Topic 'Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)' in forum 'W.O.W.' - dslreports.com

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 02:17:52 EDT

deisdestiny posted : So we have been getting the intermittent disconnects also here in Columbus. It happens about 3 to 5 times a day. The modem does not drop but we lose all external connectivity for between 10 and 30 seconds.

We have had two techs and a contractor out in the past two weeks trying to fix the problem. The first one found that the node nearby was putting to much power through the lines and they had to have the maintenance team come out and adjust things at the box near my house. The second tech came out and replaced some wires, connectors, and cleaned up the coax cabling in general. Our signal levels are nearly at the point of perfection, in fact every single tech has commented that the signal quality is the best they have ever seen.

The contractor for WOW that came out, replaced our old ARRIS modem with the new Ultra TV setup. I had hopes that our cable modem would be the culprit. But, that day on the Ultra system, we still experience the same issue and it continues.

In March 2012 when WOW was installed at this address, they had to drop a new line from the box nearby to our house. For approximately 6 months the system ran flawlessly with no disconnects. The disconnects started approximately 3 months ago.

We have turned off and swapped devices on our internal network to try and eliminate the possibility of it being something on our home LAN, but to no avail.

It is as though something outside/beyond our cable modem link is dropping connects for short amounts of time. I am really at my wits end with this issue. I have been with WOW for many years and also a very happy customer, but this is effecting us in some very bad ways. I work from home and these disconnects can cause some serious issues. I am at a loss really as to what to do anymore, tomorrow I will just be calling Customer Support once again and probably having another tech come take a look at things. Given the random nature of the disconnects, it is simply not feasible for them to hang around and wait for it to happen.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 18:45:26 EDT

td854 posted : Yeah we have a really long coax cable that has to go around the entire house which has been replaced once by you guys, and like 3 times when we had insight. At one point the cable was apparently crimped at almost a 90 degree angle at the box, guy said he fixed that. Last time he was here he replaced all the basement wiring because the original wiring was stapled to the beams. I think the only thing that hasn't been replaced is the actual in-wall wiring which we were told you guys would replace if we had whatever the service is that we're paying an extra amount per-month for. We have a lot of pixelation on certain ranges of channels but throughout all these changes, that never got fixed. I'll call them out and see what they'll do. Maybe a splitter went bad or something happened with the outdoor cable in the last 2 months.

Thanks Dan for checking that out on your end, I really appreciate what you've done so far. The smoke ping I did a while ago in this thread also pointed out pretty much the same results that you're showing, now it's time to get it fixed.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 14:28:55 EDT

WOW_Dan posted : I did a test of 1000 pings to your modem, and your neighbor's modem at 5977 on your street. The results seem to point to a problem in your home causing issues, and I would think much larger issues than what you're actually experiencing. Pinging your modem (on its private IP address) I get about 8% packet loss. When I ping said neighbor with 1000 pings on their modem, I get 0% packet loss. I will post the results below. This data points to the RF/coax portion of your home wiring being the cause of the problem. I won't be able to tell you much more than that from here. I would suggest scheduling a technician to come out again and look through and replace as much as possible to see if they can figure out what's causing this.

said by Your Modem :

col15-cmts1# ping 10.210.xxx.xxx repeat-count 1000
Sending IP ping to: 10.210.xxx.xxx
ping (10.210.xxx.xxx): 100 data bytes
!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!.!
1000 packets transmitted, 923 packets received

said by Neighbor's Modem :

col15-cmts1# ping 10.210.xxx.xxx repeat-count 1000
Sending IP ping to: 10.210.xxx.xxx
ping (10.210.xxx.xxx): 100 data bytes
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1000 packets transmitted, 1000 packets received

--
Dan Della Terza
WOW! Internet, Cable & Phone
CMTS Operations Engineer

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 04:52:17 EDT

td854 posted : Already lost connection, 4:48 am for roughly 45 seconds.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 04:19:40 EDT

td854 posted : IP and default gateway changed. I'll see what happens over the next few days.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 11:24:35 EDT

WOW_Dan posted : Can you release and renew your public IP address? You should get a different one. See if that makes any difference.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 05:37:32 EDT

adam1991 posted : If I recall doing the math, anyone who has two cable boxes (maybe DVRs) saves money by going with Ultra.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 05:10:12 EDT

td854 posted :

said by adam1991 :
I can say, you'll get *much* more cooperation if you go and get a WOW modem for the duration while they help fix this. It's not a willingness issue, it's a tools issue.

Honestly the only thing stopping me from getting another WOW modem (already using one of theirs) is that I'm the first user of my current one. As an example; I don't know what they do with their shoddy DVR boxes but we went through 4 or 5 of them before we got one that didn't corrupt half the stuff we recorded, we've been told they're "refurbished" but it feels like they just receive them, plug them in and if they turn on they put them back out. I had this exact same thing happen with modems prior to the 30 and 50 plans being released, I started with an "advanced" modem which reset all the time, they brought me down to a basic modem that reset all the time, they replaced it AGAIN and it reset all the time then they finally replaced it yet another time and I finally got one that wasn't junk. This all happened in the span of a month, I really don't wanna do that again... but if they can't find any problems then I'll have to take the risk I guess.

