Basic Internet Connectivity And Modem Help

[mclance86]

Also having a few issues with my comcast connectivity.

We had internet put in at our place a couple of weeks ago, primarily so that we can use it to do online gaming. It is the 16 mbps if I am correct (or whatever is closest to that number, 12 perhaps?) 

Sadly, the internet disrupts frequently, though for short periods of time -- long enough to disconnect, or not recognize a payment when billing something online, timing out on a web page, etc. Sometimes it only happens once an hour, often far more than that -- up to every few minutes so that trying to log into the game (TERA, an MMO) isn't even worth it. It's annoying for general internet use and for this as well -- considering we paid for it for the exact reason of gaming and cannot seem to do it.

We had a Comcast guy come out yesterday. He said some connections were loose, but while he was plugged into everything, he didnt show that any data packets were lost, and as far as we can tell, it isn't the modem recycling itself. While he was here, everything worked fine (of course) but the trouble started again later that night. We bought a wireless router last night so that we can connect both laptops, and while speed doesnt seem affected, the **** connectivity hates us.

The modem is a Cisco DPC3008.

Downstream Channels look like this: 

Power Level: Signal to Noise Ratio: Channel 1: 7.5 dBmV 40.9 dB Channel 2: 8.5 dBmV 41.5 dB Channel 3: 8.6 dBmV 41.4 dB Channel 4: 8.6 dBmV

41.1 dB

Upstream Channel is 42.5 dBmV

[Demias]

Yeah it seems to only happen at night for me also. Do you get random packet losses and latency spikes?

[Shad0wembrace]

Same thing with me.  Though lately it has also started in the afternoon/evening, then calms down, then starts back up around 9-10PM at night.

Last night I had about 15 disconnects from World of Warcraft from midnight to 5AM, and my MS goes from 150 to about 1,000, though I've had it go as high as 5,000 before.

[taintedbloop]

Same problems here, happens mostly at night. I live in south florida - what about you guys?

[Demias]

I live in Tennessee.

[BrainBox]

Had similar issues with our connection about a year ago.

When it worked, it worked. When it didn't Comcast was never here.

They even went so far as to run a brand-spanking new line to the house.

Solution: Finally got Comcast to check the line levels at the street level (as in, up and down the block), not the house level.

Turns out some of the levels were way out of wack, causing the sporadic outages.

Good luck to ya.

[Demias]

I just played some games and to be honest I don't think it's happening tonight, which means it's fixed in our area, or I'm just jynxing myself. Anyone else have some updates?

[taintedbloop]

It seemed ok recently especially during the day but yesterday during the late afternoon/night time it was lag spiking again. During battlefield 3 I would suddenly teleport backwards a few steps and it gets extremely annoying. Also while voice chatting, my voice will cut out for a second or two. A technician has already been out twice, my signal levels were good, and he replaced the splitter in the wall and some corroded connectors outside. 

Can anyone else thats having this problem confirm their location? I've heard a lot of east coast people with this issue..can we somehow escalate this and bring attention to this thread as well as the others complaining of the same thing? If we all show we are on the east coast perhaps it will indicate a problem? I heard that the connections on the east coast go through atlanta? Perhaps the problem might reside there? I dont know.

[dmtvaroha]

I've been getting the "backwards in time" thing too, where you warp backwards three steps, in every FPS I've played the last two or three days. Really frustrating. Line levels look ok (down 6.7; up 51). Packet loss wasn't terrible: 1-4%. Just seems to get jinky every few minutes.

A pathping to yahoo.com showed bigger numbers around Dallas, so I thought maybe it had something to do with storms.

[Demias]

Yeah, scratch that, it's still happening.

[LenniePaz]

taintedbloop, I live just outside of Philly and have been getting major lag spikes when playing MW3 on my 360, and my son is having the same problem on BF3 on his PC. A tech was out on Thursday and thankfully saw the lag. He ran all new wires from the pole all the way back to my house and that didn't solve the problem. He said he was going to have to come back and run some tests because his meter wasn't working for some reason. I have always had a perfect connection when gaming up until about a week ago, so something has obviously changed at my house.

[dunfigrddat]

I've been having this same problem for the last 4 weeks.  They said it was the modem, yah..ok...it's over a year old and might be messing up.  A technician replaced the modem and it was still happening.  Swapped out the "new" modem due to problems with it not working correctly with my equipment.  The third modem still losses connectivity.  Now everytime I call customer support they are doing some sort of maintenance every night.  Three nights in a row?  Get real.  I havn't been able to game or watch Netflix at nights due to this problem for 4 weeks.  If it is maintenance, I think they need to provide their maintenance schedule so we can at least prepair for it and schedule it for a time when the connections are used less.

