Why are you severing my connection

"This IS a problem with you killing my internet connect to the house at the modem when you detect a large upload."

If your a IT professional with 25 years experience, can you do a little better job explaining the problem then "killing my internet"? What exactly is happening? Do you lose DNS? IP? Forced TCP idle? What modem do you have? Anything in the logs? This seems more like a rant then a request for technical assistance. 

Are you aware that a boycott usually entails actually staying away and/or stopping use of the particular thing or entity being boycotted until the situation or event that caused the boycotter to boycott is rectified to the boycotters satisfaction?

Jerry said:
Are you aware that a boycott usually entails actually staying away and/or stopping use of the particular thing

What? Did OP say he was boycotting Cox? Im confused.

It's pretty straight forward. If I attempt to use a cloud service - say Amazon Cloud Drive for example, my cable modem disconnects almost immediately. Reboot the router and all is well again until I try to the upload again. 

I haven't had any problems since I disabled Amazon cloud services. 

I don't see that as a rant. Don't need a log to troubleshoot that. It's like Cox is blocking my IP or Mac address to my cable modem when it sees cloud upload traffic, and rebooting the cable modem fixes it every time.

At first I thought maybe my wireless router or my Mac was the problem. But then all my devices dropped, and I traced the connection issues back to the router.

I'd say it was a bad modem - but problem started when I started uploading to Amazon cloud and stopped when I discontinued.

So I don't know why Cox is blocking this!

Martin

Martin B said:
my router disconnects almost immediately

What do you mean it "disconnects"? It reboots? It looses its DHCP lease? Your describing the symptom, I am asking what the technical details are. 

Martin B said:
Reboot the router and all is well again until I try to the upload again.

Does this happen if you connect direct to the modem?

Martin B said:

It's like Cox is blocking my IP or Mac address to my cable modem when it sees cloud upload traffic, and rebooting the cable modem fixes it every time.

Rebooting your router and/or modem normally doesn't change your IP. Do you find that your IP changes after the reboot? Also, I thought you said rebooting the router fixes it, not the modem. Which one is it?

Martin B said:

So I don't know why Cox is blocking this!

Doesn't sound like Cox is blocking it. If they were, it wouldn't work at all. Blocks aren't dynamic. Sounds like what ever service your running for the backup is causing your router to have problems. Maybe its a resource issue, maybe its a routing issue, thats why I asked whats in the logs. If the router is requiring a reboot, then there should be some record of the problem that is requiring the reboot.

Sorry - in my haste to type and not proofread I typed router and meant modem.

So just to clarify. Here is what I am seeing

1. All is well - working fine for days and weeks. All devices (computers, laptops, streaming, phones)

2. Start an upload to Amazon - internet connection breaks. Can ping wireless router and local network devices, etc. All devices lose connectivity. Wireless router throws internet connection error.

3. Cable modem not responsive - reboot it - internet restored - wireless router comes back online and internet service restored to all devices. Only action needed to intervene was the cable modem reboot.

4. Problem remains gone until I start an upload again

You are right - my IP isn't changing but rebooting the cable modem is resolving the issue. Bandaid is not to upload this way.  But I'm at a loss as why an upload would kill internet to my router and of course devices hardwired and wifi connected to it.

Cable modem is DOCSIS 3.0 compliant (motorola device - SB6120). Maybe 2 years old.

When this happens my Apple Time Capsule light goes orange and utility reports no internet connection until I reboot cable modem.

Any further thoughts? 

I have it on my weekend list to try uploading to a different cloud service like MS or Cox or Adobe. I upload files to my work via VPN - and post pictures on a one by one basis to my Adobe drive or MS docs on a one-by-one basis and never a problem.

But the problem seems to occur when I try and fire off a backup to Amazon (they offer me unlimited storage). After 2-3 minutes and about 100-200mb that's when the trouble starts - almost like a large sustained upload triggers a rule on the COX side that someone is doing something bad.

??

Ubiquitousness, syntax, grammar. Consistent in posts across all manner of forums. Can't hide it. Like DNA. A dead giveaway.

Martin B said:
Can ping wireless router and local network devices, etc

What happens when you try to ping Cox.net or 8.8.8.8? Also, can you ping 192.168.100.1?

Martin B said:
Cable modem not responsive

What do you mean not responsive? Can you access it via 192.168.100.1?

Martin B said:
my Apple Time Capsule light goes orange and utility reports no internet connection

What does that represent? Lack of a IP? Lack of a gateway address? I am not familiar with Apple light sequences. Also, what does it say in the time capsule's logs? Anything in the modem's logs from around that time?

Martin B said:
Any further thoughts? 

Hard to say without know technically what is happening. The fact that rebooting fixes the issue says to me that it's probably something from the modem up. I have heard of some modems crashing if the traffic upload exceeds the throughput restrictions placed on the modem to dictate your speed. Do you have other uploads applications besides Amazon that would replicate the same traffic and connections? IE Googledrive or Dropbox? See if those cause the same issue? I don't see why it would be based on bandwidth use, because you say other such usage doesn't cause the problem. Cox can't tell the difference between a upload to one server Vs another..it's all the same packets to them. Also, I looked around google and I can't find anyone else having this issue, and you would think Amazon is a big enough name that it would be causing a outcry. 

Haha! Can't argue that and won't. I am a lazy typist on forums! Even worse on my phone where I do a lot of it! Won't deny that!!! Doesn't mean I am a bad person!  Doesn't mean I don't have a real issue either.

