"Signal level" ??

[Rushie]

Any of you tech savvy people know what's happening here? We've got high speed internet and had regular cable with our ISP. So they came and upgraded our cable to High Def or "digital" I guess. It is real buggy, doesn't work half the time. But at the same time our internet has also quit working. On and off, mostly off. The new cable doesn't come in through the internet modem, it's got its own box, but it all comes in over the same "wire".

They've come out and checked our equipment and it checks out. They say it is a "signal level" or signal strength? Having to do with whatever equipment is upstream.

It's been a week and I've had it. We are about to cancel cable altogether if that will fix the internet problem. My question is, do any of you know what exactly they are talking about and will canceling cable fix the internet, or will it still be broken because they've upgraded other people besides us, and maybe there will still be a "signal" problem?

 

[wsuffa]

Any of you tech savvy people know what's happening here? We've got high speed internet and had regular cable with our ISP. So they came and upgraded our cable to High Def or "digital" I guess. It is real buggy, doesn't work half the time. But at the same time our internet has also quit working. On and off, mostly off. The new cable doesn't come in through the internet modem, it's got its own box, but it all comes in over the same "wire".

They've come out and checked our equipment and it checks out. They say it is a "signal level" or signal strength? Having to do with whatever equipment is upstream.

It's been a week and I've had it. We are about to cancel cable altogether if that will fix the internet problem. My question is, do any of you know what exactly they are talking about and will canceling cable fix the internet, or will it still be broken because they've upgraded other people besides us, and maybe there will still be a "signal" problem?

Canceling TV will not fix the internet. And vice-versa. There may be a splitter in the house, but that will only add a bit of loss (lower signal strength) but not much.

Most likely, either the system wasn't engineered for the digital HD cable at all the frequencies they use or they have not set the amplifiers properly along the cable plant (Cables have loss, and cable systems have amplifiers every so often to bring it back up to usable levels - older analog systems had those set up a bit differently than digital. Also, cables can crack or "leak", which will reduce signal in the cable - the only way to fix that is to replace or repair the cable, usually replacing a stretch of it. Most cable trunks are made of aluminum.)

There's also the "up" side of the internet that operates on different frequencies. The amps and system need to be adjusted to that. Given that you have a problem with BOTH the TV and Internet, it's probably the "downlink" side.

I had an issue with marginal signal on my cable internet (no TV, that's not on cable). They replaced the drop from the pole to the house, a ground block, interior wires, grounding, and the modem. Still marginal. They finally sent a line crew out, who replaced a marginal/intermittant amplifier in the system... and cleared up the entire neighborhood.

Keep after them. This is a problem in their system. You shouldn't be paying for service you don't get. If you have an alternative provider (I can choose from Cox or Verizon Fios...), you might consider moving to them.

This site has some tools: http://www.dslreports.com/tools Speed and packet loss are the things most critical to you for the internet.

 

[Rushie]

Canceling TV will not fix the internet. And vice-versa. There may be a splitter in the house, but that will only add a bit of loss (lower signal strength) but not much.

Most likely, either the system wasn't engineered for the digital HD cable at all the frequencies they use or they have not set the amplifiers properly along the cable plant (Cables have loss, and cable systems have amplifiers every so often to bring it back up to usable levels - older analog systems had those set up a bit differently than digital. Also, cables can crack or "leak", which will reduce signal in the cable - the only way to fix that is to replace or repair the cable, usually replacing a stretch of it. Most cable trunks are made of aluminum.)

There's also the "up" side of the internet that operates on different frequencies. The amps and system need to be adjusted to that. Given that you have a problem with BOTH the TV and Internet, it's probably the "downlink" side.

I had an issue with marginal signal on my cable internet (no TV, that's not on cable). They replaced the drop from the pole to the house, a ground block, interior wires, grounding, and the modem. Still marginal. They finally sent a line crew out, who replaced a marginal/intermittant amplifier in the system... and cleared up the entire neighborhood.

Keep after them. This is a problem in their system. You shouldn't be paying for service you don't get. If you have an alternative provider (I can choose from Cox or Verizon Fios...), you might consider moving to them.

