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Bardoon's avatar
Bardoon
New Contributor II
4 years ago

Gigablast Speed way below Expected in Northern Virginia

I hate to add to the list but I'm another Gigablast customer who is not receiving anything NEAR the Gigablast speeds after moving about 3 miles to a Cox area.  In fact, my speeds have gotten worse.  I came from a Comcast/Xfinity area where my speeds were much better and to be honest...I kind of miss them.

I set up everything, I'm rather tech-savvy so I had a brand new Netgear CM1200 modem (had a CM1000 before) and Nighthawk X4S Router (R7800) set up in early May. Previously-used and reliable CAT6/7 cables.  Got everything hooked up and Cox came out to fix some wiring and such.  I get online and my speeds at best are hitting 370 mbps DOWN/and the advertised 35 mbps UP for my area.  I have my iMac wired into the router (and have swapped it into the modem for some tests) and link speed for the ethernet is definitely 1 gig.  Upload speeds are consistent as advertised.

We had an outage or SOMETHING yesterday on Friday. May 7th according to Cox Internet Support and not my speed are even WORST...I'm hitting 285 DOWN and still got the 35 UP.  What the heck?

I had a tech out a few days before to check wiring and the usual.  He said the typical "you should be getting gig speeds"..I'm not even getting HALF of gig speeds.  He couldn't come in to check the modem but we did a swap with a Panoramic Cox Modem and the speeds were the SAME (370 DOWN/35 UP).  Completely unacceptable and I'm a *new* customer (my parents had Cox when I lived at home).  I understand everyone is at home and such, but how are my speeds progressively getting worse?

Anyone else in the Northern Virginia area (I'm in Falls Church/Bailey's Crossroads) that has similar experiences?  Any advice?  Thanks.

22 Replies

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  • Bardoon's avatar
    Bardoon
    New Contributor II

    Am I on a node that doesn't have DOCSIS 3.1?

    • dchadd's avatar
      dchadd
      New Contributor III

      Go to 192.168.100.1 in an internet browser and post screenshots of your signal levels and event log. If it asks for a password try admin/admin admin/password admin/motorola

      You could try taking the modem outside to the demarc where he tested it eliminating all of the house wiring. If it is still testing at a slow speed it's likely the same oversubscribed node issues 80+% of people are facing. Their nodes can only reliably service a certain amount of houses which they oversubscribed before upgrading infrastructure. Everyone is sharing a pipe and it's only so big. Have you spoken to your neighbors to see if they also have the same issue?

      I was having the same issue, in addition to packet loss and high jitter. They finally, after about 8 months, split my node last month. After the node split I am getting 700+Mb download/35up. Still isn't 100% though, some peak times still have packet loss and have slower speeds.

      • Bardoon's avatar
        Bardoon
        New Contributor II

        Thanks dchadd.  Are you in NOVA too?

        I'll try the demarc a little later and we're still getting settled in our new home.  Internet is still bad..barely pushing 280 DOWN/35 UP.

        I just visited my old home with Xfinity and it's still blazing over there, got over 500+ DOWN on my iPhone via Wifi.  So disappointing to come back to half that here.

        Also, I did a packet loss test and haven't had much packet loss.  More often than not my packet loss is 0%

    • MaryF's avatar
      MaryF
      Former Moderator
      Hi Bardoon, we show that your area supports DOCSIS 3.1 If your issue continues, we may need to set up a follow up visit to take another look at your account. Please send us an email to cox.help@cox.com with your full name, account holder's name, street address, and a link to your forum thread or details of your issue so we can further assist. -Mary
  • Bardoon's avatar
    Bardoon
    New Contributor II

    Well...spoke too soon. The Uncorrectable are all back:

