the same wiring and the same node, but I might just find someone who can get it corrected?

We've been with Comcast Business High-Speed Internet since January 2010. The only outages I've had have all been elsewhere on the network and were always resolved in three hours or less.

Until recently. We started having all kinds of regular failures. They never lasted long, but they were annoying. I finally called. Tech did diagnostics from the network operations center. "It's almost certainly your modem. Do you realize it's way past EOL?" (I was.) Long story short: I renewed my contact, got my monthly charge reduced, got a new modem and the circuit's back to nearly 100% reliability. (I say "nearly" because there was a 2-hour outage in the wee hours of this morning. I'm guessing network maintenance, by the timing. It affected nothing because I have a fail-over network connection.)

(On the truck roll to replace the modem they found it hadn't been the modem, after all, but a pin-hole in the cable drop from a squirrel. Water got in, degrading the signals.)

You do get 24x7x52 tech support, and, from the stories I hear about residential service tech support: Much, much better tech support.

Btw: I wasn't charged a penny for the truck roll or the modem upgrade. They nicely listed it as a repair, rather than an upgrade

quote:

Not as a rule, no. At least not of which I know. But he tends to be present to notice these issues. So, when they pop up: Quickly log on to the cable modem and check the values. Screen-shot them and save date-and-time-stamped. See if a pattern emerges.

This is exactly what I would do, and actually have done, documentation.

The bottom line is are you getting what you signed up for? What you're paying for? Business account or not, I don't believe that utilities not delivering what they're taking your money for is excused simply because you're not a commercial account.

What are you paying for? What should you reasonably expect? You need a copy of the utility's Quality of Service standards that should be on file with the regulatory authorities. Within those standards, you need to closely compare your recent/current experience to the utility's Availability and MTTR guarantees. Also, if those guarantees are not being met, there are often well defined penalties that frame the financial adjustments for the screwed consumer.

Also bear in mind that COMCAST has been playing data cap games in Tennessee for the past few years. I've heard they're increasing the cap limit but haven't really followed it all that closely. Be sure you're not inadvertently snared by one of their stupid data cap traps. Also understand that they won't eagerly offer up that information or offer to look into it unless you bring it up.

Good luck. Having dealt with them, I fear you have a long fight ahead of you.

quote:

Originally posted by FRANKT:
The bottom line is are you getting what you signed up for? What you're paying for?

Have you ever read Comcast's, or any other ISP's, ToS?

Here ya go: COMCAST AGREEMENT FOR RESIDENTIAL SERVICES (Their caps, not mine.)

I defy you to find anything resembling a Service Level Agreement (SLA) in there. All residential-/consumer-grade Internet service is provided on a "best effort" basis. (Where, unsurprisingly, they define "best" and "effort.") You'll find the same from the thing that calls itself "at&t", from Spectrum, from WOW, etc.

Even my business-class service doesn't have an SLA. Not for $85/mo. I refer to such "business class" services as "pseudo-business class" or "business class lite." There are some perks, among them usually including better tech support, but it's the same network infrastructure all my residential-class residential neighbours have. (My main reason for having Business HSI is because I wanted a static IP address.)

You want an SLA? Be prepared to fork out closer to $1,000/month or more--for less bandwidth.

Do you go into a big box store, buy a Troy-Bilt or Poulan leaf blower, then expect Stihl performance and reliability? Because, if you do, I have sad news for you: Ain't gonna happen.

Same thing.

quote:

Originally posted by hunter62:
I own my modem and even though it was only two years, I bought a new one. This didnt solve the problem, neither did switching out the DVR.

I had almost exact same problem as you with 2 exceptions:

1) My downstream was the problematic one.
2) my ISP was Time Warner Cable.

Anyway, I had researched the issue quite a bit on various forums, swapped my own modems, replacing splitters and lines, nothing had helped.

Since all cable subscribers are on the same loop in a given neighborhood, a noisy cable modem somewhere on the loop can inject noise into the loop, causing instability for everyone else. The network can be configured such as it would reject a piece of noisy equipment or old bad lines connecting to the loop, TWC did not set this or set the bar really low to tolerate its own dirty old HFC networks.