This site has some tools: http://www.dslreports.com/tools Speed and packet loss are the things most critical to you for the internet.

Thank you! I think that totally nailed it. That's exactly what's happening. Last year before this digital TV upgrade we had a similar problem with the internet and they went and "adjusted the amp" (their words) and fixed it. I'm betting they're having to readjust that again, or replace it, or maybe it's a cable problem, and they're probably trying to trouble shoot and sort it all out.

I can have some patience as long as I know they're working on it and will get it sorted out soon. I'll keep after them. They were the only high speed provider until this year, AT&T now offers high speed here. But I am hesitant to switch to AT&T because they only just started offering it in this town and I bet they too will have bugs to work out and adjustments to make.

In the meantime it's barely useable, good time to do other stuff around the house.

Happy Independence Day!

 

[RJM62]

My local cable company was going nuts for months trying to fix an intermittent problem with my cable Internet. The problem turned out to be a grounding block that costs about $1.00, if that much.

In your case, I think it's more likely a fine-tuning problem because of the recency of the upgrade.

Rich

 

[Ghery]

My local cable company was going nuts for months trying to fix an intermittent problem with my cable Internet. The problem turned out to be a grounding block that costs about $1.00, if that much.

In your case, I think it's more likely a fine-tuning problem because of the recency of the upgrade.

Rich

I hate working on intermittent problems. Of course, the system probably worked perfectly whenever the repair folks were on-site.

 

[denverpilot]

Reading the above, yeah, just make them come fix it. Can’t fix signal problems if the outside plant isn’t right, but with an “upgrade” they’ve already decided the outside plant is up to snuff at the engineering level. The problem is likely some sloppy work somewhere or a drop cable needs to be replaced.

 

[wilkersk]

1st: and foremost, make sure you have the latest gear. Comcrap "upgraded" us, but left the same old router. Had problems similar to what you're describing. Turns out, we needed a Docsys 3.0 compliant "gateway". Once I discovered this, I marched into the local Comcrap office and demanded one. They promptly took my old modem and gave me a brand new piece of gear.

2nd: if you're on a busy stretch of cable, your throughput will slow down a bunch affecting internet speed and video streaming from your on-demand stuff. Not much you can do about that.

3rd: If you use WiFi, make sure you're not having problems there. I eventual went to a "mesh" WiFi set up and now get consistently better internet service throughout the house.

4th: Have you tried "re-setting" your internet modem or gateway? I do this regularly, especially when it seems slow.

 

[Rushie]

1st: and foremost, make sure you have the latest gear. Comcrap "upgraded" us, but left the same old router. Had problems similar to what you're describing. Turns out, we needed a Docsys 3.0 compliant "gateway". Once I discovered this, I marched into the local Comcrap office and demanded one. They promptly took my old modem and gave me a brand new piece of gear.

2nd: if you're on a busy stretch of cable, your throughput will slow down a bunch affecting internet speed and video streaming from your on-demand stuff. Not much you can do about that.

3rd: If you use WiFi, make sure you're not having problems there. I eventual went to a "mesh" WiFi set up and now get consistently better internet service throughout the house.

4th: Have you tried "re-setting" your internet modem or gateway? I do this regularly, especially when it seems slow.

Oh yes, I've reset it and also "they" reset it remotely and the gear is new. They were in our house last week checking everything out and told us it's nothing inside our house.

It's been out most of today. Came back up around 8:00 pm which makes me wonder if it's associated with amount of traffic. Maybe everyone's outside now setting up fireworks. Of course it might go back out any second now.

 

[Rushie]

Reading the above, yeah, just make them come fix it. Can’t fix signal problems if the outside plant isn’t right, but with an “upgrade” they’ve already decided the outside plant is up to snuff at the engineering level. The problem is likely some sloppy work somewhere or a drop cable needs to be replaced.

I wouldn't be too sure about that (the bolded part). I think in the past they added a bunch of new customers before upgrading the equipment they knew they needed to upgrade to handle it. They wanted to get the customers on board first and then they came back and upgraded real fast because there were problems of course.

