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About a year ago I switched my service providers to comcast, because they offered TV/phone/Internet. So I just thought that it would be much easier, and more efficient to have one company instead of two or three. The switch was easy and painless. Everything was working great.
However, about 3 months back I started to notice a drop in my upload rate. Comcast as many of you may know, offers a 3000 down and 256 up connection. I get anywhere from 10-70 kbps up. So of course I immediately checked all of my hardware and components. I tested the problem on 2 laptops that I own, and I got the same issue on all of them. I tested my ethernet cable, my router, I have no firewalls running. Couldn't think of one that that could be wrong on my side. So, I contacted comcast to try to figure out why I was getting such a crap upload rate. I gotta tell you, comcast probably has the worst customer service in any company that I've ever dealt with. I could probably write a 10 page essay on my tales trying to deal with them. But in short, it seems that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. I'd call up, state my problem, and a technician would come out, and have no clue what was happening. The only thing that they would know is that this house had a trouble call, and I'm out here to fix it. The only thing the technicians go on is one sentence, a quick overview, whatever you want to call it, of what the trouble call was about.
So anyway, the technician came out. I racked up a bunch of them. Some tech's were good, some dreadfully bad. They ended up replacing and/or checking all the lines inside my house. Everything turned up fine, all the tests on the lines were in range of the "ok" status. The problem however, was still there. So eventually I got in contact with a senior technician, who actually knew his stuff. He sent out a senior line tech to check the lines outside, which was what I thought would enevatibly be the problem. The line, after 2 technician came out, was eventually fixed. I was told that a wire was loose and they said they were getting packet loss to it. Something like 25-30% packet loss was taken down to something around 2%. So, overjoyed that after over a month that my problem was fixed, I turned on my computer and ran a speed test. My happiness turned into fury when I found that nothing had changed. I was still getting 10-70kbps up. I called the senior technician again, and complained. I told them that I was extremely patient with them, and I've done everything that I could do on my part, par changing service providers. And that I should probably be at the top of the list after all this time for my issues to get fixed.
After I calmed down, we were both trying to brainstorm what was happening. We ran a packet test pinging the modem only. Eureka. About every 20 seconds, packets jump from 2ms to 800ms for 2 packets, then goes dead, but immediately comes back.
My question is, what could be causing that (since comcast has no clue). I thought at first it might be because maybe the plug was bad, maybe the electrical outlet was bad, or maybe even the power strip I had it hooked up to was causing a surge. I've changed the outlet, changed the power strip, changed everything, but I'm still getting the same "surge" about every 20 seconds.
However, about 3 months back I started to notice a drop in my upload rate. Comcast as many of you may know, offers a 3000 down and 256 up connection. I get anywhere from 10-70 kbps up. So of course I immediately checked all of my hardware and components. I tested the problem on 2 laptops that I own, and I got the same issue on all of them. I tested my ethernet cable, my router, I have no firewalls running. Couldn't think of one that that could be wrong on my side. So, I contacted comcast to try to figure out why I was getting such a crap upload rate. I gotta tell you, comcast probably has the worst customer service in any company that I've ever dealt with. I could probably write a 10 page essay on my tales trying to deal with them. But in short, it seems that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. I'd call up, state my problem, and a technician would come out, and have no clue what was happening. The only thing that they would know is that this house had a trouble call, and I'm out here to fix it. The only thing the technicians go on is one sentence, a quick overview, whatever you want to call it, of what the trouble call was about.
So anyway, the technician came out. I racked up a bunch of them. Some tech's were good, some dreadfully bad. They ended up replacing and/or checking all the lines inside my house. Everything turned up fine, all the tests on the lines were in range of the "ok" status. The problem however, was still there. So eventually I got in contact with a senior technician, who actually knew his stuff. He sent out a senior line tech to check the lines outside, which was what I thought would enevatibly be the problem. The line, after 2 technician came out, was eventually fixed. I was told that a wire was loose and they said they were getting packet loss to it. Something like 25-30% packet loss was taken down to something around 2%. So, overjoyed that after over a month that my problem was fixed, I turned on my computer and ran a speed test. My happiness turned into fury when I found that nothing had changed. I was still getting 10-70kbps up. I called the senior technician again, and complained. I told them that I was extremely patient with them, and I've done everything that I could do on my part, par changing service providers. And that I should probably be at the top of the list after all this time for my issues to get fixed.
After I calmed down, we were both trying to brainstorm what was happening. We ran a packet test pinging the modem only. Eureka. About every 20 seconds, packets jump from 2ms to 800ms for 2 packets, then goes dead, but immediately comes back.
My question is, what could be causing that (since comcast has no clue). I thought at first it might be because maybe the plug was bad, maybe the electrical outlet was bad, or maybe even the power strip I had it hooked up to was causing a surge. I've changed the outlet, changed the power strip, changed everything, but I'm still getting the same "surge" about every 20 seconds.
