US Cable Support > Cox HSI > [OK] Another day, another Cox outage

reply to bchandler02

Re: [OK] Another day, another Cox outage

Yes, it was in a PVC conduit. When they were here they did check for voltages and such on the line and everything was perfect.

It's also odd that this went from none to a huge problem in 24 hours. To me, that points to component failure somewhere.

I am testing a theory right now.

reply to linicx
I should have added that varmints like moles and squirrels love to chew! You may have one, but, as the engineer pointed out, there may be a pinprick in the cable sheath -- and that's enough to cause a problem. I can attest to the hell one broken wire can cause too. As he said, "There are so many things that can go wrong, and the intermittent problem is almost impossible to find. "
One has to be very patient and very determined to find it. Running you in circles and claiming it is in your house, and therefore your problem is not how to pin the tale on the donkey. Persistence usually prevails. It the drop doesn't help, it may take a year to find IT. Maybe the problem is the pedestal again.

Your next steps would be to call an old electrician .. the guy that has seen all the goofy things that go wrong in a house when it all "looks" perfect to do a whole house wiring inspection. And the phone guy to do a inside phone wiring test and inspection. I had a phone jack that looked wonderful -- until one day I moved a phone line and it fell out of the jack. Go figure. Jack broke.

reply to bchandler02
Bad things happen suddenly and convincingly. It makes no diff if the cable is one day old or 600 years old. Have a drop put in and keep it for a week to test it. If it not the cable, the next place for them to look is in the pedestal. It is not rocket science. It is a company that does not want to spend money or your problem even though they are causing it. It is all about the bottom line, the Bored (a pun) and the stockholders. It is about not giving you one I bit of help, or one bit of bandwidth that might solve the problem.

reply to bchandler02
Well we're back to complete shit service again. 3 times in the past 2.5 hours I've lost connectivity for 10+ minutes each time, yet nothing changes on the modem.

The most recent time I called tech support. She reset the modem remotely and it came back on shortly after rebooting. This tells me that the modem is maintaining connectivity into the Cox system, but is not routing any traffic.

What explains this?

Are you using a laptop or desktop connected to the modem? Is either plugged into a wall electric outlet for power? If it's a laptop can you run it off battery for a while? I'm wondering if it's an electrical grounding/noise issue, mainly due to the description of the very short coax run between the PC and the demarc. A standalone laptop, not connected to ANYTHING but the modem can help rule this out.

Can you ping the modem 192.168.100.1 when you drop connection?
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Two is one, one is none. If it's important, back it up... Somethimes 99.999% availability isn't even good enough.

I am using a desktop that is hardwired and a laptop in a docking station that is hardwired. Both run through my UPS as does the networking gear.

When they were out in November, they did have a multimeter out looking for any electrical noise on the coax and didn't find any.

Interesting theory you have - next time it happens, I'll grab one of my other laptops and check it.

reply to DrDrew
Well that test doesn't work. The modem will not give a new IP address without a reboot.

Apparently I'm going to have another day of hell fighting this thing today.

reply to DrDrew
Also, no, I cannot ping it. I can continue to ping my router, but not my modem during the problem.

It's as if the modem goes offline (but lights don't reflect this). However, I found it very interesting that the agent could communicate with the modem to reset it yesterday.

reply to bchandler02
Yes, the modem must always be rebooted when connecting a different device to refresh the CPE bridging table. Our ability to connect to the modem remotely will not be affected.

I just called in as it happened again (2x in 30 minutes).

At first, the tech could not see the modem. I rebooted and he was able to see and said he saw the problem as the modem switching frequencies. He wasn't sure why - signal or line problem most likely - but has someone coming out in 2 hours, so at least hopefully they'll catch it during the act for once.

What would cause it to switch, and if I am bonding 4 channels, shouldn't it be able to maintain connection better via multiple channels?

Tech just left, no problems found (surprise?).

We swapped back to my old 3010 to see if it makes any difference.

reply to bchandler02
So you have a router connected to the modem?

Does the problem happen without the router connected to the modem, just a single PC?

reply to bchandler02
Yes, happens with or without.

There is a silver lining to today's problems. Not 2 minutes after the tech walked out, it did it again, this time on the Cisco modem. I ran outside and caught him and he came in and saw it first hand. He was on his tablet and said the modem did not show as online despite him staring at 4 solid lights. After a few phone calls, he said the people that need to look into it are out to lunch and he'd get back to me this afternoon.

Sound's to me it could be a noise related issue within the node, and it's causing the modem to lose sync, but not to the point the modem reboot's. Have you tried running traceroute's for a long period of time? to see what it shows when the internet is working, and not working?

reply to bchandler02

With pingplotter, does all hops go red when the dropouts happen? the image above show's hop 3.

Yes, they all go to 100% loss. I cannot ping the modem interface during the drops either.

In the last 20 minutes, I lost the online light (and connection) for about 30 seconds, followed about 10 minutes later by a full modem reboot.