I'm making it sound like they're a terrible company but they really aren't. For the most part the internet has been extremely reliable. When something does go wrong they normally fix it fast and they are very friendly to deal with, excellent attitude and you can get a human on the phone with no trouble. They act like they want to make you happy. Compared to dealing with Time Warner at my mom's house in the city where you are just one of their millions of customers and they treat you as such.

 

[D Ryan]

Just because the installation is new doesn't mean it should work. Why fly a perfectly good airplane within landing distance of an airport after overhaul? Chit happens.
Get your modem replaced. I've had to do it a few times over the last 10 years. What's worse is the cable tv boxes... I think I've replaced about 6 times in the last 2 years. Jeezus, and these things are made here in the usa? My provider is charter and never have a problem swapping equipment at the home office here. Company=good, equipment=sux.

 

[Eric Gleason]

I went through something similar when it was Time Warner. I'd lose internet multiple times an hour. It got to the point that I found a ping logger that would record ping times every 5 minutes throughout the day so I could show them how frequently I was losing signal.

I finally managed to complain enough that I got the number of a supervisor who eventually took responsibility for fixing it. He found that my entire neighborhood was mess, and eventually the problem went away, but it took a couple of months of persistent, polite, firm communication with TWC to get that far.

(Now on Spectrum and have very few problems.)



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[EppyGA]

Interesting that you say it began working after 8:00pm. Temperature probably had cooled off a bit by then. Electronics like cool weather as well as the cable itself. Digital is interesting stuff, it generally either works or doesn't work. In the analog days you could still have a picture but it might be said to be "snowy" due to level issues, amplifier issues or length of amplifier cascade issues. A lot of that went away with the introduction of fiber optics into the cable plant which cut the amplifier cascade issue out of the picture. With digital you don't get "snowy" anymore you either get beautiful pictures or no picture, although as you approach the picture stage you will get the pixelation just before the picture goes bye bye.

Want to understand it a little better, go read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulation

 

[wsuffa]

Heat-related normally indicates a couple of things - bad amplifiers, bad power supplies for the amplifiers, bad power injector, or cable with a cracked shield that breaks when it gets hot.

Randy is right - digital works or it doesn't. At the same time, noise can affect QAM signals. Cable systems also use multiple digital carriers - if some of those are affected, it'll cause slow speeds or drop-outs. (noise ingress is the inverse of signal leakage - where a cable leaks out, it'll also get signals in, causing interference. This was more of an issue in the analog days, but can still happen.)

Given that this happened with a cutover to digital, I would almost bet on the cable provider making the decision to go digital without improving the existing plant, turning it up & cutting over, and deciding to fix whatever problems happen to result from the cutover. I'd guess - without knowing the company, but having dealt with some in the past, is that they really didn't engineer/re-engineer the plant for digital service. Costs money, you know.... and some cable companies with older plants have plans on the books to rework the whole thing (sometimes with fiber, sometimes not) - whether or not those get realized depend on profits, need to pay for acquisitions, etc. Typically a digital plant will have different amplifier spacing and different amplifier performance requirements. And yes, they can increase the levels both on your modem (for upstream transmission) and the plant (for downstream). Increasing signal levels raises the chance of intermodulation in the system.

There's a reason Verizon went with fiber to replace copper, and there's a reason that both they and ATT have slowed deployment as 5G is on the near horizon: once they have the bandwidth (that they have to pay for...) they have a means of accomplishing last-mile. (Verizon was for a bunch of reasons, including union rules, expense of maintaining an aging copper plant, wireless spectrum that they are paying for, better bandwidth on fiber to permit upsell, desire to compete with cable, and so forth).

This problem is in their plant. They need to fix it. Need to stay on them, rattle cages, and climb the chain to get it fixed. It's easier if you are a business customer, but even that is no guarantee.

 

[Rushie]

SOLVED

It was a two part problem. Before yesterday, my neighbors were also out concurrently with me. That supported what they said about it not being in my house, but a signal problem with their amps. But I asked one of my neighbors this morning if hers was out yesterday too, expecting yes, because theirs had been all weekend, but no, she was up all day yesterday.

