COX Internet/Digital Cable Help!?

[David Carmichael]

COX Internet/Digital Cable Help!?

I am defaulting to you guys for help.... as the onsite service technician says that I have a strong signal by all the testing that he can do, and other than a number of loose connections in my junction box he could not find anything wrong...other than a bad voice line filter which he replaced.

I have had off and on troubles for about three years// yet when a technician shows up there is nothing wrong!

The issue is.. I drop internet signal per my monitoring software (The Net Uptime Monitor V1.8.1 02/26/2014)  for about 10-20 seconds.. this drop can happen as often as every ten minutes or once every 12 hours I never make it to a thirteenth hour!  When this drop happens I also loose sync on my digital tuner that is connected to my TIVO.

I have run the on site COX speed test and it even shows the drop of signal in their graph... but my over all speed is greater than they support.

I have an older Cisco DCP3850 (three years or older) WiFi/Modem with the latest firmware dated April 2015, it is a DOS.3 rated combo device.

I would think it was a modem if only the Internet was effected... but also affecting digital cable and the service technician saw where I could not tune into digital channels (2208 and above) while the loss was happening (other channels worked fine).

Now the issue has gotten worse since the rains of 7/21/15.

So what could be causing a unsteady signal, so I can inform COX to check their part XYZ??

Net Uptime Monitor Failure Log (NetUptimeMonitor.com)

Licensed to David Carmichael

 

7/25/2015 11:49:23 PM Log Start

=======================================

Failure Start       Length

7/25/2015 11:59:34 PM 0:00:11

7/26/2015 12:02:34 AM 0:00:19

7/26/2015 12:17:13 AM 0:00:12

7/26/2015 12:21:36 AM 0:00:20

7/26/2015 12:24:22 AM 0:00:12

7/26/2015 12:27:01 AM 0:00:11

7/26/2015 12:42:11 AM 0:00:13

7/26/2015 12:53:49 AM 0:00:10

7/26/2015 12:55:36 AM 0:00:11

7/26/2015 1:02:10 AM 0:00:11

7/26/2015 1:02:53 AM 0:00:14

7/26/2015 1:11:23 AM 0:00:20

7/26/2015 1:20:25 AM 0:00:13

7/26/2015 1:22:20 AM 0:00:19

7/26/2015 1:27:23 AM 0:00:10

7/26/2015 1:32:45 AM 0:00:14

7/26/2015 1:40:26 AM 0:00:12

7/26/2015 2:02:31 AM 0:00:12

7/26/2015 2:03:20 AM 0:00:12

7/26/2015 2:07:54 AM 0:00:17

7/26/2015 2:28:03 AM 0:00:14

7/26/2015 2:29:54 AM 0:00:16

7/26/2015 2:33:18 AM 0:00:17

7/26/2015 2:37:29 AM 0:00:18

7/26/2015 2:41:12 AM 0:00:15

7/26/2015 2:48:11 AM 0:00:22

7/26/2015 2:58:21 AM 0:00:24

7/26/2015 3:06:25 AM 0:00:18

7/26/2015 3:07:15 AM 0:00:16

7/26/2015 3:12:47 AM 0:00:11

7/26/2015 3:21:12 AM 0:00:18

7/26/2015 3:35:27 AM 0:00:14

7/26/2015 4:00:40 AM 0:00:11

7/26/2015 4:01:39 AM 0:00:12

7/26/2015 4:17:01 AM 0:00:11

7/26/2015 4:18:33 AM 0:00:19

7/26/2015 4:36:52 AM 0:00:13

7/26/2015 4:44:56 AM 0:00:17

7/26/2015 4:51:19 AM 0:00:15

7/26/2015 4:56:41 AM 0:00:11

7/26/2015 5:03:17 AM 0:00:13

7/26/2015 5:13:00 AM 0:00:17

7/26/2015 5:14:12 AM 0:00:14

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"Time spent with cats is never wasted." - Sigmund Freud

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[Dale Beams]

Consider setting a firewall between you and the cable company.  You can find software firewalls which you can set up on an old computer online.  IPCOP is a good one to start with.  This way you can determine if the interuption is local or from outside your home.

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From: dec...@gmail.com
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2015 05:28:04 -0500
Subject: [aclug-L] COX Internet/Digital Cable Help!?
To: discu...@aclug.org

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[Dale Beams]

It's good to have the documentation.  When the world was still on dail up I was running at top speed.  One day my speed dropped with no explanaiton why.  When I called the ISP I kept getting the answer "everything is ok".

I ordered a new modem and had the same results.  I logged my problems and began comparing them with other technitions in the area.  Someone was watching the traffic, as a week and a half later I recieved a call indicating the ISP had found a problem at the office modem bank and would be giving me three months of high speed for free.

