Internet Issues - Consistent Lost Packets North Phoenix, Arizona

Hi sjo102784, 

We can certainly get this reported. At this time I am not detecting packet loss. do you notice this issue happening at a specific time of day?

Greg P

Cox Forums Moderator

If you consult the images linked, that will give you a general idea as to when it occurs.  I tend to see this between 6AM to 9AM and 6PM to 11PM on weekdays and at various times during the weekend. 

The issue is sporadic and does not occur consistently.  Some weeks it will occur a few days, and other weeks it will happen several days consecutively.  Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of this week were abysmal.  Other people in my area are telling me they're experiencing the same symptoms. 

In addition, my modem should demonstrate the hundreds of thousands of corrections necessary when dealing with the problems of infrastructure beyond my home.  I've attached images of the status page in this post. 

Karen,

Would you be able to post the update from your escalation team here?  There are 40-50 users minimum on this forum who have been experiencing these issues.  Its been pretty systemic and most of us are limited to only cox service.

Major packet loss again last night, between 6PM and 10PM.  Attached is another screenshot depicting the packet loss during that time period, along with another screenshot of my modem indicating larger number of corrected packets when compared to the previous day, due to the high amount of packet loss between 6 and 10PM last night.  

Packet loss:

Modem corrections:

Well, at 5:15 AM, my internet went down entirely. All the lights on modem were off and it reset. Came back up and no packet loss with 90 mbps down and 12 up. Tech support did try to reset the modem 6 hours ago and it didn't help.  But someone did something this morning to fix it. Thanks!  Good luck on your Phoenix issue!

Try Ping Plotter - it's the program I used to narrow down the issues of packet loss and high latency during outages.  You're reporting the exact same symptoms I had - which turned out to be bad Cox infrastructure/equipment in my area.  

Don't make the same mistake I did - get data right away, and have techs come out during peak times when the packet loss is likely to occur.  If you see a trend (which I did this week), see if they can come out and test when packet loss is most likely to happen - and request an actual Cox employee.  I'm not sure about Vegas, but the non-Cox/outsourced techs they use in the Phoenix area are very very very bad. In the course of troubleshooting this, I was told by an outsourced Cox in home tech that my problems were due to "having too many things plugged in".  

It took thirteen on site tech visits before Cox finally confirmed the packet loss issue while excluding my internal network.  Thirteen.  Most of which were outsourced technicians who wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible, to theoretically maximize the number of visits and subsequent payments they receive.  

I'm fairly sure you are if you're streaming - but testing while hard wired to your modem/router is the way to go.  To vet my network I tested while hooked up directly to my modem and had data showing the issues persisted with that setup as well.  

Another thing to try would be to manually assign DNS servers.  This didn't help me, but if Cox's DNS servers are problematic, it might help.  Try 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 or 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.  Both are low latency/reputable DNS servers.  

If all else fails and you have data to show that Cox's infrastructure is the problem, file a complaint with the FCC.  The more records the FCC has, the more data about Cox's aging and unreliable infrastructure will be in the public records.  https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/articles/115002206106

Good luck!

Thanks Becky for the response. I actually went out and bought a brand new modem because that's what tech support said as well. But it didn't fix it. It was a service outage that fixed itself later that morning. Everything has been okay since then.

Experiencing similar issues with packet loss - former network engineer but know jack about docsis/"cable" technology. Your posts are disheartening as you've had this for three months and I've only been working with Cox support for about a week.

Just through googling I see tons of people having this issue, I don't know how it couldn't be an infrastructure issue. If you start experiencing packet loss the minute you leave your gateway it is either cabling or infrastructure, and I wish their phone techs were able actually look at issues and not just "Oh we pinged your modem and it's fine."

If it's an intermittent problem you have to look at logs and see what's going on, you can't just say "looks fine now". I find it insane that their extent of troubleshooting is 'pinging' the modem. I asked if they have looking glass tools or anyway of looking at logs, which of course they don't.

Interesting.  Thanks for posting this

I'm going to throw my hat in the ring here as well. I am in North Scottsdale (far north, nearly Cave Creek) and we've been having noticeable problems for a few weeks now. We have the 300 level of service. Today will be a third visit from a tech. I seriously doubt anything will be found in the house. Also, as the tech is coming at 1PM today I doubt they'll find anything going on. The main problem is serious degradation of upload speed. Usually I notice it while gaming. This morning I noticed it just because I started running speedtest as soon as I got out of bed. The problem lasted for an hour after than point. When this occurs it corrects itself after a while and stays fine for a time. I try and run speed tests as soon as I notice it. On many occasions the upload test will totally fail. those results do not save however. Some tests show much slower results than expected. but at least those results save and are reviewable. I just installed ping plotter today so next time I have an issue (probably this evening) I'll be able to run it as well as speedtest. The modem was replaced by a tech three days ago and there are no error logs on the new modem. The previous modem had recorded many, many, errors. When the tech was here three days ago everything in the house checked out ok, but he replaced the modem and signal amp. To say the least that has not fixed the problem. Now if all I was doing was web browsing, or even streaming video I'd probably never notice the problem. When these faults occur the download degrades. Sometimes this degradation is well over 50%, but you can still get away with web browsing or even streaming. It becomes noticeable when gaming as the upload hits zero or very near zero. So I suspect Cox's problem is a lot bigger than they think. Looking at the demographic in my neighborhood I don't think there's a lot of gamers here. So maybe not so many complaints coming in. I'll see what happens after the tech visit today, but I'm not very optimistic.

Yes, thank you. The tech was very helpful and made sure I knew what he found out.  Hopefully this does the trick. Thanks again.

I’ve been experiencing severe packet loss in north Las Vegas for almost a month now, had my modem replaced twice and that did nothing, always starts around 6-7pm and lasts until the morning, this is getting rediculous 

Yes, same thing here.  I've been told this is tied to over utilization of nodes in my area due to "unanticipated population growth".  Which is a greasy way of saying they don't want to invest in additional infrastructure to alleviate network bottling.  Not sure if Vegas is the same as here, but I've heard from others in the SW area who experience the same exact thing.  

I'd suggest gathering as much data as possible and contacting any local or federal regulatory agencies (FCC/FTC for instance).  

Becky - if you look at the previous post, I linked a graph demonstrating continuing packet loss and high latency through around 1AM last night.  So no, the issue has not improved. 

As you can tell by my post, this has been some type of ingress or infrastructure problem for months and months.  Your techs have been out to the node multiple times while outages are occurring.  Why is there not a permanent fix in place? 

You're suggesting having a 14th in home appointment may be necessary when your last in home technician and two of your tier 2 representatives confirmed the issue to be outside of my home?  What evidence can you provide in this public forum that demonstrates the node level issues have been resolved?  I'm seeing the exact same behavior I was seeing four months ago, long before the "node level issue" had been "resolved".  

That sounds very illogical and anti-consumer.  Perhaps your network engineers should look at the data I've provided and figure out what infrastructure problems are persisting that would cause 5-30% packet loss consistently during peak for a consumer.  

Or perhaps your company isn't interested in fixing the problem considering there is no parallel competitor in my area of the market? 

The most recent tier 2 confirmation of 12% packet loss between their pinging location and my modem was during an outage on December 1, four days ago.  This excludes all of the hardware in my home and is indicative of a problem with your infrastructure, as I have mentioned in dozens of previous posts. 

I have the conversation recorded and am willing to post a link to this forum if you don't believe the diagnostic data your own employees can provide

Two days without a response so far.