So as it turns out, they had fixed the signal problem the day before yesterday, and thought everything was fine. I called back this morning and bypassed "tech support", pushed the right buttons and got "Joe" who is local, on the phone. He listened to my story and then asked me to unplug my cable from the PC to the WiFi and use it to replace the patch cable between the modem and the WiFi. It was then I knew....... frickin patch cable, and I am mortified not to have thought of it myself. I told him, no need, I have spare patch cables, and I replaced it, and voila, everything works!

I am embarrassed not to have troubleshooted the patch cables myself but in my defense, 1) there really was a signal problem outside our house and 2) I have almost never had a patch cable to go bad; maybe once in over a decade. But I do know it happens. However, I would not have in a million years thought of a two-cause coincidence at the same time. My patch cable coincidentally fails at the same time they upgrade the TV and have signal failures? But it appears to be the case.

In retrospect, both problems were causing intermittent outages and in talking to the neighbors we didn't narrow down to the minute or hour so we may not have been truly concurrent. We may have actually been out more than they were, but not by much according to the teenagers whose gaming was impacted

The good that came out of all this, "Joe" told me to always call direct to him if I have any problems in the future. Don't fool with their "tech support" who are just basically secretaries halfway across the country and there more or less just to give people someone to make them reset the modem and then open a ticket when that doesn't work, during off hours.

I can see where outside temps affected the outside equipment, but cannot figure why my cable here decided to fail at this exact time. Joe did say there is a possibility the problem is the port on the modem, so if it starts acting up again, the next step will be, they'll bring us new one.

 

[Rushie]

Given that this happened with a cutover to digital, I would almost bet on the cable provider making the decision to go digital without improving the existing plant, turning it up & cutting over, and deciding to fix whatever problems happen to result from the cutover. I'd guess - without knowing the company, but having dealt with some in the past, is that they really didn't engineer/re-engineer the plant for digital service

I am convinced this is the case.

This problem is in their plant. They need to fix it. Need to stay on them, rattle cages, and climb the chain to get it fixed. It's easier if you are a business customer, but even that is no guarantee.

Yes, in my case I needed to stay on them because they did fix their plant problem and did not call us back to say "we fixed it on our end, are you good?" And we would have said "no".

They've given us just such a callback in the past but I guess yesterday was a holiday...

 

[Rushie]

Yeah I spoke too soon. My new patch cable did something, because it's no longer solid out, but it is blinking off like every 5 minutes for half a minute to two minutes, then it will come right back. Basically not useable. Just got off the phone, they refreshed the software and such, documented that it was not being "seen" by them intermittently; they're sending a technician out. I'm going to guess the port is going bad and it's connection to the patch cable is better with this one than the other one, but still going bad?

I asked again about the equipment upgrades and he said, "Yeah it's been a citywide problem. We are just trying to squash the bugs as they come up but now yours might be a little different."

Whatever that means.

 

[jsstevens]

If they can see it going out it's on the cable side.

 

[ejensen]

We recently got an offer to upgrade speed (Century Link DSL). Sounded good so I called. Had to buy their modem. I said no, I just want the upgraded speed, let me worry about the modem. No, you have to buy ($150) or lease ($10/mo). I said no, if I have trouble I'll pay for the tech call. Nope, I finally gave up. Will try again when I find a different path.

 

[Ghery]

Comcrap says I have 1 Gbit/second speed (according to my contract level - VoIP phone, TV cable, broadband and security system. Bought a faster cable modem to upgrade the speed (needed one, anyway). You can forget one important point, however. I may get 1 Gbit/second speed out of the modem, but that's a Cat 5 cable coming out of it to a 100BaseT input on the router. Guess what? That bottleneck says 100 MBit/second is as fast as it will go. WiFi doesn't support 1 Gbit/second speeds, so whoopee, it doesn't matter. And given that most of the computers/tablets/phones in the house are connected via WiFi, that 1 Gbit/second speed is just an advertising gimmick. Oh well...

