funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
 ·Verizon Online DSL
 ·Skype
| reply to mooosenix
Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee?
said by mooosenix  :Mine is not rebooting. The modem "config" page is still accessable, and all the lights are still on with the activity light happily blinking away.... ...no new logs on the modem config page Agreed, your modem is not rebooting.
said by mooosenix :Sometimes the connection will restore itself after ~30 seconds or so by itself without a reboot. The next time this happens, do not manually restart the modem. Instead, check your system logs or router's logs for a message indicating some kind of a DHCP event. (Restarting the modem would force such an event, which is why I'd like you to avoid it.)
said by mooosenix :Just for kicks, I'll probably have my modem swapped out in hope that's the problem, but I doubt it. Despite the lack of log entries, the modem is still in play as a possible cause for your issue. I would think that if a modem was requiring a signal, that too would be logged. Swapping it would be a quick way to rule in or rule out a major player in making a successful connection.
My gut tells me it's your computer or your router, and not your modem and not ISP throttling.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
"We don't throttle any traffic," -Charlie Douglas, Comcast spokesman, on this report. |
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funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC | reply to MacLeech
What is CPD? |
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MacLeech
The one and only
Premium
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
4 edits | said by funchords :What is CPD? CPD = common path distortion. It's caused when forward signals are "reflected" back onto the return path. It's more common on the coax distribution system where the forward signals are high (20 dBmV or higher) and the return attenuation is low.
It causes the return noise floor to jump up quite a bit (some times more than 20 dB). It kills the upstream SNR and causes "codeword" errors on the upstream. It usually affects every modem on the upstream CMTS port, but can be VERY intermittent and difficult to track down because it often disappears for hours or days due to being disturbed during the troubleshooting process.
If CPD is strong enough, it'll knock modems offline, if it's not it could just slow things down and cause "hiccups" occasionally because of the upstream errors.
It has a lot of possible causes: corrosion of distribution equipment, loose connectors, bad termination, faulty amplifiers, kinked cable, customer wiring issues, etc.... I've seen alot of it first hand.
This may interest you:
»cable.doit.wisc.edu/cpd/cpd2.v2.html
[edit]Posted better link. |
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alexfalkenberg
@rr.com
| reply to funchords
I appreciate the feedback, wherever you might post it.
AC: I've actually run a cord from the next-door neighbor's place since I've seen it mentioned that it could be that (but honestly, TW themselves have blamed sunspots, overpowered ham radio, CB radio from semi traffic nearby, every network and phone and cable-using device ever made...and on and on, no lie). Anyway, it made no difference.
The cable modem is currently connected just inside my foundation where the line enters the house (albeit currently with a splitter (also replaced by them) so we can watch TV). The problem still occurs with just the CM connected, sans splitter, btw. Literally every cable and connector from the cable modem's current location 3 feet from my basement wall, all the way back to the pole behind our house, has been replaced by TW since this started. None of that has fixed anything.
As for interference, wouldn't that be an ongoing problem anyway? We've been in a pretty steady weather pattern lately, so no real changes as far as furnace use or anything else. Heat is a gas furnace on opposite side of the house from the coax and cat6 runs. As for cables running near anything electrical, they're where they've always been for the last three years we've lived here (with the exception of a recent move of the CM to the basement to test the house-wiring-of-some-sort-is-mucking-things-up theory), so the lack of any changes inside our house would seem to rule out it being a problem inside our house, imo...right? We've not added any new electronics or phones or anything of the sort since this started again.
I'm really at a loss about how to even explain this to anyone at TW, when we can even GET anyone to talk to us about it. NO one I've talked to seems to really 'get' that it could be a problem anywhere but inside my house. The last tech they sent out did the smallest/fastest local speedtest possible, which runs quite quickly...and that passed, so he called everything OK. Before he left, I hopped online right after that, and it's same-as-it-ever-was. He shrugged, said he didn't know, and to let them know if it continued!
I've lost all patience for service calls involving my home interior at this point, because they've all proven to be complete wastes of time. I've literally tried everything I know to try/test, eliminating other equipment, etc.
So clearly there's something wacky _somewhere_, but it seems like a ghost in their machine "out there" and I would love to be able to direct them to some specific part or location or something--anything--to get them to take a look. It seems like they're monkeying around with something, and it's wreaking havoc on us here.
What does it take to get TW to take this seriously, and do some good testing? I'd think they could bring their own cable modem, sit out at the pole 100 feet behind my house, try to download something--anything--and watch the CM reboot... Keep tracing it backwards from our pole, until it goes away. With only one guy (me) noticing and complaining, though, they apparently don't feel particularly pressured to take the time and spend the money investigating this. Meanwhile, I'm out $55/month for Roadrunner service I might as well not even have for as much as I can rely on it.
As for CM levels, they are always within the limits I've seem mentioned around online. Nothing weird there. Very rarely I'll see some "No FEC lock" errors in the log, but for the most part, nothing weird in the logs or admin UI at all except for the constant spontaneous rebooting I see listed.