I don't tend to reach out on a forum unless o am really baffled. This upload issue has me scratching my head. So no it's not a rant - but I have had my shares of challenge with my services from Cox - just like a lot of people. Not saying it's bad - but after 15 years on the service to start having them now is a little annoying. Just need a better more modern way to backup my data and cloud is a good answer over physical drive rotation. Especially since I have many devices and travel a lot!

Be nice - don't judge!

I think you are on to something about the modem crashing due to upload restrictions. Too bad I don't have a different model. But yeah I do have other cloud services that work fine.

But come to think of it for example I recently uploaded 1gb of photos and video to a Dropbox account  - it handled this fine.  Ran for 20-30 minutes and completed fine.

So I wonder what a amazon's cloud app is doing differently to trigger this. Unfortunately, Apple Time capsule loses connection and I can't ping the Cox Gateway without a reboot of the modem and then all is well again. Not much of a log - just a simple visual app that shows the connection between the Internet and router with an error indicator. Not all that helpful.

Is it maybe time to invest in a newer model modem? 

Martin B said:
Apple Time capsule loses connection and I can't ping the Cox Gateway without a reboot of the modem

When you say the gateway, do you mean the public gateway IP (IE 68.9.x.x) or something else? Can you ping the modem @ 192.168.100.1?

Martin B said:
Not much of a lo

If you have a older Airport and running Airport Utility 5.6 or earlier, the logs should be visable;  Advanced > Logs and Statistics button. For the modem, you should be able to find them at http://192.168.100.1/cmLogs.htm Be sure to remove any MAC address or public IPs before posting. 

Martin B said:
Is it maybe time to invest in a newer model modem? 

If you have Preffered or higher, then it couldn't hurt, but Im not sure the modem is the problem. The modem is a transparent bridge, so think of it like a switch, if one kind of data to one location is working, but the same kind of data to a different location isn't, then its not a problem with the hardware. With that said, I guess it's possible Amazon uses some kind of application layer that conflicts with the modems firmware, but thats a stretch. 

I would suggest trying to connect your PC direct to the modem and trying a upload and see if that causes the same problem. If it does, I would try having someone at Cox check to see if there are any updates available for your modem's firmware. I would also try over on Amazon's forum and see if anyone is having a similar problem. Focus on the connection failure after a certain amount of upload, since that seems to be the key.

::Edit:: I took a peek over at Amazon's forum and found this post from around Sept 8th:

"I would like to bring to your kind notice that, due to technical glitch on our servers, almost all our customer's are experiencing issues accessing their Cloud Content. We're deeply sorry for the inconvenience caused. "

So maybe there is some issue where you are reaching some saturation point with their servers and the problem is happening on their end? Rebooting the router may disconnect/reconnect the connection, creating a new session with the server. To be honest though, I don't know enough about how their system works to be sure. It does confirm known issues with their cloud backup though.

FYI Cox uses Amazon Cloud Services (AWS) to route traffic across the country. 

BTW Martin, my previous posts were not directed at you. Sorry about that.

Gateway can't ping (68.9.x.x). Modem pings but only if I directly hardware - since I lose connectivity to it once my airport drops it....

I'm thinking my old router has a fairly small upload speed limit after being 2-3 years old.

Was thinking about just replacing it - it's time! Can't hurt anyway. I'm curious if Amazon works after that. The ARRIS 6141 seems capable with 150mb upload speed and 343 download. I'm on cox premier (100mb) but thinking about the 150mb service soon.

I'm on the latest version of Airport utility last msgs in the log are as follows (mac cleared)... No previous messages since August. These showed up before the reboot event....(When I tried rebooting my airport thinking that was the issue..

Martin B said:
Gateway can't ping (68.9.x.x). Modem pings but only if I directly hardware -

Could you clarify? What do you mean by gateway? And what IP did you ping?

Martin B said:
I'm thinking my old router has a fairly small upload speed limit after being 2-3 years old.

Do you mean modem again? The SB6120 is a 4x4 DOCSIS 3.0 modem, and the SB6141 is a 8x4 DOCSIS 3.0 modem. 8 channels down, and 4 channels up, so upgrading from a SB6120 to a SB6141 might help your download, but I doubt it will do much for your upload, since their upload capabilities are the same. Also, I would first bypass the router and connect direct to the modem and make sure the problem still occurs. No point upgrading the modem if you can confirm it has nothing to do with it.

Martin B said:
I'm on the latest version of Airport utility last msgs in the log are as follows (mac cleared).

Could you copy/paste the Airport logs? I don't know what (mac cleared) means.

Martin B said:
. These showed up before the reboot event.

Those would have happened during the reboot. Thats basically the modem contacting Cox and confirming the configuration file, what determines your speed, is correct for your account. Perfectly normal. You can confirm by manually rebooting and seeing the same logs.

PS. Did you see my edit showing the Amazon forum post reporting a known issue with Amazon Cloud? See post above.

Eh - given that the only place I have seen an issue right now is Amazon, I'm just going to abandon that approach right now. You could be right - who knows what issues Amazon has had or is having, and since my LAN and WAN is perfectly stable without introducing Amazon it's just not worth the time and effort right now.

I only used Amazon because they offered free cloud unlimited for 6 months. There are other options I can try. If I run into this again, then I'll do some further troubleshooting. Like suggested, I can hard wire into the modem (which for some reason I love to keep calling a router!! btw!!! Lame!!! haha!).

Nothing else in the logs from the Airport to give a clue - from what I can tell it's like the Airport hasn't seen any problem other than temporary loss of internet connection a few times.

I probably just uncovered some odd combination of software and hardware. Disappointing - sure a little - but it's not stopping me from doing too much right now - so I've stepped back a little. Just annoying that's all. I don't mind something failing or being slow - but hate when software breaks connections! haha.

Thanks anyway though - appreciate the ideas.