Cable internet is slowly killin me!!!!

[god_father7]

k, i have had my cable internet connection for about 6months. During the past month, i hav found that i have been gettin dropped connections A LOT!!! my modem idicates that its online, but i get 100% packet loss when i ping an ip. I time out after roughly every half hour for abbout 10-15 minutes. This gets very annoying as one can imagin. Ive had cable support over here and they say nothing is wrong, even though they see the packet loss.

Is this my problem, or theirs? cause the soln they told me was to re-install windows.....

but i think the problem is from their side

i dont have to reset the modem for the connection to come bak, it comes bak by itself after about 10 minutes. During that 10 mins, the amount of packet loss fluctuates, but never really stabelizes until about 15 minutes after i get disconnected!


PLEASE, if anyone can help, i would REALLY appreciate it!!

THANKS AGAIN!!!!!

[Statica]

Sounds like you're dealing with @home ...

Firstly did you ask whether anyone along your route is having the same probs. They'll usually tell you what the modem uptime has been [notwithstanding folks who decide to turn off their modems at nite].

Whenever you have the problem, is there a time pattern? That usually is indicative of load & that is bad becos it could take wayyy too long for the problem to be resolved.

When you have the probs, call tech support & ask them to find out the transmit levels of your modem .. higher levels, are (a)indicative of excessive noise (b)poor line quality (c)someone near your house running some faulty equipment that is really sending out some bad feedback

- this isnt too bad a deal, the trick is to get someone who knows whats going on to take ur call or to come over to your place [from personal experience, I can attest to ONE in over 15 service calls - took his name & cell # down], even though I can diagnose most issues myself, I have a hard time getting them to act on it [of course a few months later they repeat to me what my solution was]

- the problem, if noise could be solved from your end by removing any splits of the cable [going to TV outlets], maybe using a different plugpoint

- or a noise dampener near your modem - that is tricky to get the right value for..

- take ping logs & send it over to the tech place .. refuse payment till they get it right.

Good luck ... [you'll need it ]

[god_father7]

how u guess? it is @home..... hehe

well, anyway, they sent over a dude and he checked the line and said everythings cool. I even showed him the time outs and he was like "yea, its timing out". but he said that hes gunna check the connection from outside (after checking from the cable) then when he came bak, he says everythings working.....

well, guess what, 10minz after he left i timed out again, and basically, that day, i must have timed out like 15 times

the timeouts r random, but usually occur between 30-50 minutes of use. PLaying online games is a nightmare, cause one minute im killin stuff, next minute im dead, then i cant get bak into the game for aother 15 minz.....

someone told me it could be the modem itself...could this be the prob?

[Statica]

Hi god_father7 .. I might be mistaken .. but arent u in Canada? If so you must be afflicted by Rogers/Shaw@home .. the lousiest service on the face of this planet & the neighboring 8. Anyways, with apologies [perfunctory] to any1 who works for Rogers/shaw@home but they are beyond pathetic.
* Trust me on this .. first speak to a manager .. most customer service reps who will get to u are the sort who know NOTHING beyond .. do u have TCP/IP installed on your machine.. when u get a manager .. tell them that you will not be paying for the service because you have none .. log in your ping to text files & date them for proof.
* If you are with @home in canada, they have 2 kinds that they know abt in terms of cable modems .. Teriyon [sp?] or Lancity .. the Teriyon's are more resilient to noise than Lancity [have a higher threshold]... try alternating
* Get the customer service rep to tell u what the transmit level is at when u have the problem
* If nothing else works . get a tech to come out to you, swap the modem, put u on an alternate gateway to make sure that its a cabling issue.

I dont know where u are but in Canada, they have a monopoly [pretty much like everything else in this place is a monopoly .. far sightedness isnt one of the traits amongst decision makers] .. U'd be shocked to hear some of the wonderful features of @hell

- their so called 6-16 character password is a hoax, they dont use MD5/Shadow pwds .. all they use is a simple UNIX password .. anything above the 8th character is irrelevant & false advertising
- they spent all their existence as a subsidiary of @home .. without even having clustered/load-balanced servers .. and didnt realize it .. we'd loads of email issues here
I even have an email from one of the managers that state something to the effect that .. the provision of email services to members is for recreation only, and we do not recommend that it be relied upon for important matters in response to a complaint I had abt lost emails [incidentally, the emails werent lost, they came to me 89 days later!].

I am being so explicit abt it, not becos I would change from @home .. I'd rather be with @home than with a diallup, and I'd rather have every one of my toenails yanked out with rusty pliers than ever move to sympatico [ADSL], but becos I just want you to know what you are up against. My service is working now, knocking on my wooden desk, after so many months of not having the bozos listen to what I told them to do in the first place.