 

[denverpilot]

Comcrap says I have 1 Gbit/second speed (according to my contract level - VoIP phone, TV cable, broadband and security system. Bought a faster cable modem to upgrade the speed (needed one, anyway). You can forget one important point, however. I may get 1 Gbit/second speed out of the modem, but that's a Cat 5 cable coming out of it to a 100BaseT input on the router. Guess what? That bottleneck says 100 MBit/second is as fast as it will go. WiFi doesn't support 1 Gbit/second speeds, so whoopee, it doesn't matter. And given that most of the computers/tablets/phones in the house are connected via WiFi, that 1 Gbit/second speed is just an advertising gimmick. Oh well...

The Comcast modems around here are GigE on the Ethernet side. Sure you don’t have something misconfigured there?

A co-worker literally melted a crappy consumer grade GigE card and chipset (Realtek) in his firewall/routing/VPN server he built himself after running his Comcast fiber at full Gig for days straight. He’s that kind of heavy user...

Came asking what cards we use in servers. Poor little consumer grade Realtek for $9 without a heatsink on any chip on it, didn’t stand a chance.

Comcast recently offered him 2G service in his neighborhood. He turned it down, couldn’t find many websites that would even feed him at a full 1G. All throttled at the server end by individual session/stream.

(He’s into multiple 4K streaming of video sources. Lots of them. Simultaneously. Ha. Thankfully he doesn’t do it at the office on any of his four monitors. He’s a massive multitasker and actually handles it well.)

Anyway. Get a faster router. You can at least use about half of that total speed on your WiFi if you upgrade the AP and clients, too.

And oh yeah, I hate you people with real Internet. But at least my 802.11n old crap runs much faster than my upstream pipe by far.

Love, rural Internet guy.

 

[RJM62]

Yeah I spoke too soon. My new patch cable did something, because it's no longer solid out, but it is blinking off like every 5 minutes for half a minute to two minutes, then it will come right back. Basically not useable. Just got off the phone, they refreshed the software and such, documented that it was not being "seen" by them intermittently; they're sending a technician out. I'm going to guess the port is going bad and it's connection to the patch cable is better with this one than the other one, but still going bad?

I asked again about the equipment upgrades and he said, "Yeah it's been a citywide problem. We are just trying to squash the bugs as they come up but now yours might be a little different."

Whatever that means.

Probably either the port is going or there's some problem with the drop. I actually suspect the drop if it's temperature-related.

As I said earlier, my problem was temperature-related and turned out to be the grounding block on the pole. That was determined after several modem and router swaps and several other changes. I'd also cleaned the contacts on the block and connectors with contact cleaner and a brush, but that wasn't enough. The kid from the cable company changed the block, along with the connectors on the cables that connected to it, and I haven't had a problem since.

It's hard to figure how something like a grounding block could go bad. I mean, there's just not much too them. But they do go bad sometimes. Or maybe the problem was with the F-connectors on the coax. Maybe a little moisture got in there and corroded them. It doesn't take much to affect the throughput.

I've also given up going through tech support. The office where the techs and their supervisor hang out is within a short drive or a long walk. I just show up at morning muster with a box of donuts and my problem now. The people in the office are nice, but their tech knowledge is limited. Dealing directly with the geeks is the way to go.

Comcrap says I have 1 Gbit/second speed (according to my contract level - VoIP phone, TV cable, broadband and security system. Bought a faster cable modem to upgrade the speed (needed one, anyway). You can forget one important point, however. I may get 1 Gbit/second speed out of the modem, but that's a Cat 5 cable coming out of it to a 100BaseT input on the router. Guess what? That bottleneck says 100 MBit/second is as fast as it will go. WiFi doesn't support 1 Gbit/second speeds, so whoopee, it doesn't matter. And given that most of the computers/tablets/phones in the house are connected via WiFi, that 1 Gbit/second speed is just an advertising gimmick. Oh well...

Well... As you pointed out, it will all be limited by the weakest link in the chain. I suspect providers do figure on most of their customers not understanding that, as well as those who use WiFi for everything, when estimating their total bandwidth. They eat it on the few who do upgrade everything in their systems and use wired connections to handle the full throughput, and make it up on the majority who don't.

Sparrow Fart Cable actually does offer faster speeds than my current 100Mbps/10Mbps service, but they've reduced the data caps. I exceed the new caps every month now, but I've never been charged for (nor even called about) the overage. I suspect that's because the caps were higher when I signed up.