BTW our DVR box still sucks but we gave up after replacement #3 or 4, we get pixelation and/or corruption all the damn time and our signals are fine (been checked by a tech repeatedly.) We would just go to Ultra TV to solve the problem but we don't need another bill hike just to solve a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 06:53:40 EDT

adam1991 posted : oh, man, this brings back memories of a similar problem I had 15 years ago with TW.

Only it wasn't with TW. It was with AT&T. A router of theirs in Chicago was broken.

Try explaining *that* to anyone in the food chain 15 years ago. Took me two weeks to cajole people throughout the chain to help out.

Then the same thing happened after I switched to WOW, and I had to reinvent the wheel there. Took awhile.

Good luck.

I can say, you'll get *much* more cooperation if you go and get a WOW modem for the duration while they help fix this. It's not a willingness issue, it's a tools issue.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 01:28:08 EDT

td854 posted : Ok well after 2 days of no disconnects it's back again, many times today.

The first hop (aside from router and/or modem) I go through is 10.35.25.50
The second hop is 10.35.11.29

After these two, it peers to a different network for each one of my connections, so it either is indeed my modem somehow or it's one of these two hops. The two people that connect to me go through the same four hops after those two, however one user does not disconnect when everything else does. The third connection that I connect to goes through a completely different route after those two.

First, second, and last hops are not shown deliberately.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 14:09:30 EDT

td854 posted : Not sure what WOW did but the problem seems to be solved, I haven't disconnected in 2 days so I'm going to go ahead and assume they fixed it. I literally did nothing. No calls, same modem, same router, no reset config, nothing. If I run into any other problems I'll contact you Dan.

Just to add one other thing, when I was having the connection issues I was going to run a trace route but didn't really think about it. I ran a few yesterday though and noticed that the in and out of state connections are routing through the same device on WOW's network (10.35.11.29) so either the route changed (assumption) or that device was having issues and was replaced (assumption.) All hops after that device are different for the three primary things I am connected to/from.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 23:54:26 EDT

WOW_Dan posted : I have seen modems cause issues I could never explain if I tried. That was merely why I suggested it. My next step would then be to provide traceroutes to the internet that might show where the issue might be occurring. If we could narrow it down to a hop, maybe we could try and get a hold of that circuit provider and see if they can check that circuit for issues. If it's not a circuit directly connecting to us though, it might be difficult to get them to test it. If you could send me your phone number, account number, and full name on the account, I might have one other idea I can try as well.
--
Dan Della Terza
WOW! Internet, Cable & Phone
CMTS Operations Engineer

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 19:08:43 EDT

td854 posted : I understand you're trying to help, but from a technical standpoint how would an issue with the modem hardware produce the phenomenon associated with my previous statement; summarized: connections to objects in my state (Ohio) stay connected when all other connections out of state disconnect. Not to mention the modem is less than a year old, I am the first user of it, and I keep it well ventilated. While I realize even if it were in the realm of possibility in my mind that faulty modem hardware could cause this issue, it is extremely unlikely that this modem would be defective in the first place.

I apologize if I'm coming off as arrogant but I've been down a similar road before with Insight Communications and it just ended in a years worth of modem swaps, wasted time and money on my part and Insight's part and it ended up being a problem with a junction somewhere in the southern United States associated with the company that provides Insight with service. Since the problem is completely oblivious to the average internet user it is more likely than not that it wouldn't be reported. Heck, I haven't even called to report a problem because talking to the WOW people on the phone is difficult as I end up having to educate them. Same with the techs, when I got this Arris modem/router installed I had to show him how to make it pass-through because he didn't know how, and I had never even used that particular brand of modem or interface.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:13:42 EDT

WOW_Dan posted : My next suggested step would be to replace the modem. You can either have a technician come out and replace it, or just swap it out yourself at a local office if that's more convenient.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 02:53:48 EDT

td854 posted : I sent an e-mail to technical support, a very long and technical e-mail describing each step and process I took to root out any problems that could be on my end. What did I receive? A response almost 4 days later that tells me to delete my temporary internet files and restart my PC. Really guys? Really?

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 06:35:42 EDT

td854 posted : Just ran a 50 foot ethernet cable directly from the modem to my PC for about 20 hours and have disconnected 7 or 8 times. I was at the PC the whole time chatting with a friend of mine, same thing happened, friend in ohio stayed connected to me, every server or person I was connected to or was connected to me outside of the state DC'd.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:21:49 EDT

WOW_Dan posted : You stated you rebooted your router, but you did not mention bypassing it. Can you try bypassing the router and test a computer directly on the modem and see if it has problems? Routers are easily the most common sources of problems I've run into.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 02:48:41 EDT

td854 posted : Well I just had an interesting experience this evening. A friend of mine who i don't normally voice chat with logged into my ventrilo server. He's in Ohio but not with WOW and during talking to him, everything disconnected but he did not disconnect from me and we were still talking. I disconnected from a Teamspeak server in Dallas, a game server on the west coast, and another friend of mine connected to my Ventrilo in PA disconnected from me. This leads me to believe that the connection issue is in some intermittent faulty regional router somewhere. I had a similar problem with insight as I'd only disconnect from things in specific regions of the country and it took them almost a year and a half to fix it. I may try to find some servers I can ping all at once and see which ones drop when I disconnect, it may help to track down the general area.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 21:38:29 EDT

adam1991 posted : You'd think, but I have my own story here.

