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domiguy85
join:2009-06-02
Warner Robins, GA

domiguy85 to Anon

Member

to Anon

Re: [GA]WarnerRobins High latency\bad tracerouting to many areas

What's sad is that it's an issue of greed and laziness to me. They oversaturate an area with no regard for congestion, so instead of upgrading before the problem surfaces, they wait until it's a problem.

That's a complete disregard for the customers just like you said.
nickphx
join:2009-10-29
Phoenix, AZ

nickphx

Member

So what you're saying is COX should be able to predict the future.

What do you think would happen if they were under-provisioning and had purchased unneeded hardware and bandwidth? Your costs would go up. People are already on here whining about a few dollars.

It's a delicate balance for COX to manage current usage and projected future usage.

A complete disregard would mean not working to fix the problem.
Do you know how their network is designed?
Do you know what needs to happen to upgrade?
Do you think they just flip a switch?

I had a DSL line with qwest. They had a similar problem with a REGIONAL gateway during peak times. It took them over a YEAR to fix.
domiguy85
join:2009-06-02
Warner Robins, GA

domiguy85

Member

said by nickphx:

So what you're saying is COX should be able to predict the future.

Actually, yes, to a degree. If they have proper bandwidth monitoring and contingency plans in place, they should be aware of any potential congested nodes as subscription rates go up. I don't need to work in IT to make that observation (hey, I do though!)

Someone would just need to monitor each node, see the slowly rising spikes in latencies, and say to others, 'hey guys, maybe we should be a little proactive and start upgrades before this node becomes a problem'. I said this was likely a congested node on Day 1 of my service. Instead, they keep subscribing until the nodes become fully saturated, and who feels the brunt of it? The customers.

This isn't a Cox only issue; ISPs are notorious for doing this, and they get away with it because the average, uneducated user won't make a fuss about it. Saturate, deal with complaints, upgrade when enough complain, maximize profits. Problems like this don't come out of thin air. I would agree with you if I saw slight slowdowns during primetime hours, but I'm seeing triple the normal latency. Who told me about slowdowns/upgrades when my service was first setup? Noone.

It wasn't until the most recent technician came by (last Friday) someone elaborated on the upgrade issue. He specifically said there's a disconnect between the sellers of cox services (including higher tiers) and the actual hardware capabilities of the lines. Sell, sell, sell.
said by nickphx:

What do you think would happen if they were under-provisioning and had purchased unneeded hardware and bandwidth? Your costs would go up. People are already on here whining about a few dollars.

We're not Cox's budget planners, nor should we ever claim to be. Keeping costs low is understandable, but not if it means a significant drop in service quality. As you said before, there's a required balance, but from a customer's perspective, I see it as one poorly managed by Cox at this point. Also, personally, any complaints in regards to cost have been out of principle for a service I can't actually use. I will reiterate, not a single person mentioned any form of compensation during this entire ordeal to me until I brought it up myself. Simply saying, "hey, your node is congested while we work on some upgrades, unfortunately we can't do much at the moment, so here's something to offset the significant inconvenience in the meantime". Transparency, at the bare minimum, shows respect to the customer.
said by nickphx:

Do you know how their network is designed?

said by nickphx:

Do you know what needs to happen to upgrade?

Irrelevant to the customer as long as he or she is told of such upgrades and provided compensation during the time of significant drop in service.
said by nickphx:

Do you think they just flip a switch?

Really?
said by nickphx:

I had a DSL line with qwest. They had a similar problem with a REGIONAL gateway during peak times. It took them over a YEAR to fix.

Please tell me you complained and/or received credit for the service during this time and didn't just bear with it. I'd be incredibly disappointed to hear that you paid in full, and I would've considered just disconnecting and using another company while they worked on that fix. Let me guess, there were no other viable options in your area.

As I've said in a previous post, if Cox is truly working on a upgrade that will take a month or two (how the heck do I really know?), there's nothing I can do, so the only options are to receive credit for broken services or to disconnect until they finish it. I'm giving them that choice.