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cardboardbox112's avatar
cardboardbox112
New Contributor
4 years ago

Paying for Gigablast, 20% packet loss? pingplotter results

Over the past year, ive had problems with cox internet and latency 120ms+ in games such as league, overwatch, apex. I am hardwired via ethernet Cat6 cable into the modem, my mom and I are the only people who live here and use the internet. I have the panoramic modem that they give you and have even tested other modems and routers and still 120ms. I downloaded pingplotter and have ran it for 10 minutes to various ip's,  I don't know how to read it so I'm hoping someone can give me a detailed description of what it says so I can learn what I need to say when I call up cox.

https://imgur.com/a/HfHTMnF

this is my pingplotter results only ran it for around 10 minutes

9 Replies

  • Cyrusgm's avatar
    Cyrusgm
    New Contributor II

    There's likely nothing you can do.  I basically can't play games anymore, and after running loops with tech support I finally filed an FCC complaint, to which Cox finally admitted that my node is over-utilized and there's nothing I could do to make it better.  They said they hope to have my node upgraded by Q4, but it's gotten so bad I'm actually looking to move someplace that has any ISP other than Cox.

  • Cweis's avatar
    Cweis
    New Contributor II

    I have had the exact same issues for years now in my neighborhood. I have had countless techs come out to the neighborhood and stand on the street with their computers telling me they can't do anything. When the connection is good it's good but that's rare. Huge packet loss in league and multiple outages that claim to have been "fixed". Outages occur almost weekly. It's probably something with the infrastructure so I doubt it'll ever be fixed. It'd cost them too much money. But here we are paying 140$/m for years and they rack in the money blatantly refusing to improve our experience.

    • Cweis's avatar
      Cweis
      New Contributor II

      And would you look at that. Another outage 3rd day in a row after it was "fixed" yesterday.

  • wildbailey's avatar
    wildbailey
    New Contributor III

    This looks pretty identical to my situation: https://forums.cox.com/forum_home/internet_forum/f/internet-forum/28432/upstream-packet-loss-and-jitter

    The first hop is your modem. Everything looks fine there, so you can likely rule out an issue with the connection between your computer and the modem. 

    What we should look for is "continuous" packet loss (where a similar amount of packet loss continues all the way down to the bottom, ignoring any blank hops). This begins at hop 2 in your screenshots, which means the packet loss and high latency is starting at – or somewhere between  the modem and that second hop, which is a device in your area managed by Cox.

    My personal recommendation is to email cox.help@cox.com and ask them to check the signals to/from your modem. Include your PingPlotter screenshots and the same details about in-game latency from your post. They will be able to confirm or rule out any issues with the modem's connection. 

    If they say that everything looks fine, then this might just be another case of congestion, where pre-pandemic Cox didn't expect so much traffic from your area and sold more bandwidth than their infrastructure could reliably handle. If the packet loss/latency is higher during the day (~ 7am-10pm) and calms down in the middle of the night, then it fits what I call the "neighborhood congestion pattern".

    In my case, a technician came out and checked the lines in person first. He confirmed everything was in good shape, so I reached out over email hoping they could check further into it. After some back and forth, they confirmed that my issue looks to be from "increased usage in the area", that they are planning upgrades to the local infrastructure to handle more load, and offered me an estimated completion time.

    • Bruce's avatar
      Bruce
      Honored Contributor III
      sold more bandwidth than their infrastructure could reliably handle

      Whenever I read this statement, I can't help but imagine a typical Cox node...

  • JonathanJ's avatar
    JonathanJ
    Former Moderator
    @Cardboardbox1121


    I apologize for the frustration you’ve been experiencing with your Cox services and I want to help. If you can email your full name and the street address on your Cox account cox.help@cox.com, I’ll be happy to investigate.

    Jonathan J
    Cox Moderator

  • InnocentSoju's avatar
    InnocentSoju
    New Contributor II

    Yeah its gotten so bad that I bought something called shadow so I can play games. Even thought I have a beefy pc, the internet provided by cox isn't enough. I used my 5G hotspot as well and it runs better than cox hard wired. 

    • Allan's avatar
      Allan
      Moderator
      @InnocentSoju, I recommend sending us an email with your full name, address, and a brief description of this issue to cox.help@cox.com. -Allan, Cox Support Forums Moderator.
  • trev_io's avatar
    trev_io
    New Contributor III

    Same issue here looking into using a cellular wifi router with data plan instead at this point.  Sad that hardwired ethernet cant compete with cell service.  Its not like they are in a rush to fix the node because there is not another ISP in the area that users can switch to.  Makes me so upset that even though I dont want to move I may have to just to get reliable internet how do we allow companies to do this.