There are a couple of possiblities.  Experience tells me you are or have moisture in the line.  (assuming it's cable and not cat5)  To get the best connections we used to wrap the connenting points in silicon gel and rubber tape.

The second is that it may not be intermittent but rather metered.  In otherwords it may be intentional as a form of load balancing among your neighbors or (as awful as it seems) a way to push a customer into a higher billing bracket through upgrades.

I'd recommend you send the logs to customer service.  If that does not help, then as you are using the list here, point it out with customer service and indicate you have recurited other technicians to scrutinize the project.  If again that does not work the last option is making it public on a public board or even in the newspaper (a nice editorial will get it fixed quite nicely).

Doing it this way you will have followed the proper steps to escalation.
1. Concact the retailer
2. Bring a witness
3. Bring multiple witnesses and evidence.
4. Public shaming.

If this does not work your only and last option is court.

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From: dec...@gmail.com
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2015 05:28:04 -0500
Subject: [aclug-L] COX Internet/Digital Cable Help!?
To: discu...@aclug.org

[Jeremy Jones]

David,

I had the exact same problem and the exact same results.  It took me calling corporate and demanding something to be done before they looked into it.  Eventually they sent out techs to monitor my neighborhood for 48 hours straight, and it was only then that they noticed that the cabling was beyond it's usable life and had tons of squirrel bites into and through the cable.  It took them almost two years after that before they were finished running new cabling throughout the neighborhood.  

Unfortunately that did not quite fix the problem.  I still had the same repeated drops as I had before (I still had access to the modem at this point), but I had a good strong signal when I had a signal.  One of the next techs that came out locked me out of my modem, told me that he could not troubleshoot anything from the pole to the cable box unless I wanted to pay some outrageous amount per hour for premise wiring troubleshooting, and that was the answer I got from every tech from that point on.  (and Gawd help you if you hack back into YOUR modem that YOU bought so that you can monitor THEIR connection, that pisses them off to no end and might end your ability to use Cox, which is not entirely a bad thing ;-)  )

Needless to say, I begged AT&T to get UVERSE in our neighborhood and finally got them to realize that they had a huge group of customers waiting to give them their money.  In the end, I moved.  I will never touch another Cox again.  LOL

BTW, the property this was at, is located in a neighborhood near Kinsler Elementary, if that helps any.  Good luck.  Try calling their corporate offices, they might be able to help.

Jeremy

 

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[David Carmichael]

Dale & Jeremy: 

Thanks for your replies! 

I hope it is not corporate.. but when you take into consideration that I am only using 25% on my heaviest month of my allowed data stream I kind of hope that this is not the case.

I have sent logs and screen grabs of COX's own speed test program showing the lost of signal.

Will see what happens next.

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"Time spent with cats is never wasted." - Sigmund Freud

I live in my own little world. But it's OK. They know me here. 

Growing older is mandatory... Growing up is optional...

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Wii Address: 0441-6820-0158-3757 / Mario Kart Wii: 3052-0348-5504 / XBox 360 ID: FrontwardLeaf6

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[aeros...@cox.net]

Is connected to women it rains?   I went through this several years ago.   It turned out that the case of an amplifier on the pole down the street had a Crack and the rain water seeped into the amplifier.   Also Cox has implemented a 300 gig  data limit,  could that be causing an issue? 

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Smartphone

----- Reply message -----
From: "David Carmichael" <dec...@gmail.com>
To: "Air Capital Linux" <discu...@aclug.org>
Subject: [aclug-L] COX Internet/Digital Cable Help!?

[Michael Gichoga]

You are not alone. I've had the exact same problem for the last two months or so only that mine were more frequent. They sent two techs out; the first one was worthless. He came and repositioned (as in made it face a different direction) the modem and said that was the problem. He was lucky it was one of my family members who was there because I was at work otherwise I would have given him a piece of my mind.

The second one identified signal problems and spent about half a day outside fixing it. Although not completely fixed, it doesn't go offline as much as it did before. Personally I think Cox has either oversubscribed users or they have cabling and routing problems.

I don't have uverse where I am right now and no way I'm going to DSL. I'm stuck with Cox's underachieving service. All that I am doing now is collecting uptime info so I can present it to someone up stream so they know what kind of service they're charging for. It's not nice to watch Netflix and in the middle of the movie internet goes out.

Hope they can get yours resolved.

Mike

[aeros...@cox.net]

Is connected to women it rains?   I went through this several years ago.   It turned out that the case of an amplifier on the pole down the street had a Crack and the rain water seeped into the amplifier.   Also Cox has implemented a 300 gig  data limit,  could that be causing an issue? 

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Smartphone

----- Reply message -----
From: "David Carmichael" <dec...@gmail.com>
To: "Air Capital Linux" <discu...@aclug.org>
Subject: [aclug-L] COX Internet/Digital Cable Help!?
Date: Sun, Jul 26, 2015 5:28 AM