Time Warner Cable - Legacy → Greensboro, NC connectivity issues

I'm having ongoing issues with download speed in the Greensboro, NC area. I was about to go through the torture of once again calling tech support, but thought I'd post here first to see anyone knows of any bigger issues that tech support is going to be oblivious about. Off and on over the past 2 years or so I've had problems with max dl speed. I pay for Roadrunner Turbo, but don't consistently get my 15Mb/s dl speed.

I've called about 4 or 5 times over the past 2 years to complain about slow speeds. Each time I've scheduled a tech to come out, but, miraculously, every time my speed returns to normal the next working day so I canceled the tech call each time. After a few months I'd get fed up with the dl speeds and call again.

Two weeks ago I had the problem happen on a Friday night so I had to wait all weekend for the "reset miracle" to occur. I almost called and canceled the appointment again, but I decided this time I'd let the guy come out here.

He found no problems with my modem (Ambit U10C018.80 with Netgear router). No problems with the connection on the box on the side of my house either. When he went to the big box in the front yard that's shared with my neighbor he found wildly fluctuating speeds that sometimes crashed down to practically 0. I told him that this is the problem I've been seeing over the past 2 years off and on. The major difference this time is that my upload speed was literally less than 1 kb/s. It was so low that it wouldn't register on speedtest.net or any other speed test site (Speakeasy, etc). The reset miracle earlier in the day though had fixed my upload problem.

Tonight my speed is better than it was two weeks ago (a whopping 3Mb/s but fluctuating a good bit) and my upload speed is again so low that it isn't registering on speedtest.net. The tech who came out said that an email had been circulating at TWC that an issue was known on the other side of Greensboro (West side of the city), but that as of 2 weeks ago TWC didn't know if it was an equipment issue or an engineering issue and that he thought I was being affected by the issue.

I've talked to my neighbors over the past couple of years and most are oblivious to speed issues, but this is affecting not only my leisure (Netflix, etc.), but also my work since I work from home and need my internet for uploading.

Does anyone know what might be happening? I'll certainly not get a straight answer when call TWC in a moment.

Thanks

Interesting that you're having issues in the Triad much like I am now.

I'm in W-S and my connectivity issues on Roadrunner started last week, Jan 24th. My connectivity is awfully slow but during different times of the day and night. I've called TWC Support 3 times since last week and they claim no issues are on their end. Can't say I believe what I'm being told. They tell me it could be my WiFi router.

I have also performed multiple speed tests, mostly this past weekend. Just like you, my upload tests either does not run at all (test sits at 0) or when it does, it reports well under 1 Mbps. My download tests complete fine sometimes quickly, other times slow. But, the results are within range of 15 Mbps.

I have the RCA cable modem and the Apple Airport Express (2nd Gen) WiFi router. I can confirm that I'm not sharing a 2.4 or 5GHz channel with others around me (I purposely changed channels awhile ago after using a tool to see other channels in use around me).

I did a brief test with my Mac desktop plugged directly into the cable modem two days ago. However, I didn't keep it connected long enough. I will do it again this week and leave it for 3-4 hours to see if I can confirm if it's my WiFi router or not.

Please update on any more findings you have...

Since you're in the area there is one other little bit of info that I didn't include in my original post. The tech that came out a couple weeks ago said that I get my feed from a location on the west side of East Lee St in Greensboro (geographically I'm south of 85/40 very close to the Alamance co border) and it's from there that the problem originates.

I called tech support after my post and they have someone coming out here tomorrow morning.

Your problems sound exactly like mine, but I've been seeing it quite some time. One thing I forgot to mention is that probably 6 days out of every week my connections starts off very slow in the morning. I have to dl some large files from my corporate HQ and I usually get 150-300 kb/s dl speeds initially. My turbo package should allow me to dl at a little over 2 Mb/s. After about 15 minutes or so of dl'ing at the slower speeds my connection will normally jump up to my expected speed. It's the weirdest thing. This particular problem has been happening for months. It's almost like I'm getting internet on demand and my modem has to see usage before it allows me to get full dl speed, someone flips a switch somewhere and BAM! my speed goes to normal!