[god_father7]

i am in canada...brampton - therefore rogers@home.....


i have a teryon modem, and im not sure about the tcp/ip htingy...prolly not - im using win me too

il prolly give em a call tommorow and bitch at em a little more.... but i think i may switch to look 3mb satellite internet. I havnt heard much about it though, so a link would b nice to follow up the look internet research.

tell u the truth, i have been nothing but dissapointed with the @home internet service. They emphasize on how stable the connection is...HAHAHA who r they kidding.. i dont think a day has gone that i havnt been disconnected at least once. oh well....

is there a possible solution to my problem, or would i just be better off changing subscribers?

Thanks for ur help ex-static-cling!! ur helpin me out loads

[Statica]

Ahh yes, I thot I remembered u said that before.. from Canada.

I dont know abt switching though .. as I said its actually the least of the resident evils out here. The thing about Rogers is that if you complain often enough and threaten to cut off payment they usually start to get moving.. usually. Have u been referred to network tier? or Level II ?

I shudder to think of Bell, I was one of their test subjects for their forays into high speed internet & was sickened enough to go back to diallup.

havent heard too much abt look though.

Try telling them to give u a lancity modem, it may cure a helluva lot of probs cos they have different subnets.

I havent heard too much abt look though .. pls post here when u do find out.

[Omletteboy]

@home definitely have problems, DNS server is down a lot. Before, Shaw Wave was very speedy here in Calgary 3 yrs ago when I first got it; when they join @home, service degraded big time. Now Shaw is spending 200 mil to build its' own backbone and split from @home.

As well the @home mail server is located in California which is ridiculous when we're in Canada. They lost a lot of clients due to their email problems.

[Statica]

The email server was in california .. recently moved into Ontario .. they finally discovered that their mail wasnt on HA/clustered servers .... talk about a kick in their knickers!

& not to mention DHCP problems that they have.

Originally posted by Omletteboy @home definitely have problems, DNS server is down a lot. Before, Shaw Wave was very speedy here in Calgary 3 yrs ago when I first got it; when they join @home, service degraded big time. Now Shaw is spending 200 mil to build its' own backbone and split from @home. As well the @home mail server is located in California which is ridiculous when we're in Canada. They lost a lot of clients due to their email problems.

[uhhuh]

If it is not too much trouble(I know easy to say) do as they say and re-install WinMe and ask them if before you do this if it does not repair your connection problem if you will be compensated for doing this if you have to take it somewhere to get it done?Possibly if they did check every aspect of your connection there is no alternative.The only thing I had to install over was a Browser one time that I dl'd from their services area.It would not let me encrypt the Browser.They were on the phone for 2 hours trying to sort it out but eventually the only fix was to uninstall and put the Browser back on and then it would encrypt.
Are you getting any compensation from Rogers for your downtime?Whenever I had downtime they always compensated me on my bill,you should ask for this and they will do it.I know it is not a fix but it helps to cover your losses.
Honestly I have used Rogers for about a year and I will admit they had alot of problems but lately it has been good.I think alot of people get onto cable and take for granted what a dial up connection was like.I went from AOL Canada to Rogers......I really don't think anything more needs to be added to that statement.
I think alot of people automatically assume that it is Rogers problem but I am sure there is times as in my case where the problem actually was on my end.I am sure i am not the only person who ever expeirienced a bad download or computer problem.I found the tech I had at Rogers very thourough and spending to hours to save me un-installing was really nice to have done but in the end they could find no problem on their end.I know this does not help much but you really may have no alternative if you intend to keep your cable connection.Even if you continue to pester them if there is no fix on their end you are still without.If they can do nothing from their end undoubtedly they may lose you as a customer but if there is nothing they can do you cannot expect an ISP to fix an internal computer problem if that is where the problem exists?

[reboot]

I'm using Shaw@home, and for the longest time was having sporadic interruptions in service. I had them test everything from the junction box on the house, all the way to the server. They found one little problem with some sort of splitter on a pole, fixed that, and went away.
My problem persisted, and I flat refused to pay until it was resolved. (stupid thing to do BTW!)
I finally resolved it myself.
"How", you ask?
By throwing out the stupid 3com NIC and getting a Linksys.
"Why", you ask?
Because the 3com did NOT take kindly to my overclocked PCI bus, and thus would "hiccup" just enough to release the IP, and not renew it for a few minutes, sometimes hours, unless I rebooted the computer.
Moral of the story: If you're gonna mess with the ISP, MAKE SURE it's NOT something in your own system, BEFORE you crawl down their throats...

[SARGE]

And the preacher said, "AMEN".

[Charliey]

Ex, whats wrong with Bell High Speed? i have it and it goes down sometimes, but not more then @home.

[god_father7]

man, the frequent disconnections r hurting.... and the worst part is the @home 24X7 phone tech support is always busy

damn @home.... get some servers that can cope with the number of users

sorry....just a little stressed...exam time and this dont make a good combo..

argh! im timing out right now trying to post this message!!!!!