If they ever start actually enforcing the caps, I'll probably sign up for UbiFi. I'm actually itching to give it a try anyway, but I'm holding off until the premise equipment is 5G-capable. Even if the tower isn't 5G, I figure I may as well wait until the premise equipment is before shelling out the coin. But if the cable company starts enforcing the caps, I'll consider it sooner.

Rich

 

[denverpilot]

If they ever start actually enforcing the caps, I'll probably sign up for UbiFi. I'm actually itching to give it a try anyway, but I'm holding off until the premise equipment is 5G-capable. Even if the tower isn't 5G, I figure I may as well wait until the premise equipment is before shelling out the coin. But if the cable company starts enforcing the caps, I'll consider it sooner.

I suspect UbiFi is in for a quicker death than my previously predicted 3-5 years, in your original cable modem problem thread, Rich.

https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/at...spot-tracking-and-high-speed-cap-enforcement/

AT&T just rolled out their network upgrades that allow them to track and throttle mobile hotspots specifically by usage cap this month.

Unless UbiFi has some secret business deal with AT&T, I think the Death Star is about to shoot all their customers who use more than the bandwidth per month caps that have been in all the AT&T contracts for mobile hotspots (but somewhat unenforced on commercial accounts) soon.

UbiFi may also be playing the game where they activate the SIM in a smartphone and then play games in the router firmware to keep AT&T from noticing the SIM was moved to a mobile hotspot.

That will come around to bite them if they are, because AT&T will eventually notice.

People were doing that on Verizon and VZ figured out how to catch it and dumped them all.

I can’t find any evidence UbiFi is running a legitimate “AT&T approved” service that AT&T really knows about. Well, they know, but they aren’t doing anything about it yet...

You know how AT&T is. Build their case quietly and then hit UbiFi with a bill so big they’re instantly bankrupt. Make them go away for good in one legal shot. That’s how they play.

 

[Ghery]

The Comcast modems around here are GigE on the Ethernet side. Sure you don’t have something misconfigured there?

A co-worker literally melted a crappy consumer grade GigE card and chipset (Realtek) in his firewall/routing/VPN server he built himself after running his Comcast fiber at full Gig for days straight. He’s that kind of heavy user...

Came asking what cards we use in servers. Poor little consumer grade Realtek for $9 without a heatsink on any chip on it, didn’t stand a chance.

Comcast recently offered him 2G service in his neighborhood. He turned it down, couldn’t find many websites that would even feed him at a full 1G. All throttled at the server end by individual session/stream.

(He’s into multiple 4K streaming of video sources. Lots of them. Simultaneously. Ha. Thankfully he doesn’t do it at the office on any of his four monitors. He’s a massive multitasker and actually handles it well.)

Anyway. Get a faster router. You can at least use about half of that total speed on your WiFi if you upgrade the AP and clients, too.

And oh yeah, I hate you people with real Internet. But at least my 802.11n old crap runs much faster than my upstream pipe by far.

Love, rural Internet guy.

Probably either the port is going or there's some problem with the drop. I actually suspect the drop if it's temperature-related.

As I said earlier, my problem was temperature-related and turned out to be the grounding block on the pole. That was determined after several modem and router swaps and several other changes. I'd also cleaned the contacts on the block and connectors with contact cleaner and a brush, but that wasn't enough. The kid from the cable company changed the block, along with the connectors on the cables that connected to it, and I haven't had a problem since.

It's hard to figure how something like a grounding block could go bad. I mean, there's just not much too them. But they do go bad sometimes. Or maybe the problem was with the F-connectors on the coax. Maybe a little moisture got in there and corroded them. It doesn't take much to affect the throughput.

I've also given up going through tech support. The office where the techs and their supervisor hang out is within a short drive or a long walk. I just show up at morning muster with a box of donuts and my problem now. The people in the office are nice, but their tech knowledge is limited. Dealing directly with the geeks is the way to go.



Well... As you pointed out, it will all be limited by the weakest link in the chain. I suspect providers do figure on most of their customers not understanding that, as well as those who use WiFi for everything, when estimating their total bandwidth. They eat it on the few who do upgrade everything in their systems and use wired connections to handle the full throughput, and make it up on the majority who don't.