[pleclerc77]

I live in Southern MD and have been having random time outs since the big storm we had that came through last weekend.  I have an EMTA (Aris TM722) which connects into a Dlink router (DIR-655) and then two Dlink switchs (DGS 2208).  I noticed two things, one I would have several random blocks of time outs at any given time and the second being spikes in ping times whenever I did anything, gaming, streaming shows, typing this post, etc.  The random blocks of time outs seems to have been my router.  I caught a few times reseting (power off real fast), maybe the storm got to it, unsure.  So I connected directly to the modem with my PC.  I still have the spikes in pings when gaming and normal surfing.  Instead of a block of time outs I will have one here and there, but I think it is too frequent.  I switched out to an old Linksys router I had laying around so the rest of the house has some type of connectivity.

I am averaging 9-10ms pings to my gateway (beyond my equipment, not my router).  When I fire up Diable3, BF3, WoW, stream something on Hulu or HBO2GO, I will get a ping of over 2000 here and there.  This was happening when I was connected directly to the emta and as I sit now connecting through the linksys.  I am by no means an expert on any of this, but at this point I am thinking it has to be something beyond inside my house. 

I did have an issue roughly 4 months ago that was similar to this but not as bad.  It took two tech trips out to resolve it.  There was apparently a bad line outside at the end of my driveway that went up to the pole.  Once it was replaced all was well afterward.  Maybe there is still a physical line issue?  Or does it sound like there is some type of backend Comcast issue.  It has become very frustrating....

[Canice]

We too are a family of MMO players.  For the past three months we have been having issues with Diablo 3 and now World of Warcraft.  Our latency jumps to 5k, and hovers around 500 home.  We have had tech's out here twice to "fix" the problem.  Initially they replaced fittings and wiring outside the house and on the second trip replaced our modem.  The second tech blamed Blizzard, stating it was their problem and not Comcast.  This "revelation" pretty much ended my playing of Diablo 3, but WoW did not have any issues.  Last week a huge storm went through and knocked out most of the cities power which resulted in no electricity for 5 days and obviously no internet.  Everything came back up here on Tuesday, but Comcast reported problems in our area that should be resolved; first Thursday, then Friday and now today.  This morning I called Comcast, as my home page reported no issues within our area.  While talking with the tech I did a speed test and it showed a consistent 36mgs with no spikes or interuptions but an upload speed of around 5mgs.  The tech stated my numbers were fine, my modem showed continued connectivity for the past 8 hours and to continue to wait it out until they finished with this area.  I get on WoW with a latency of 200 and climbing, speed tests wont even launch, Comcast is saying "don't call us unless its an emergency" and low and behold I get a call from Comcast stating the service in my area has been restored, I'm still having latency issues with my Home on WoW.  This whole situation has frustrated my whole family.  At this point I am looking into dropping Comcast and going with Fios for my internet service.  I think Comcast has an issue on their end that (1) they don't know how to fix, or (2) they don't want to fix.

[Brooklyn525]

I am still having problems when I try and play WoW and D3. We did lose power with the big storm a week and a half ago and just got power back last Tuesday, and internet back. I was not having problems at first, but they have progressively been getting worse, to the point, I can't even play games on facebook without lagging out. THIS IS RIDICULOUS.

[bemerick]

can't play D3 in Chicago due to latency spikes.  It'll be green (~95ms) and then drop to red (~2500ms) and then back up.  It's impossible.  No idea what's going on, been happening since Sunday.

[dmtvaroha]

Still lag spikes. Pingtest & speedtest come back fine, but actually trying to play a game is an exercise in frustration. Tribes Ascend says they're trying to locate network problems -- I've seen timeouts in the Atlanta area on a tracert.

I tried BF3 today with little success.  Laggy FPS play makes for a terrible time.

I used to have FiOS through another company, and the Fiber Optic connection was awesome, but the customer service was awful -- I mean, so bad that I would have to be nearly without internet before considering them again. And their stated goal of no more TV service didn't sit well with me either.

So for now I'm sticking with Comcast -- hopefully the connections will get better soon.