The most frustrating part of this whole thing seems like it's being blown off and not taken seriously by TW. Literally zero response to long letters, long explanations to techs, etc. Promises of CM monitoring with eventual callbacks...none of which ever happen, etc. But they're always right on top of the bill! *sigh*
We're moving 50 miles or so north eventually (month or two from now), but not out of the TW-Milw. service area... so if it's a bad line or connection in a neighborhood junction box or something, maybe the problem won't follow us and we'll eventually be fine. Who knows. The lack of comparable options is quite frustrating. I'll still worry for our current neighbors and the next family that lives in this house.
Thanks again.
-alex
»alexfalkenberg.com |
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funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
·Verizon Online DSL
·Skype
| Even before your reply, you very well established that customer service problem you are having. My message to you was mainly to point out that 99% of the causes of restarting modems fall on the TWC side.
The 4-5 things I mentioned weren't to put the onus on you at all. Instead, it was more of a Hail-Mary shot that maybe, just maybe here's a not-so-obvious item that both you and TWC overlooked.
You might want to lookup Mona Shaw for help with TWC. She's the Comcast Hammer Lady. It sounds like you need her more than we do.
In short: I don't think your technical problem at that address will get fixed until someone at TWC steps up and assumes ownership of it -- someone who is willing to keep your account at the top of their "to do" list and who sticks to it trying make some progress toward finding and fixing the problem every day. The bigger the company, the more difficult those people are to find.
The lack of any changes inside your house help to rule out, but do not completely rule out problems that are exacerbated by heat or season (my signals used to go through the roof whenever it hit 100F, yet for a few weeks I could only get techs to my house on cooler days -- and they, naturally, couldn't see the problem). Likewise, heaters and cooling fans tend to run on a seasonal basis. These things -- if they're happening at all -- are difficult to detect.
That's part of the frustration -- you've got to be willing to keep sticking this back on TWC even though you can't ever by 100% sure it's not something on your end. But that's one of the reasons you pay half-a-C-note for Cable Internet. It's an advanced technology and they're supposed to have the knowledge and the tools to find and fix these problems.
So far, they have failed you miserably.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
"We don't throttle any traffic," -Charlie Douglas, Comcast spokesman, on this report. |
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alexfalkenberg
@rr.com
| funchords: I wasn't trying to be defensive about it; sorry if it came across that way. I do understand what you're saying, and I agree with it.
I'm left wondering what productive steps I can take to get them to UNfail me now. I don't know anyone at TW-Milwaukee and all attempts thus far to contact "the right people" (as provided to me by CS reps both in the local offices and over the phone) have always ended in no response at all.
So I'm all for sticking to my guns until it's resolved, but I'm totally unable to get any traction with them. All I get is ignored; the only thing they're fairly quick about is sending automated letters threatening me with nonpayment when I try to withhold money. Go figure, right?
I suspect contacting a local television station's "consumer done wrong" person might be all I've got left at this point...short of just riding it out, cutting my losses, and praying the situation doesn't exist at our new address once we've moved. I don't necessarily want that kind of attention--for either party--but desperate times...
-alex
»alexfalkenberg.com |
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MacLeech
The one and only
Premium
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
| Please post the signal levels, when the connection is good and when it's bad.
Also if you can, try PingPlotter and run a trace to a known good site like 209.244.0.3
That PingPlotter program will show packetloss over time at each hop in a trace route. It logs the results and can run for hours, days, weeks, or forever.
With concrete info like signal levels and packetloss graphed out specifically showing an issue and where things start to fail, it gets very difficult for the techs and local management to ignore it if they get it. |
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funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
·Verizon Online DSL
·Skype
| reply to alexfalkenberg
No, you came across fine. I just wanted to reassure you, but the 99% line I used came across incorrectly.
I do agree with you that the unusual -- like a news "Consumer Reporter" -- might be the next step. Other phones to ring --
1. President/CEO
2. Member of the Board of Directors
3. Consumerist
4. BBB
You're a blogger, so you don't mind a little attention. Get attention to your issue by buying a week or two on a billboard and use that space to complain, get the billboard covered on the local news (for free), and do some AM radio interviews. In all cases, get the word out that you'll be tracking progress on your blog. It's a guerrilla-marketing way to get someone from TWC to pay attention.
When do you get that press, then write in to news@dslreports.com, post vidoes of the stories on video sites, etc. etc..
Basically, become not just a squeaky wheel, but a royal (but righteous) PITA.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
"We don't throttle any traffic," -Charlie Douglas, Comcast spokesman, on this report. |
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thezfunk13
@rr.com
| reply to sup191
I have been having huge problems as well. I have turbo and the past two weeks have seen time outs just generally surfing the web. I ping the new DNS servers and I am running 150ms+ which is pretty slow. Some ping requests time out. Even google is seeing 200+ sometimes. When I try a independant DNS server they get even higher. Looks like I have a long, hatefilled, frustrating phone call with tech support ahead of me.