Thanks for the update. It stinks that you've been dealing with this much longer than I. Plus, you pay for Turbo. I have Standard (15Mbps).

If I find that after testing the direct connection with my Mac-to-modem for 3-4 hours still gives the same results, then I will request a service tech also.

When the issue started last week, I noticed a lot of these Critical Errors when viewing the RCA cable modem event log:

"SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire FEC f..."
"SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire QAM/Q..."
"DHCP FAILED - Discover sent, no offer received..."
"DHCP FAILED - Request sent, No response..."

The issue already started this morning around 8am ET, trailed off about 10 mins later, then again around 10am.

Turns out whoever I talked to last night gave me the wrong day for the tech to come out. She said this morning, but the robo call this morning said Saturday so I've got a few days. But, as I mentioned in my original post I got the miraculous reset this morning as expected. I checked my speed on speedtest.net at 8AM and was only seeing 2Mb/s dl with 0 up. Immediately after the robo call (at 8:38AM) my upload went to normal (it's actually testing above normal), but it took an hour for my dl speed to go over 5Mb/s. Somebody somewhere knows about this problem and is resetting something in Greensboro because this is not the first time I've gotten the miraculous reset immediately after the robo call asking if I'm still having a problem and conforming my tech call. That's the part that really ticks me off. They know and have known for a long time about this problem, but it's still going on. I've never had a problem with TWC cable TV, but their internet service is really lacking, from my perspective at least. I've heard that Comcast's infrastructure is much better and while I'm not looking forward to them throttling me I'm still hoping they do wind up buying TWC and upgrading things. I still hold onto my dream that we'll get get FiOS one day or maybe Google will surprise us!

I"m in Graham and have had zero problems in years.

Dialzero,

Did the TWC Tech come out yet today and have they fixed your issue? I have a service call now for this Monday, Feb 10th.

I finally got a phone rep late this week to see that my line is showing a constant up & down status, even when I removed my Airport WiFi router from the setup. I have also rolled back the firmware on my router and from all that I can determine with it, the rollback seems to have helped the router itself.

So...my connectivity issues remain with working fine one moment, then disconnecting every 5-7 mins. Then it will work fine for an hour and start up again. Still seeing DHCP warnings too on my cable modem event log.

I will also mention that around 2am Friday morning, a Roadrunner channel went down in my service area. It was reported on the automated system when I called as the connection stayed down for about 15-20 mins during that time.

Update: The TWC Service Tech just left. He was quite efficient!

He replace something behind my wall jack, he replaced something in my "box" in my laundry room that he said did not look right, and he swapped out my Thomson RCA modem that had the wrong power supply for it with a Ubee DOCSIS 3 model.

He also did testing of the signals inside and outside, which he said both looked fine. Last, he said neighbors did not appear to have any issues around me.

I'll be testing and hope all that he did fixed it! So far so good.

As luck would have it, about 8.5 hours after the service tech left, my Internet disconnects started up again at 12:30am today. Same issues as before.

I called TWC Support yet again and surprisingly, after I advised that I am an Earthlink customer who has not been able to ping both of the Earthlink DNS pre & post Tech visit, she said they have a memorandum that Earthlink has an outstanding "issue" with no ETA.

It's quite frustrating that no one else I spoke with over the last 2 weeks mentioned this at all. I don't know what to think now. However, I have reached out to TWC Help via email asking if they can give me more specifics on the Earthlink "issue".

It appears the TWC Support email team gave me the real insight today. I should have been told this two weeks ago.

"Earthlink problem is still being investigated. It appears to be a DDOS attack on both the email and DNS servers that Earthlink uses".

Since I am able to change my DNS servers, I will give that a try.

Dialzero, any luck on your end?

"It appears the TWC Support email team gave me the real insight today. I should have been told this two weeks ago."

The issue surfaced on Saturday, It would have been hard to have predicted that 2 weeks ago. Its resolved now BTW.

Hob