Even though my own SB6141 modem had its firmware updated by TWC, it didn't help. What had helped was my threat to disconnect and they giving me a free modem. With their own modem, they had special logic in the firmware such that if it detects noise in one of the bonded channels, it would soft reboot or reset all channels quickly and select a new channel to be bonded with the rest and discard that dirty channel and be back on service rather quickly.

My own modem would get hung up on that particular dirty channel and since all bonded channels must run at the lowest denominator, your speed dramatically dropped, until you manually reset the modem or TWC reset the modem after many hours of dismal service.

At times, the dirty channel was cleaned up but my own modem still stuck running at very slow speed bonding to that channel. A modem reset found that the same channel was selected again, but now running with low noise to signal ratio.

Not much of help but that was my own experience. I have since disconnected TWC service and got AT&T fiber 1000 internet and since installation 4 months ago, it has not gone down even once.

It may depend on where you live, but here we have great tech service with Comcast. I think they're located in Everett Wa. and I've called them 3-4 times in the past and they logged on to my system and resolved my issues remotely. It's a big reason that I stick with them and pay the high monthly cost.

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by FRANKT:
The bottom line is are you getting what you signed up for? What you're paying for?

Have you ever read Comcast's, or any other ISP's, ToS?

Here ya go: COMCAST AGREEMENT FOR RESIDENTIAL SERVICES (Their caps, not mine.)

I defy you to find anything resembling a Service Level Agreement (SLA) in there. All residential-/consumer-grade Internet service is provided on a "best effort" basis. (Where, unsurprisingly, they define "best" and "effort.") You'll find the same from the thing that calls itself "at&t", from Spectrum, from WOW, etc.

Even my business-class service doesn't have an SLA. Not for $85/mo. I refer to such "business class" services as "pseudo-business class" or "business class lite." There are some perks, among them usually including better tech support, but it's the same network infrastructure all my residential-class residential neighbours have. (My main reason for having Business HSI is because I wanted a static IP address.)

You want an SLA? Be prepared to fork out closer to $1,000/month or more--for less bandwidth.

Do you go into a big box store, buy a Troy-Bilt or Poulan leaf blower, then expect Stihl performance and reliability? Because, if you do, I have sad news for you: Ain't gonna happen.

Same thing.

Holy cow! You off your meds?

You "defy" me to find SLA "in there"? Defy? How about tartar control toothpaste? I'm guessing I wouldn't find that "in ther" either. SLA is your acronym, not mine, and probably not used very often by COMCAST, either. And leaf blower arguments? That ridiculous analogy is definitely yours.

What COMCAST does say is,

quote:

Comcast provisions its customers' modems and engineers its network with the goal of enabling customers to enjoy the speeds to which they subscribe.

Now I'll ask it again, is the OP getting the service for which he's subscribed and for which he is being charged?

They [COMCAST] also state (yeah, it's actually "in there") that,

quote:

Comcast's Xfinity Internet services also deliver over 100 percent of their advertised downstream and upstream speeds during periods of time when Internet usage is generally lighter, known as "off peak" times, during sustained testing.

Again from their charts and filings, unless the OP is subscribed to their 25 Mbps service, the minimum upload speed a subscriber will experience is 5 Mbps during the "off peak" times of 11:00pm to 7:00pm local time (yes, that's the correctly-stated window). Their very worst upload speed is advertised to be .768 Mbps, more than 5 times faster than the .15 Mbps the OP is struggling with. I'm just spitballing here but I'd guess by the amount of effort the OP says COMCAST has expended to this point that they fully understand that their "best effort" ain't gettin' it and would be difficult to defend if the OP should decide to escalate his mess. It's common knowledge that motion is not necessarily the same as action and they can change out splitters until the cows come home and the underlying problem will remain unresolved.

COMCAST was also nice enough to describe their preferred method of conflict resolution (arbitration) as well as financial compensation rates for non-performance and the thresholds at which that compensation becomes warranted.

As far as the rest of your rantings above, well, I sincerely hope they made you feel better. I really do.