Forum Discussion

New Contributor

6 years ago

Cox throttling speeds to gaming servers? I think so.

So I've just had it with Cox and their seemingly dishonest practice of blaming everything on the customer... I just got the 300mbps service in Las Vegas, and suspiciously get 500% increases in ping to gaming services as opposed to standard browsing/streaming service. I've validated everything is good to go on my end, and spent an hour or more being treated like a fool with Cox "technical support" people who don't even know what ping or traceroute are. As a background I've worked in IT for 15+ years and manage large load balanced networks like this for a living... Either there is an immense amount of ineptitude and apathy going on, or they're trying to push gamers to spend more money.

My modem is a DOCSIS 3.1 enabled modem.
My router is a gigabit router.
I'm wired into the router with CAT6 cable, directly.
My connection to the COX gateway is fast, and fine. The issue is the Cox internal routing.

In this case, I'm going to use League of Legends for an example since they post their server IPs publicly. All I need to do to show where the breakdown is occurring is run a simple tracert. It's clear that I'm getting solid ping to Cox's gateway - langbprj01-ae1.rd.la.cox.net [68.1.1.13] - but they're choosing to route gaming traffic specifically through some kind of WAF, concentrator, or other type of internal network device which is throttling all traffic to 60-70ms (at lowest)

The glaring technical evidence:

Tracing route to 104.160.131.3 over a maximum of 30 hops

1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2     9 ms     8 ms     7 ms 10.67.0.1
3     8 ms     8 ms     7 ms 100.127.4.164
4    11 ms     7 ms    11 ms 100.120.102.24
5    15 ms    16 ms    12 ms langbprj01-ae1.rd.la.cox.net [68.1.1.13]
6    60 ms    61 ms    61 ms 72.215.224.162 <---- the offending Cox IP.
7    61 ms    67 ms    65 ms 104.160.152.223
8    62 ms    61 ms    60 ms 104.160.152.227
9    67 ms    70 ms    70 ms 104.160.159.100
10    68 ms    67 ms    68 ms 104.160.131.3

So why are they throttling gaming speeds to 60-70ms? It doesn't really make sense until you realize they've just started marketing their "Cox Elite Gaming" service to unlock higher speeds for a premium monthly rate. The only problem? I CAN'T EVEN BUY THEIR EXTRA SERVICE IN MY AREA. Come on! If you're going to scam me into buying a premium service, at least offer the option to buy it!

My only option has been to reduce my service to the 150mgps service (why bother with bandwidth if it's slow), and subscribe to Haste for a slight ping boost to try and compensate. Note - COX - you're losing money here.

In the end I'm just getting screwed, and Cox is showing how dishonest they are. If they could explain exactly what that IP is and why they refuse to address it internally, maybe it will matter. Until then I'll be planning my exit ASAP.

Michael-MS
New Contributor III
6 years ago
60 ms to Chicago is fast my man. You’ll ping 20 to West coast servers. I’m in Las Vegas as well and Cox doesn’t have the best routing but it’s still good.

The IP you are tracing is owned by Riot Games in CHICAGO. The “offending” IP owned by Cox 72.215.224.162 is also located in Chicago. The jump in ping is the geographical travel from Nevada to Chicago.
- FatDaddyWampus
  Contributor
  6 years ago
  According to WHOIS, that IP is in Atlanta.
  
  https://www.whois.com/whois/72.215.224.162
  - Michael-MS
    New Contributor III
    6 years ago
    Geo location is not always accurate. I got different locations for all those IPs, including the last one at Riot Games. The point of my post is that it’s an east coast server and he’s a dumb **** for complaining about 60 ping.
    
    A better method when Geo isn’t accurate is to do a global ping test. https://tools.keycdn.com/ping You can see the Riot server pings 17ms from New York and 50+ from California. It’s clearly an east coast and Cox routing to it is perfectly good.
HandsomeChef
New Contributor III
6 years ago
I've been having severe up and down speed issues in the Las Vegas area for 2 months now. Went over 17 days of Oct. with little to no upload speed what-so-ever. Spent about 15 hours on the phone with various depts and tech personnel, all of which told me my intermittent issues were my fault/my equipment. Their techs come out, tell me its not my fault/my equipment, but no explanation. Was told for 2 weeks there was no work being done to affect my internet speeds in my area; came here, made a post and was told IMMEDIATELY there was network infrastructure and staging work that was causing outages.

As you state, this is either pure apathy, carelessness or just a complete failure of Cox communicating internally. Cox can be sure I'll be posting and encouraging ALL of my neighbors who are having issues as well to complain directly to the FTC regarding Cox's practices in this area. Not like it'll do anything.... I just want my service properly restored and supplied..
- Vegassun1
  New Contributor
  6 years ago
  Same here. These issues started around September for me and i've been getting only an upload speed of 2 or 3. Sometimes it's even below 1! I'll see how stable Centurylink's services are... and more than likely will be terminating my contract will Cox. Im paying $250 a month for crappy service.
  - Zurq
    Contributor II
    6 years ago
    I have came to the conclusion that the cox speed test server is broken, just look at this.
    
    COX Server
    
    Another Server
    
    COX SPEED TEST TOOL ON COX SERVER
KevinM2
Former Moderator
6 years ago
Hi Taur, we apologize for having caused anger or frustration with our internet service. Cox does not shape, block or throttle Internet traffic or engage in other network practices based on particular online content, protocols or applications a customer uses, or by a customer’s use of the network. I am including a link that discusses our internet service disclosures in greater detail.

www.cox.com/.../internet-service-disclosures.html

The Elite Gamer Service is only available in our Arizona market at this time. Would you be able to perform a traceroute on a hard-wired connection for us? Latency or packet loss within connecting networks outside of Cox’s network, such as gaming servers, are beyond the scope of our troubleshooting. -Kevin M. Cox Support Forum Moderator