This happened a few years ago. I had EXTREMELY slow upload speeds. Techs all validated my complaint.

Over the course of several visits and several weeks, they were unable to fix this. They cycled THREE cable modems through, and rewired everything back from the cable modem all the way to main lines running back to the fiber point. Still nothing.

I'm not sure how this happened, but finally one of the techs who showed up got together with someone on the phone who had a brainstorm: just re-flash the cable modem from the head end.

BAM! done. ????? You mean, no one had ever done that in all of this? And ALL THREE of their replacement modems all had the same problematic firmware and behaved THE EXACT SAME WAY?

I was watching Big Bang Theory tonight, and here's Chuck Lorre's vanity card from this episode:

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." --Mark Twain

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 21:21:01 EDT

td854 posted : I'm using one of their modems, and it was literally brand new when I got it, I was the first user. I suppose it's possible that its gone bad but that would be some pretty poor luck.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 21:11:03 EDT

adam1991 posted : If you're using one of their modems, then yes, place a call for a truck roll.

If you're using your own modem, you really should rent one of theirs for a short period of time. They can't really troubleshoot unless it's their cable modem.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:20:43 EDT

td854 posted : Anyone have a suggestion as to what I should do at this point? Should I just place a service call with WOW? Every night repeated disconnects and apparently we're getting a lot of pixelation on certain channels as well (I don't watch TV) but if the signals are good as someone mentioned, I don't get it.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 00:29:16 EDT

td854 posted : »/r3/smokeping.···331cec93

Well there it is, disconnecting a lot tonight as well. had at least 5-10 disconnects just this evening.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:51:24 EDT

td854 posted : Running that now. Have had 2 disconnects in the last 45 minutes after not having any since around noon. This is like the worst time to have these as I run servers for my buddies and I.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:12:00 EDT

adam1991 posted : set up a smoke ping here on this site, and look at the graphs.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 13:18:51 EDT

td854 posted : Ok I've set it, we'll see what happens.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 13:02:29 EDT

NuclearXP posted : You can either configure your router to use a new DNS, then flush it on the PCs, or manually override your tcp/ip configuration on each PC one-by-one and flush.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 12:16:52 EDT

td854 posted : Should I be doing that on my router or all my PCs? I use 3 PCs at once at this desk and they all DC at the same time.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 12:13:16 EDT

NuclearXP posted : tried flushing your dns cache then pointing to opendns or google dns?

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 12:10:57 EDT

td854 posted : I rebooted my router (it's a PC,) modem, and 16-port gigabit switch i bought at the end of last year, problems still exist, tried leaving them all off overnight and problem still exists. I tried running continuous pings between my main PC and all the other interfaces on the network (Printer, TV, NICs in each PC) just to see if something was dropping out through the switch and nothing dropped until it reached outside my LAN.

Re: Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 10:50:41 EDT

MrMonk posted : Your signal looks great. The drops are good actually, ideally you want to be close to 0. What seems odd is how much the signal is different on different channels, but I guess they are not that far a part to matter much. Your SNR is damn near perfect. I would try rebooting the router and modem and see what happens. I get random times of high pings and poor performance, but rarely do I get actual dropouts like that.

Edit: you don't 0 on upstream. Your upstream power looks good too. You want between 35-50 ideally. 55 or higher you generally will have issues.

Intermittent disconnects (Central Ohio)

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 09:29:40 EDT

td854 posted : I'm having split-second connection drops in Lewis Center, OH. I'm pretty sure it's not a full modem connection drop but I honestly haven't gotten up to check it out as it's not near the PC and I've been too busy. I'm not really sure what exactly is going on, I assume it's something to do with whatever upgrades they're performing that they're having issues with but basically this is what occurs:

Running a constant ping to multiple reliable IPs will show timeouts at random times for 8-10 seconds, all "streaming" applications will drop and immediately re-connect such as voice chat, livestream (me transmitting,) text chat programs, online games, netflix, etc. This happens at any point in the day, I've had it happen at 2am, 9am, all evening hours. This began happening around November 11-15th or so, I don't know the exact date. I've been told previously that the temperature can effect the hardware out front of the house (though I'm quite skeptical) and it has gotten colder since then. We have had signal issues previously both box-to-house and through the house to modem but apart from a few cables, almost all hardware has been replaced. Event log on the modem doesn't show anything regularly happening.

Basically I just want to know if this is a problem on their end or mine as I haven't had any problems in so long; literally no disconnects for a year or more.

Here are my modem signal levels as of this posting (last connection drop 45 minutes ago)

[att=1]

Edit: Some of the power numbers have dropped down to 0.20 and 0.30 as of this edit.