[bemerick]

Comcast came out to my place in north Chicago on Saturday.  When he walked in the door he said they knew there were line issues and had received many complaints in the area but that he had to check my signal inside anyway.  He ended up replacing some connectors and a splitter, which gave me a "less bad" upload power issue, but still relatively high.  Either way, speedtest comes back OK and looks alright, but playing a game of Diablo III results in green ping, then red, then yellow, red, green, red, yellow - all the while enemies are disappearing and reappearing on my screen and I'm geting sent back 2-3 seconds randomly.  It's ridiculous.  This needs to get fixed soon, I'm paying for service and I paid for Diablo and I can't use either one.

[dmtvaroha]

Updating my issue in Fort Wayne, IN.  I saw a Comcast truck in the neighborhood a few days ago, and the internet connection has been flawless since. We did have a severe storm with trees down a couple of weeks ago, and I suspect they're still getting a lot of the lines cleaned up.

Hoping that my good news spreads and everyone that's still having trouble can get some similar news soon.

[grizmul]

Add me to the list in alexandria, va.  Getting intermittent dropped packets and pings that go from a nice 35ms to Comcast's IP, first one in the chain, to 3000-5000ms pings which cause a huge pause in things like Diablo.  I now just keep a ping window up to watch and Can't blame anything game wise as I see it on multiple computers and the game off. Rep on the phone said they won't elevate the issue as "normal" users won't notice an intermittent slow ping or dropped packet here and there. 

[pleclerc77]

Update to my status:  I have been at my current job for six years now, before then I worked for Comcast.  I was there a total of 6 years.  So everytime I have a weird unexplainable issue, I normally shoot my friends that still work there a text.  I told them about this last incident and they actually put in a work order to investigate the node I was on, there were other anomalies that they saw.  They told me that the ticket would most likely be closed out as "no trouble found" because I guess if there was an issue why was it not resolved sooner and whos fault was it. 

Sure enough the next day I was called and asked how my connection was because ti was closed out as "no trouble found".  The connection was perfect, no issues, no lag spikes, etc.  So if you know somebody that knows somebody that knows somebody that works in the backend of Comcast, make that connection! 

I first started out on phone support for Comcast some 12 years ago, when HSI was first introduced.  Back then when someone called in you could spend the needed time with them on the phone troubleshooting the connection.  Try not to hate on the phone reps now when you call in, they can only do so much and unfortunately are restricted by the tools they have in front of them and the time the length of time they are alotted to be on the phone with you. 

Definately make sure you do as much troubleshooting on your end as possible before calling in or before a tech comes out.  If you have a network take that our of the equation.  Several times I thought to myself, it can not be my equipment, nothing has changed.  One of the main issues I had was my equipment, which has been removed and replaced since the issue began.  When you are connected directly to the modem, run a continous ping to your gateway.  Pull up a command prompt, type ipconfig.  You should see an IP fo the gateway.  Once you have that number type ping xx.xx.xx.xx (xx being the numbers given) followed by a space and then -t  This will ping that IP until you close the window.  You can also look up a program called ping plotter, which has a 30 day free trial.  The gateway is your first hop, if there are any time outs or huge lag spikes there, then I would think there is a issue outside of the house.  Either node, line, etc. 

As I stated before I am no expert when it comes to this, just trying to help out the best I can

[EG]

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pleclerc77 wrote:

When you are connected directly to the modem, run a continous ping to your gateway.  Pull up a command prompt, type ipconfig.  You should see an IP fo the gateway.  Once you have that number type ping xx.xx.xx.xx (xx being the numbers given) followed by a space and then -t  This will ping that IP until you close the window.  You can also look up a program called ping plotter, which has a 30 day free trial.  The gateway is your first hop, if there are any time outs or huge lag spikes there, then I would think there is a issue outside of the house.  Either node, line, etc. 

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FWIW, there is unfortunately one caveat with that these days. Comcast claims to perform ICMP based ping packet rate limiting / de-prioritization on these interfaces so the effectiveness of using ping as a troubleshooting tool is compromised and the results are unreliable..

[pleclerc77]

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EG wrote:

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pleclerc77 wrote:

When you are connected directly to the modem, run a continous ping to your gateway.  Pull up a command prompt, type ipconfig.  You should see an IP fo the gateway.  Once you have that number type ping xx.xx.xx.xx (xx being the numbers given) followed by a space and then -t  This will ping that IP until you close the window.  You can also look up a program called ping plotter, which has a 30 day free trial.  The gateway is your first hop, if there are any time outs or huge lag spikes there, then I would think there is a issue outside of the house.  Either node, line, etc. 

