Nightly degradation
Re-activated internet service 2 weeks ago....Still had gateway from when we turned the service off about 9 months ago. Despite being Docsis 3.0, we were told that we "had" to come get a newer gateway. Ok fine....we do that and the service was perfectly fine for the first week. Then about a week ago we started noticing that the internet speeds would start degrading each night between 11pm and 1am. We have the 150/10 plan and while these speeds are achieved all day long, every single night they start degrading....usually it will go from 150+ right down to 25, and from there it proceeds to degrade at a rate of roughly 25% per hour. So by 3-4am, my available download bandwidth will be sitting under 1.0.....until it eventually just stop working all together. At that point I usually have my nightly call with Cox Tech support, where they ask me to go through the same troubleshooting steps. I get that in order for them to anything (schedule a tech to come out) they have to follow their own protocols in order to escalate....but at what point does this nonsense stop? I've called in 4 times thus far....with each tech support rep coming to a different conclusion and offering different levels of help.
Being in the IT field, I did my own troubleshooting long before I gave in a called Cox. Long story short, regardless of the degradation that occurs nightly, every trace that I have run has a recurring theme. Massive packet loss at the same COX node. So, I made sure I let the tech support people know that I knew and could see where the issue was. Yet their protocol requires that a tech comes out to "investigate". Ok fine.....first tech came out two days ago.....and as I told him....he did not find any issues inside the house. He proceeded to climb up the pole outside the house and replaced the line coming in but was clear that it probably wouldn't do anything.
While he was literally 40 feet up the pole, an interesting thing happened. A nice pickup truck pulled up next to him and the individual proceeded to have a fairly lengthy conversation (7-10 minutes) with him. I witnessed the whole thing, however I obviously could not hear what was being discussed. The tech comes back inside and immediately tells me who it was and what was discussed. Turns out the guy is some "boss" that works for Cox and also happens to live in the neighborhood. Apparently when they guy saw the tech up on the pole he decided that he would come over and let him know not to "waste his time" going up there because the issue that we were having is very likely the same issue everyone in the neighborhood is and has been having for quite some time. He went to tell the tech that this is a known issue....which is "specifically at the node down the street" and that Cox is fully aware of it.
So I guess this is one of those situations where Cox is gonna play this game where they know what the problem is but wont do anything about it until either enough people complain....which is likely never gonna happen......or until the FCC gets involved. At this point it seems like getting the FCC involved is the only course of action for the customers. Cox is not meeting their SLA's by any stretch of the imagination which is simply unacceptable.
So in closing....at this point they've scheduled another tech to come out to my house again....as if he is going to reach some different conclusion. If I had to bet, I would say that the most likely cause of this repeating nightly degradation of my service is intentional throttling. I could be wrong and I hope I am....but what else could cause this to happen every single night...like clockwork???
To me, this ultimately just boils down to a dollars and cents...like most things in life. If I cancel my service...sure Cox will lose a 20 year customer and they will be out some recurring revenue, however it likely would cost more for them to go out to that node and do what needs to be done. Most people aren't going to call tech support, most people aren't going to post on these forums.....and most people will just accept the service as it is. So the numbers game works in their favor....and I guess I can't blame them for using that business model. That said, I refuse to accept my current level of service.