Congestion and throttling.
Oh boy. Where do I start? About a month ago, or month and a half, I started getting terrible quality internet. I have Gigablast, I usually average 400-500 down and 20-30 up during peak hours. 750-800 down and ~35 up off peak. This time I had 260 down and.....wait for it.....0.01 up. Completely renders internet unusable. First thing I did was restart my modem and router. It had been a while. No change. Hmm. Okay. Maybe there is an outage. Checked the app (because apparently you can't do it on the web, and how could you with garbage internet?), no outages in my area. Fiddled around with it some more, and I decided to bite the bullet and call Cox. Oh, sir, have you tried resetting your router and modem? Naw, I've just been throwing rocks at my network. We are detecting some packet loss on your end, can't be our network, it's never on our end. We will refresh your modem, maybe that will help. How old is your modem and router? Not old, both are under a year old (I buy my own equipment - Docsis 3.1 modem that's on the approved list and google WiFi Mesh). Are you doing your speedtest directly at the modem? Yes. Oh, sir, I see an outage in you area now. I open the app, and now it's there. Alright, I'll just wait it out. Did other things and slept and had normal access the next day. Issue randomly persisted, tried running traceroutes, timeouts at hops, packet loss. Had this happen 8 times in one month.
Decided to call again. No outages in app.
Have you tried resetting your modem and router? Huff. Yes, yes I did. We aren't detecting any problems on our end. I can try refreshing your modem. You can, I just don't think that will change anything. I've already done this once in the past week. I asked if there is throttling in the area or congestion. Technician dances around first question, and says there could be congestion (as if you don't know? or can't find out?) in the area. We really need to reset our modem and router to see if they area causing the problem. Look, I've already tried that, before I even called you. It made no change 10 minutes ago, and I've got some pretty serious doubts it will change it now. But, I'll humor you and we can refresh the modem. And what a surprise, no change. Can you send a technician out to look at it? Sure, but it will be a 75 dollar service charge if it is inside the home (technician is completely convinced it is my hardware). Yeah bud, at this point, I really don't care. I'll pay a 75 dollar fee if it fixes my internet. I really don't believe it is my hardware. Works perfectly fine the other 18-odd hours of the day.
Technician shows. Seems confused about what I want him to do. I just want you to check for issues, you know, troubleshoot. If you don't find anything, you don't find anything. He finds a little ingress, makes some changes to remedy it, but says it is negligible, and likely not affecting me negatively to a great extent. Ok cool, well thanks, hopefully that fixes my issues. It doesn't. If anything, it has been happening more lately. Decided to upgrade my router (I disliked not being able to change certain settings with google wifi), and at the same time, possibly eliminate network issues. Installed a new one, ax and backwards compatible, connected with cat6 cable. Yesterday, Oct 27, 2020 at ~4:00p.m, I had a paltry 170 down and 0.00 up with the new router. Checked the app, outage in area...estimated repair time- 10:10p.m.
Lovely. I guess I'll just use my phone hotspot, because apparently that is more reliable than the 100 dollar a month internet I pay for. I sign up for updates via app and check for updates as the night goes on. No remedy. Go to work the following day (today the 28th) and while there pull a speedtest remotely: Down:851.48 Mbps - Up: 37.23 Mbps - Ping: 8ms. Great. Glad I can get what I pay for while I'm not at home. Arrive home with fingers crossed, and am able to use internet for about an hour before it goes to **. So peak hours makes my internet completely unusable.
I'm sooo glad my fiancée doesn't have to do work, and I don't have to do homework....oh wait...we do. But we can't.
This has happened 17 times in a month and a half. I am thoroughly fed up with this nonsense. Moreover, I'm tired of being told to reset my hardware like it's a revolutionary technique for internet repair, and the insistence about it. If the customer informs you they have already done that before calling you, move on to the next step. Check the customer call history and notes.
Lastly, a couple of clarifications: As far as throttling goes, I don't care to be throttled, at long as my internet is still usable. I understand network congestion happens, we can't all have large piece of pie. I get it. But 0.01 upload?!
Sincerely,
An incredibly patient, but extremely aggravated and angry Cox customer
P.S. - Writing this using my phone hotspot because my home internet can't be bothered to work properly.
