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psycho's avatar
psycho
New Contributor II
3 years ago

It's time for regular packet loss again!

Hi there, if you want some backstory, read these:

Cox Line Quality Issues - Regular Upstream packet loss - Internet - Internet Forum - Cox Support Forums

Line quality issues are back again... - Internet - Internet Forum - Cox Support Forums

[OK] Cox line quality issues are never-ending - Cox | DSLReports Forums

Welcome to episode three of "it's packet loss time again!" but this time with dishonest/ignorant service agents!

It's a common problem in my neighborhood. Happens almost all the time, but two or three times a year my Cox gigablast service gets to be unusable. It's generally due to squirrels chewing the lines, and/or noise at the local node. It always takes a line tech to fix this, but it seems impossible to skip a house-call, even with my account history.

So, I contact support. After getting disconnected a couple of times, and trying to tell them I don't need another new modem, we establish that I need a technician to come out.  I try to explain that I'm an expert at this, and it'd be really awesome if we didn't waste Cox's time, and my time, having to handle a house-call.  I ask "to be clear, this is for a line tech, and not a regular technician house call so I don't need to be at home, correct?"

"Yes sir, that is correct" came the answer.

Excellent I thought. I later went on the Cox website to check to see if there was any appointment data....

Looks like a house-call for a TV problem. TV? I don't even have Cox's TV service!

Here's my line quality, based upon pinging 1.1.1.1 in my router.  This is the last 7 days:

Quite a lot of T3 timeouts in my modem log also.

Signal levels in the modem:

I guess I'll make sure I'm at home in case a regular tech comes. Boy are they in for a lot of data. I hope they're alert!

OEC Fiber is installing in my neighborhood. It's VERY tempting, but I've been with Cox for 10 years now, at several different addresses. 

There is nothing to be said for customer loyalty any more, and they surely don't keep (or read the) notes on my account.

bad service
connection issues
internet
packet loss

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  • St8kout's avatar
    St8kout
    New Contributor III
    3 years ago

    I discovered early on that Internet speed and things like ping & stutter are unrelated. Paying for a more expensive speed plan didn't really change my online game play experience.

    I had a regular no-frills plan (forgot the speed) but after I got into online gaming and had some problems, I upgraded to the highest speed plan offered. Much to my disappointment nothing changed. The only differences were shorter download times when I would buy a game from Steam or download some new update. Game play remained unchanged. My ping was still too high, resulting in delayed responses.

    Outside of gaming, you might need higher speed for streaming 4k or 8k, as it takes more data to feed your 4K TV while streaming from Netflix or whoever. Btw, Netflix will tell you themselves that you only need a minimum of 5Mbps for regular HD, as long as that's the only thing online. If your kids are gaming in another room you might have some hiccups in streaming.

    I've been streaming from various sources using their free trials. For the same internet speed, most streaming was just fine while others sources had problems. It would mess them up when I wanted to rewind back a bit during a movie, sometimes making me start the movie from the beginning. So that's another variation to factor in.

    • psycho's avatar
      psycho
      New Contributor II
      3 years ago

      I understand completely what you're saying. I don't have a real speed problem.

      Latency and speed aren't too related, although your average speed will drop with excessive packet loss.  You can have the best ping time in the world, and if some of those packets get dropped, especially in UDP or other streams which don't use acknowledgements, you'll feel it in gaming, streaming, etc.

      This is a common occurrence for us here. Squirrels chew the cables, causes opens, shorts, intermittents, and that compounded with line noise just makes the whole internet experience poor. 

      My pain is with this happening multiple times a year, and having to jump through hoops to get it looked at.

  • JonathanJ's avatar
    JonathanJ
    Former Moderator
    3 years ago
    @psycho

    We are unable to schedule a maintenance technician without first scheduling a service call. I know this step may add more frustration, but please know that we need to follow our established procedures in this situation.

    Jonathan J
    Cox Moderator
    • psycho's avatar
      psycho
      New Contributor II
      3 years ago

      I understand that. They should have a star system in their customer notes so this stops wasting time and money. Something like:

      * = doesn't really know what the internet is.
      ** = has heard of TCP/IP.
      *** = average computer savvy user.
      **** = sets up their own modem and router.
      ***** = knows Cisco IOS, network guru.

      I wonder how much Cox could save on initial service tech calls by doing this....?

      • St8kout's avatar
        St8kout
        New Contributor III
        3 years ago

        While online you can get quick answers to almost everything, but of course if your Internet is down, so is your access to the very info you need to get back online.😏

        "I need my Internet so I can fix my Internet."

    • psycho's avatar
      psycho
      New Contributor II
      3 years ago

      During my [Cox Contractor] service call yesterday, they replaced the line from the pole to the house.
      There was no change.
      They said they couldn't escalate it due to a ticket already being entered two days ago.

      I called Cox, and they had me switch modems back from Cox's own Arris TM3402A to my own Arris CM8200A (also DOCSIS 3.1) to see if anything improved. It didn't, except I got a slight boost (1-2 dB) on my signal levels. S/N is good also at around 40 dB on most bonded channels.

      Next thing I know, there's an outage notification in the Cox app:



      Once the notification was cleared, I set away my Pingplotter again.... it looks like it was great overnight, and then after 10 this morning it all went to heck again:

      The saga continues......

      • psycho's avatar
        psycho
        New Contributor II
        3 years ago

        Now I have an additional outage notification.

        I'll update afterwards. At least this shows they know about it, right?