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

--- **.*.*.** ping statistics ---
11 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 0.0/0.0/0.0 ms

i c too much of this..... and its carrying on....

[Statica]

hehehee godfather .. your internet isnt suffering from interruptions .. u have none . It sounds like the problems I had... u really need to get a hold of your area's specialist.

BTW ever noticed that if there is a massive outage the first thing they seem to do is to pull the plug on their fone lines?

Charliey - I was a test subject first on a pilot project by 'Hell' in providing High speed internet via cable, yeah they apparently did extensive wiring in some areas of Canada [particularly ON & QC]. The first few weeks were great, but as load increased the started to stink. They were yet under the auspices of Bell TotalVision and not Sympatico. The most amazing thing was that the only thing that sympatico provided then was the SMTP/POP3/NNTP servers & they were the ones that were frequently down, again lack of proper load balanced servers. & Then the switch came, in that one week of having billing transferred to sympatico, things were just beyond pathetic. Frequent service interruptions .. probably the worst thing was Sympatico "top level" techs. who insisted that all the packet loss etc was cos of MY WINDOZE configuration .. of course they couldnt explain why my Linux box had the same probs :P, and one of them had the audacity to tell me that they cannot allow me to use Linux cos I could be serving out data. Finally managed to get rid of Hell .. but then a row in billing as they continued to use my credit card for their pizzas for a good cpl of months [adjusted later].

Even now there are a few things I am very wary abt Bell's version of High speed .. apart for their EXTREMELY assinine TV ads. (a)proprietary login for Win & very flaky porting to Linux (b) High speed aint that fast. Bell's lines esp in areas that I know have friends etc. with HSE that dont get consistent performance.

The bottom line is if it works for you be it @Home or HSE, ur lucky .. hopefully they will adhere to CRTC & outsource their lines for ppl who know what they are doing.

[mairving]

Maybe you can get help or answers here: http://www.rhua.org/

[Charliey]

well, i guess they've gotten a bit better for me, i find the serive pretty stable, and the speed somewhat consistient.
And ive gotten it to work w/ linux, actually im typing this message with my internet connected through my linux router box.

[god_father7]

hmm....after a few days getting more and more annoyed... i still have a crappy connection (no high lvl character lvling for me in diablo 2)

had the modem changed....nothings changed. the lines have been checked and they r perfect.

I have found though that today, the connection was alot more stable than other days...and on sundays, the connection becomes more stable too

the connection used to b stable til like 2 months ago - ive had the cable since the begining of summer, and have changed the ethernet card once in the middle.

all @home do is put tickets through, but they come bak with the answer "nothings wrong". newsflash!!! there is a prob cause i called u like 20times about it!

i just called em now...and they put another ticket in... the tech guy sees im timing out, and yet the guys monitoring the ticket dont find any probs.....

i hope they fix soon

[Statica]

Charliey .. good idea to get it running thround Linux .. Did you remember to secure it??
an insecure linux on a high bandwidth is a million times worse than a windows machine on the same connxn!

Originally posted by Charliey well, i guess they've gotten a bit better for me, i find the serive pretty stable, and the speed somewhat consistient. And ive gotten it to work w/ linux, actually im typing this message with my internet connected through my linux router box.

[Charliey]

Right now im just using the basic firewall script thats in the IP Masq how-to at http://www.linux.com. The only running service is ip_masq, and its only set to accept connections from the 2 computers on my lan. once i get it running more serivces (samba, ftp server, www server) im going to put in a better firewall script.

[archie]

God_father7, when I just saw your post I was thinking, "they sound as pathetic as the ones with whom I've just signed up with".
You are not alone. I too switched over to @home in the last month after many years with Pathcom.com [DUN]. In all that time with Pathway, only once did my connection go out for several hours and only because of an explosion in downtown Toronto. That was major and affected most if not all in this area.
While I don't experience the problems you are having, I had an interruption in service two weeks ago that lasted from Wed to Mon a.m. The response was "call us back in 24 hrs to see if things are better" and "when you can get online, everything is OK" It started out with a DNS problems and then router. [I'll try and keep this brief as to not raise my blood pressure]. Until one has dealt with such an organization, they would not understand.
Knowing that their service was lousy, after finding that DSL was not available in my neighbourhood, I contacted Look. They will come to your house and do a 'line of sight' (I think they have to see Milton or CN tower). Unfortunately, it was not to be.
I must admit, when @home is working, the speed is incredible. A download which may have taken 1 hour will now takes a minute. Where I was not doing much of that, I now find myself trying out new things.
The solution for me has been to not solely rely on them. Another way of getting internet access as a backup is recommended. I'm not likely to go back as I do enjoy having my phone line available while on the internet ... and no other options are available. Anyways, enough of this ranting ... it's just nice to be able to relate to people who have gone through this.