    Channel Lock Status Modulation Channel ID Frequency Power SNR Correctables Uncorrectables
    1 Locked QAM256 30 849000000 Hz 0.6 dBmV 40 dB 345 828
    2 Locked QAM256 1 675000000 Hz 2.4 dBmV 40.3 dB 333 859
    3 Locked QAM256 2 681000000 Hz 2.2 dBmV 40.8 dB 291 890
    4 Locked QAM256 3 687000000 Hz 2.3 dBmV 40.9 dB 303 879
    5 Locked QAM256 4 693000000 Hz 2 dBmV 41 dB 281 883
    6 Locked QAM256 9 723000000 Hz 1.8 dBmV 40.8 dB 261 879
    7 Locked QAM256 10 729000000 Hz 1.9 dBmV 41 dB 283 876
    8 Locked QAM256 11 735000000 Hz 1.6 dBmV 41 dB 277 874
    9 Locked QAM256 12 741000000 Hz 1.6 dBmV 41 dB 257 906
    10 Locked QAM256 17 771000000 Hz 0.2 dBmV 40.7 dB 287 883
    11 Locked QAM256 18 777000000 Hz -0.6 dBmV 40.3 dB 312 836
    12 Locked QAM256 19 783000000 Hz -1.3 dBmV 39.9 dB 311 857
    13 Locked QAM256 20 789000000 Hz -2.6 dBmV 39.1 dB 292 873
    14 Locked QAM256 21 795000000 Hz -4.3 dBmV 38.1 dB 294 858
    15 Locked QAM256 22 801000000 Hz -4.8 dBmV 37.6 dB 320 863
    16 Locked QAM256 25 819000000 Hz -1.6 dBmV 39.3 dB 287 880
    17 Locked QAM256 26 825000000 Hz -0.7 dBmV 39.9 dB 319 856
    18 Locked QAM256 27 831000000 Hz -0.2 dBmV 39.7 dB 325 823
    19 Locked QAM256 28 837000000 Hz 0.1 dBmV 39.2 dB 360 811
    20 Locked QAM256 29 843000000 Hz 0.3 dBmV 39.4 dB 319 846
    21 Locked QAM256 33 345000000 Hz 2.8 dBmV 41.9 dB 79 152
    22 Locked QAM256 34 351000000 Hz 2.8 dBmV 42.3 dB 409 1128
    23 Locked QAM256 35 357000000 Hz 2.6 dBmV 42.1 dB 412 1182
    24 Locked QAM256 36 363000000 Hz 2.7 dBmV 42.2 dB 411 1154
    25 Locked QAM256 37 369000000 Hz 2.7 dBmV 42.2 dB 384 1221
    26 Locked QAM256 38 375000000 Hz 2.6 dBmV 42.2 dB 376 1199
    27 Locked QAM256 41 393000000 Hz 2.5 dBmV 42.2 dB 394 1132
    28 Locked QAM256 42 399000000 Hz 2.6 dBmV 42.2 dB 374 1030
    29 Locked QAM256 43 405000000 Hz 2.7 dBmV 42.3 dB 367 1039
    30 Locked QAM256 44 411000000 Hz 2.6 dBmV 42.2 dB 358 1053
    31 Locked QAM256 45 417000000 Hz 2.5 dBmV 42.1 dB 352 1015
    32 Locked QAM256 46 423000000 Hz 2.4 dBmV 42.1 dB 331 980
  • Bardoon's avatar
    Bardoon
    New Contributor II

    So I had a tech come out, he was awesome.  Very detailed and helped troubleshoot more than the last one.  He fixed some of the wire crimping that the previous one did and we tried everything again.  Previous crimping and connections wasn't so good and he showed me why.

    This is VERY strange - He was getting over 900 Mbps down when we tested the connections and my modem on his device.  We were able to hook it directly because my connection box internally and modem is close to the outside back door so we were able to use my extended cables so he didn't step inside.  We speculated that maybe the inside crimps jobs might be causing issues...but we barely pushed ~250-280 down on my laptop wired to the modem.  Why is his device showing over 900 on the modem and my wired laptop was MUCH less?  After he left, I tried another test...I avoided the coax that comes into my house and wired one outside in the COX box to their orange wire.  This should've been getting 900 Mbps down...BUT NO, ~250 Mbps again.  Is it possible that the COX set-up in the demarcation point (there's a metal connection between the COX orange cable and the cable that comes into my house) needs to be replaced?

    I really liked the tech, he was detail-oriented and even showed me what he was seeing so I was able to validate his findings.  This is a real head-scratcher.

    Anyone with similar experiences?

    • ccs46's avatar
      ccs46
      New Contributor II

      Does your laptop have a Gigabit ethernet adapter?

      • Bardoon's avatar
        Bardoon
        New Contributor II

        Yes, and I was using a Cat8 and Cat7 cables to test