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FWIW, there is unfortunately one caveat with that these days. Comcast claims to perform ICMP based ping packet rate limiting / de-prioritization on these interfaces so the effectiveness of using ping as a troubleshooting tool is compromised and the results are unreliable..

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Thanks I never knew that.  Whether it be a coincidence or just dumb luck, it seemed to help me in this case...

[homercles82]

Add another one to the list.

MAJOR drops in connection, seemingly only at night. When it is working properly I am getting 24-35 Mbps via speedtest.net. When I have issues it drops down to as low as 2.5Mbps DOWNLOAD speed.

It makes gaming impossible. I had less issues on a 1.5Mbps DSL line from verizon!

I have run speed tests multiple times, ran every legit virus, malware, spyware scanner I know. I ran a test on dslreports and it showed a 35% packet loss rate. I had a Comcast man out last week who replaced a connector outside the house. Of course it was during the day when the issue seemingly disappears so the speed test he ran showed 25Mbps. When I called Comcast initially they had me soft and hard reset the modem (Arris TG862), they sent signals as well. They claimed no issues but darnit I have them.

It is mainly happening at night, mostly after 6 PM from what I can tell. I am located in Central VA.

It drops so badly that the Comcast Easy Solve program keeps popping up saying I have no connection. It makes gaming impossible and makes me yearn for the FiOS that is being run in my neighborhood now.

[EG]

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pleclerc77 wrote:     

EG wrote:     

Thanks I never knew that.  Whether it be a coincidence or just dumb luck, it seemed to help me in this case...

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I'm not saying that it is completely worthless. Some patterns over a longer period of time may be able to be established using this method.

[homercles82]

This is a screen shot of the typical speed I am getting for over a week now.

http://i.imgur.com/XTDTt.png

I was getting 25Mbps+ until a week ago.

Very frustrated.

[EG]

Perhaps some of these are local system  capacity / congestion issues with which they historically seem to be in denial about ????

[homercles82]

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EG wrote:

Perhaps some of these are *last mile* capacity / congestion issues with which they historically seem to be in denial about ????

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That screenshot I linked isn't the worst of it. I ran a speed test last night and got back 1.25Mbps DOWNLOAD SPEED! ??????????????????

What I find confusing is that it has worked PERFECTLY until about a week ago. I raved about Comcast and now that I, and many others, have an issue that apparently is NOT caused by any hardware in our homes we get nothing out of them. Nothing has changed on my laptop. NOTHING. I come home from vacation and BAM the freaking internet is worthless. I have checked everything on my end. I have tried wired and wirelessly with the same horrible results.

If Comcast is having an issue with their systems because of the Derecho storm, or other storms recently, then say so! I am willing to bet most people would be sympathetic to it and appreciate a "We are working as fast as possible to fix it" rather than being ignored.

[Incineratus]

Oh man same problem here while Playing LoL for the past two days my internet spikes from 80 ms to 500ms it blows. Buddies using the U-verse have never lagged once so I believe its time to switch to the other side

[ggeinec]

Same here, in central MD. My story sounds very similar to the others in this thread. I'm hoping it's just fallout from the storm a couple of weeks ago and all will be fine soon. But the comments about it happening more in the evenings makes me wonder if the Netflix streaming effect is beginning to kick in . . .

[tlowd72]

I live in north central illinolis and have had the same issue ever since i moved out to where i live now(a little over a year). i never had this issue when i lived closer to the center of town, and it happens about 1-2 times a week (happening right now) and can last for hours. and when comcast comes out to look at it, what d'ya know..it works fine and they can't find anything wrong....go figure. It's to the point now that i'm about done with comcast internet.

[Anon327249]

I live in PA and started having the same lag or warp around July 10th or 11th..

can't play Battlefield due to the warp factor..get tired of running up the same stairs 4 times..

[ericdm55]

I am a Battlefield 2 user with connection lost disconnects. "Check your connection message is rude. The error is in England at the EA link network I'm sure, since its a great game, they have canceled support. Everyone here may have general modem problems, but I have had 3 ISP's and 3 modems in 2 years. its an older game, maybe there are security changes not patched. I would like a Comcast Engineer/ player to watch the patches lost to England. see if there is a lingering firewall or corupt folder at EA.com. Usually my comcast modem is sweet with the best speed Iv'e seen here in Atlanta.