BTW...my TF2 has been lagging real bad too...even though on the server my ping is supposedly 50 or so. |
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thezfunk13
@rr.com
 from:
funchords
| I think I might have solved my problem in regard to lag. I spent literally my entire Monday night testing all of my hardware just to double check and found that my LAN interface on my pfsense box seems to be kicking the bucket. What was suppose to be a simple swap and reloading of rules turned into a complete rebuild. Everything is back up and running and I am getting advertised speeds and low latency again. Torrents are an unknown as I haven't tried that yet. |
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Andypro
join:2007-05-11
Milwaukee, WI
| reply to sup191
I'll go ahead and hop on this thread too.
I live in Milwaukee and am having largely the same issue. My modem doesn't reboot randomly, but it does reboot during moderate downloading. It's anywhere between 1 to 20 minutes, but when I download a file the modem will reboot every time. If I don't download anything large then it stays up just fine. Some youtube videos can even cause the reboot. Not good.
I'm going to get a tech out here and I'll let you know if he gives me any insight into the problem. I'd like to propose that there has been so much snow this year that there could be moisture problems with the cable outside at any of the connection points. I also notice that the box I'm plugged into, which is in my neighbor's back yard, looks to have been tampered with as the cable is sort of strewn about and the plastic cover is just sitting on top without being snapped in. |
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Dingleberry
join:2001-04-29
532xx
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to sup191
Hi,
I'm jumping back in with a suggestion that I don't think I've yet posted in this thread, but think I may have posted in another...
One other thing people may try when they're having problems is to vary the size of the icmp/ping pkts... I was having a VERY odd problem last fall that TWC would not acknowledge even existed, but I was able to show that something outside of my house was indeed wrong when I started twiddling with the ping sizes...
I wrote a little script that would some number of times (if you're bored, do something like 100 pings) ping an address with packets of increasing size (increasing by 50 bytes) up to 1500; this gave data that showed a correlation between packet size and probability of failure when pinging the default router supplied by dhcp server. I could ping the modem's interface all day with no problems. When I tried pinging the default route, the probability of failure increased with packet size. The probability of failure stayed the same trying to ping the default route, anything on TWC's network, or anything else on the internet.
My problem turned out to be that someone had supposedly attached some bad equipment to the node I was on; but it would occur sporadically? |
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Andypro
join:2007-05-11
Milwaukee, WI
| reply to Andypro
I've got a tech coming out between 3-5pm on Friday. I'm gathering data points so I can make a pretty graph for him. I want to make sure I have something to show him and he doesn't think I'm just another clueless intrawebz user.
Plugged straight into my SB4200 modem with my laptop after a fresh reboot, I tested a 1GB file download 3 times so far and the modem crashed/rebooted in (mm:ss): 04:53, 02:52, and 19:45. I think I'll try the increasingly-large pings that another poster suggested and see what sort of data that gives me as well. |
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MacLeech
The one and only
Premium
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
1 edit | SB4200s have had issues with random crashing depending on the data flow through them.
See this:
»Poll !!!!!! Who has a SB4200 modem ???
Maybe you just need a new modem. |
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Andypro
join:2007-05-11
Milwaukee, WI | Actually this *is* the new modem. I had an old SB4100 and I figured it was a modem problem as well, but unfortunately, it's not. I traded my old one in for this one a few days ago. |
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MacLeech
The one and only
Premium
join:2001-07-14
SoCal | That 4200 is still close to 5 years old... Try a 51xx series. |
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iamadam
@rr.com
| reply to Andypro
I have been noticing slowdowns as well as of late. I pay for the 15/1 service and my speed tests barely peak at 5. I was using firefox for web browsing sites such as MySpace and Facebook would just not load. I tried using IE and same dilemma for the most part. I have reset my modem and all of that. I play COD4 online on PS3 though and I have no perfomance issues whatsoever. I have tried calling, but never had enough patience to wait on hold for 10 hours. *I also used to be a tech/installer for TWC and trust me when I say they don't know what's going on, they just come to wire the house or switch equipment.* it takes about 30 seconds just to preview this post. |
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Andypro
join:2007-05-11
Milwaukee, WI
| reply to MacLeech
I could go out and buy a 51xx modem if I thought that would solve the problem. Since I'm having the identical problem across two different modems, though, I don't think I'll bother. I have a sneaking suspicion that it has to do with the node and all the snow that's had several months to find cracks in the cables to seep into and cause problems. If the tech doesn't know what the issue is (and he probably won't,) then I'll insist that a new cable is laid and connectors resealed. |
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Andypro
join:2007-05-11
Milwaukee, WI
| Well, I should have listened to MacLeech  The tech came out today and said he'd been replacing old Motorola modems throughout the city because they just don't work well with the Turbo tier here. I have some other brand which I can't remember right now, and I've been slamming it ever since I got it with downloading and it hasn't hiccuped once. Yay!
If you have an SB4x00 and are having problems, definitely insist on a new modem. My speeds are better now, too. |
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MacLeech
The one and only
Premium
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
| said by Andypro :Well, I should have listened to MacLeech The tech came out today and said he'd been replacing old Motorola modems throughout the city because they just don't work well with the Turbo tier here. I have some other brand which I can't remember right now, and I've been slamming it ever since I got it with downloading and it hasn't hiccuped once. Yay! If you have an SB4x00 and are having problems, definitely insist on a new modem. My speeds are better now, too. Good to hear your modem reset issue was fixed. |
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