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wmcole's avatar
wmcole
New Contributor II
7 years ago

Slow Internet

A number of threads have been started about slow internet.  (http://forums.cox.com/forum_home/internet_forum/f/5/t/18484.aspx, http://forums.cox.com/forum_home/internet_forum/f/5/p/18566/69263.aspx#69263, http://forums.cox.com/forum_home/internet_forum/f/5/p/18540/69240.aspx#69240, ...)

The slow-down for me seemed to happen overnight, 08/01/17.  Watching the process of accessing web pages, or my non-cox legacy POP3 email server I noticed that the majority of "time lost" was in resolving the domain name.  This was not just associated with the initial web page or mail server request.  It also applied to loading elements within web pages (image, video or external content) that were referenced by a  domain name. Delays in loading individual content elements within a page were as long as those to open the initial web page.  Totaled up, I could often select a web page, go to the coffee pot and fill my cup and return to my computer, a 40' journey round trip, and the page would just be in the early stages of populating its non-text content all the while status bars proclaimed "waiting for <insert domain name target here>" for 20 - 30 seconds before each element loaded.

Either:

  1. Cox DNS servers suddenly became under powered / overwhelmed by name resolution requests, OR
  2. Cox was intercepting all DNS requests, and performing extra processing on the DNS references before passing the request on to the named server.

What made #2 a contender was the insertion of Cox advertising on couple pages requested from servers located thousands of miles away that are not served by Cox.  Also, it is likely, due to money in politics, that Ajit Pai (FCC Chairman) will rescind Net Neutrality rules in late September.  It could be that Cox has rolled out a "live beta" of their "Detect and Throttle" ISP software that would necessarily have to intercept DNS requests before routing them to a particular "speed queue".  This was somewhat supported by a little experiment I repeated at least a dozen times: With two tabs open in either of three browsers, select to load any web page you like that is not hosted by Cox.  Switch to the second tab, and select to load Cox.com.  When Cox page loads, log into your account.  When that page finishes loading, go back to the first tab, and it will not yet have finished loading all its content.

Whether the issue is #1, #2, or another possibility remains to be seen.  But it would be hard to imagine how this happened literally overnight at the first of the month without the roll-out of significant software or hardware updates to Cox DNS infrastructure.

So, in case this massive slow-down was not intentional I hope this posting is seen by a Cox ISP engineer, or passed along to them.  Trying to deal with support simply gets you "reset the modem... power cycle your router... it must be your browser / anti-virus / personal firewall / computer's internet / network settings..." when the problem is outside my (and all user's) walls.

Cox ISP Engineering - please take this seriously., investigate and resolve.  It is frustrating seeing response like dial-up days or bad DSL days.  Speed tests from Cox or independent servers appear proper for upload / download time, but latency is way to high even on Cox's speed test.  There is a problem and it is not within users' walls.

speed issues

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  • ChrisL's avatar
    ChrisL
    Former Moderator
    7 years ago
    @wmcole

    Looking form this end one of the upstream channels is reporting some power levels out of spec although what I suspect is happening in your case is probably some contention resulting from the modem not meeting the minimum requirements for your subscribed speeds. You could try bypassing any cable splitters in use to see if that helps with the power level concerns but upgrading the modem is probably a more permanent solution.

  • wmcole's avatar
    wmcole
    New Contributor II
    7 years ago

    Chris,

    Thanks for getting back to me.

    I only have two TV outlets and one outlet going direct to the Modem.  All other unused outlets in the house (two more) are capped with 75 ohm terminators. I had to put a drop amp in the attic before I had internet to get vaguely reliable TV signal (still dropping channels, programs go into "stop motion", macro-blocking artifacts frequent on most channels etc, etc,)  But when I added Internet, I let the line from the pole go bypass the drop amp (connected to the "thru" spigot) and only connected the TV outlets to the drop amp.

    Until 08/01/17 Internet speed was fine, latency in all speed tests (yours or speedtest.net) was low (9 - 13 ms).  Now the upload . download are about the same by latency runs 50 - 70 ms.  And for some reason, even after modem resets, it wants to connect me to servers out of San Diego, where I THINK (i.e. could be mis-remembering) that before I was connected out of servers in the LA area.

    Before I spend money on a newer modem (existing one is only 3 years old, DOCSIS 3.0) is there any amp you can recommend that I might try between the pole and the Internet socket to resolve the upstream channel issue, or is there a way, other than just looking at the modem status pages to test if the issue is with a failing modem?

    Thanks again for the reply.

  • ChrisL's avatar
    ChrisL
    Former Moderator
    7 years ago
    @wmcole

    The signal issue I had been seeing previously appears to now be gone. Perhaps it's an intermittent issues. You can check the cable connections for problems although having a technician come out is often necessary. If you're still having speed issues I'd start with the modem. The one you're currently using is one of the original 3.0 modems to be manufactured and only support 4x downstream channels.