Sparrow Fart Cable actually does offer faster speeds than my current 100Mbps/10Mbps service, but they've reduced the data caps. I exceed the new caps every month now, but I've never been charged for (nor even called about) the overage. I suspect that's because the caps were higher when I signed up.

If they ever start actually enforcing the caps, I'll probably sign up for UbiFi. I'm actually itching to give it a try anyway, but I'm holding off until the premise equipment is 5G-capable. Even if the tower isn't 5G, I figure I may as well wait until the premise equipment is before shelling out the coin. But if the cable company starts enforcing the caps, I'll consider it sooner.

Rich

I own all my equipment, Comcrap simply provides the cable and service. And they cap my monthly data and announced it the one time I exceeded the cap (and they grant you two months of exceeding the cap before they charge you - how generous). Happened to be the month a new computer went online and too much data went upstream backing up the files.

I'd get a faster router, but that won't help all the devices connected via WiFi. Just pointing out that claims of really high speeds by cable companies are meaningless unless everything downstream supports the higher speed, and as pointed out by others, rate throttling at the source is also an issue, and one you have no control over.

 

[RJM62]

I suspect UbiFi is in for a quicker death than my previously predicted 3-5 years, in your original cable modem problem thread, Rich.

https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/at...spot-tracking-and-high-speed-cap-enforcement/

AT&T just rolled out their network upgrades that allow them to track and throttle mobile hotspots specifically by usage cap this month.

Unless UbiFi has some secret business deal with AT&T, I think the Death Star is about to shoot all their customers who use more than the bandwidth per month caps that have been in all the AT&T contracts for mobile hotspots (but somewhat unenforced on commercial accounts) soon.

UbiFi may also be playing the game where they activate the SIM in a smartphone and then play games in the router firmware to keep AT&T from noticing the SIM was moved to a mobile hotspot.

That will come around to bite them if they are, because AT&T will eventually notice.

People were doing that on Verizon and VZ figured out how to catch it and dumped them all.

I can’t find any evidence UbiFi is running a legitimate “AT&T approved” service that AT&T really knows about. Well, they know, but they aren’t doing anything about it yet...

You know how AT&T is. Build their case quietly and then hit UbiFi with a bill so big they’re instantly bankrupt. Make them go away for good in one legal shot. That’s how they play.

I think they're actually doing it legally. The guy I spoke to when I called them said they were an MVNO with contracts with multiple incumbent carriers, including AT&T. They assign users to a carrier based on the quality of the signal. He told me that with the standard antenna, AT&T would be my best choice at my address (but that TMO was also an option with a directional antenna).

He also was very forthright about there being no guarantee that any carrier would choose to renew their contract in the future, in which case the only option would be to reassign the user to another carrier, if one exists in the area. There are no contracts with users, so there would be no need to get out of one; but the user would be on the hook for the equipment they'd purchased. There is no lease option. The equipment can be re-sold, however.

What I think is that carriers have scads of excess bandwidth on rural towers, so it makes sense for them to sell large blocks of it to MVNOs at bargain-basement prices. I know that using my phone as a hotspot, I can get crazy high speeds from the second floor of my house or from the Speedway that's LOS to the tower. Even on the first floor of my house, where I get two bars in the summer and three in the winter, I get 4G speeds in excess of 50 Mbps.

I also suspect that there's some state and federal grant money involved somewhere. UbiFi will hook anyone up, but they target-market to rural areas (and the price really wouldn't be all that competitive in urban areas, anyway). I know that my cable company has a discount deal with a very low cap that's heavily subsidized by grants. They're also stringing fiber and copper through the woods to places where the cap costs would never be recoverable without state and federal money.

For what it would cost to get set up, I'd take my chances and give it a try if the cable company started to actually enforce the caps. It's not a huge expense. I just have a hunch that in the near future, a 5G-capable box will replace the current 4G one; and as I have no immediate need for the service, I'm going to wait it out for a while.

Rich

 

[Rushie]

Probably either the port is going or there's some problem with the drop. I actually suspect the drop if it's temperature-related.

As I said earlier, my problem was temperature-related and turned out to be the grounding block on the pole. That was determined after several modem and router swaps and several other changes. I'd also cleaned the contacts on the block and connectors with contact cleaner and a brush, but that wasn't enough. The kid from the cable company changed the block, along with the connectors on the cables that connected to it, and I haven't had a problem since.

It's hard to figure how something like a grounding block could go bad. I mean, there's just not much too them. But they do go bad sometimes. Or maybe the problem was with the F-connectors on the coax. Maybe a little moisture got in there and corroded them. It doesn't take much to affect the throughput.

I've also given up going through tech support. The office where the techs and their supervisor hang out is within a short drive or a long walk. I just show up at morning muster with a box of donuts and my problem now. The people in the office are nice, but their tech knowledge is limited. Dealing directly with the geeks is the way to go.

Rich

KNOCK ON WOOD, ever since the refresh it's been up. However, it's been raining all morning and temp is only 85 so far, so it very well may have a temperature related component. I feel sure it's been multiple things because of the change every time we do something. Going to have to see what happens when it gets to 100 outside again.

 

[denverpilot]

@RJM62 could be. The grant thing may be where some of that mystery “rural broadband tax” is going that everyone pays.

Not sure it was intended for doing a wrap around back into the pockets of the carriers that focus mostly on cities, and was intended to spur actual rural infrastructure companies, but oh well.

Population density isn’t high enough to make a reasonable time payback out here.

 

[RJM62]

@RJM62 could be. The grant thing may be where some of that mystery “rural broadband tax” is going that everyone pays.

Not sure it was intended for doing a wrap around back into the pockets of the carriers that focus mostly on cities, and was intended to spur actual rural infrastructure companies, but oh well.

Population density isn’t high enough to make a reasonable time payback out here.

Most of the grants are for "terrestrial broadband," which loosely interpreted would include 4G/5G, as well as microwave and mesh WiFi.

I really don't have an issue with it. For the vast majority of users, what matters is getting them connected to a high-throughput, low-latency connection, not how the last mile is accomplished. If there's a glut of data available from the cell towers, then they may as well use it.

Two companies -- Margaretville Telephone Company and Frontier Communications -- are buying up a lot of Verizon's POTS franchises around here and running either fiber or coax, depending on the density. Verizon has zero interest in rural America, so they're just as happy to sell the franchises.

I'm also told that both Frontier and MTC are resurrecting DSL and installing DSLAMs in a few really remote, low-density locations where the copper is new due to it having been replaced after the hurricanes. There's a hill a few miles away from me where the average full-time households-per-mile is less than two. They need at least 10 before they'll run coax or fiber; but one of their techs told me they can do 100 Mbps over the latest iteration of DSL if they have good copper, at much lower cost than stringing coax or fiber. I have my doubts. But again, if it works, I'm all for it.

Whether they run fiber or coax also seems to depend on what's at the end of the run more so than how many people live along it. If they get a franchise for a town or village that currently has no broadband and they need to run fiber to it, they also hook up the people who live along the run. So some stretches of road that have almost no people do have fiber Internet and cable TV service available.

I still hope that UbiFi succeeds, or that the carriers themselves start offering competitive options. Competition is always a good thing.

Rich

 

[Rushie]

To wrap it up the guy came out today and replaced the modem. He did some tests on the old one first and said only 3 of the 4 channels was working, whatever that means. He didn't seem to think that explained all the intermittent outages, but said the modem was old and all of this is evidence that it might be stuttering towards a complete failure.

Hope he's right and it's fixed. Thanks for all your educational responses!

 

[EppyGA]

To wrap it up the guy came out today and replaced the modem. He did some tests on the old one first and said only 3 of the 4 channels was working, whatever that means. He didn't seem to think that explained all the intermittent outages, but said the modem was old and all of this is evidence that it might be stuttering towards a complete failure.

Hope he's right and it's fixed. Thanks for all your educational responses!

DOCSIS uses bonded channels to send data. In the TV world one channel is 6Mhz wide which limits data rate per channel to about 38 Mbps. DOCSIS bonds a group of channels together to allow for the higher data rates that we see today.