Forum Discussion

CochiseKev's avatar
CochiseKev
New Contributor
2 months ago

super slow speeds 0645-1845 daily

OK this is weird..

We have 500/10 service at home, same plan for years now. For the last 6-8 weeks, all day long our downstream speed hovers at about 10 mbps instead of 500 as it should be. Upstream unaffected - also stays around 10, which is where it belongs.

Went through 2 very painful tech support calls and after much arm-twisting, finally got them to schedule a truck roll. Tech comes out and finds that the line from the Cox terminal in front our house, to the connection on the house, to be very "noisy" due to the fact it was buried in the ground without being installed in conduit. He ASSumes this must be what's causing our anemic speeds. At the time I hadn't yet determined that it was a time-of-day specific thing so it made sense to me too. He ran a temp line from the street, and scheduled the line to be permanently replaced, in conduit, which has since happened. NO CHANGE in speeds, but knowing now that it's time-dependent, that makes sense.\

By taking a bunch of speedtest readings in recent weeks I've determined that the slowdown starts around 6:45 in the morning, and ends around 6:45 pm. At that time speeds return to 500+ mbps, usually closer to 600, which is how everything behaved until this started.

Can anyone at Cox offer some guidance here? Seems REALLY strange that this happens in a relatively exact 12-hour cycle. Almost seems like it's some sort of provisioning problem. HELP!!

Thanks

Kevin

Cochise County, AZ

  • Myke's avatar
    Myke
    New Contributor
    27 days ago

    Exact same thing is happening to me. I am running into a weekly issue where my 500 mbps internet goes down to <15 mbps. I've already talked to tech support two different times and they assured me that it wouldn't happen again after they restarted my modem.

  • LisaH's avatar
    LisaH
    Moderator
    2 months ago

    Hi CochiseKev. The purpose of the Cox Forums is to allow customers to discuss technical topics related to residential Cox Cable, Telephone and High-Speed Internet services with other customers. This appears as if you may need someone to look into your account personally. We would definitely be able to assist you with this. Please reach out to us on X at CoxHelp via DM, visit us on Facebook via private message, or email us at cox.help@cox.com. Provide us the name on the account with the complete service address with a link to this thread so we can get started. Thanks,  Lisa, Cox Support Forums Moderator

    • WiderMouthOpen's avatar
      WiderMouthOpen
      Esteemed Contributor II
      2 months ago

      Why does this look like someone may need to look into OP's account personally? Looks like basic troubleshooting to me.

    • CochiseKev's avatar
      CochiseKev
      New Contributor
      2 months ago

      Thanks.. already sent a detailed email with full account info and more to the email address above a few days ago, no response (yet), hence the post here.

      • DorisM's avatar
        DorisM
        Moderator
        2 months ago

         I am so sorry to hear you are not satisfied with your service. Please DM us your complete name and address so we can assist you.

  • WiderMouthOpen's avatar
    WiderMouthOpen
    Esteemed Contributor II
    2 months ago

    Could this be congestion from too many people using the internet at that time? And the fact you're using an older DOCSIS 3.0 modem. What model modem do you have . Can you show the signal levels from 192.168.100.1?

    • CochiseKev's avatar
      CochiseKev
      New Contributor
      2 months ago

      The modem is 3.1. It’s fine. Works great 12 hours a day. This is super frustrating. 

      • WiderMouthOpen's avatar
        WiderMouthOpen
        Esteemed Contributor II
        2 months ago

        What model modem? Can you post your signal levels? Both when the problem is happening and when it's not. I can give instructions once I know what model you have.

        As for it being a provisioning problem, I doubt it. That would bottleneck the speed all the time. Not just sometimes.

    • CochiseKev's avatar
      CochiseKev
      New Contributor
      27 days ago

      Nah that's not it. During the day my wife is working and she's the only one eating any bandwidth at all, and it's super minimal (email, web stuff mostly). Modem is an Arris SB8200. I just sent screenshots of the signal levels to cox.help@cox.com.

      • CurtB's avatar
        CurtB
        Honored Contributor
        26 days ago

        Congestion could be caused by excessive traffic on your node, not just your dropline.  What your neighbors are doing can affect you.

  • CochiseKev's avatar
    CochiseKev
    New Contributor
    6 days ago

    WELL it looks like this is finally resolved. I'll elaborate in hopes that it saves someone else a headache later on.

    Tech came out, still only getting 10 mbps downstream. He runs a ton of tests outside, everything looks fine. Finally he brings his laptop in, and connects it directly to my modem, and gets full proper speed via ethernet. Connects to a LAN port on my router (TP Link Deco XE75) and gets the crappy speed. SO - the problem is isolated to my router. Which doesn't explain the 0645-1845 timing thing detailed in my first post, but clearly whatever is going on is a router issue. Right?

    He leaves, I order a new router, after first attempting to install a previous version of the firmware for the router, no luck. But - full speed suddenly starts happening that evening, a few hours after he left, during the timeframe it would have been throttled previously. Weird. So I do nothing and it's fine, for about a week. Then I start getting 100 mbps instead of 1 gig (I had upgraded to 1g from 500 mbps in the middle of this). Reboot the router, back to full speed. A few hours later, back down to 100 mbps. Now rebooting or power cycling it do nothing, still slow. I decide it's time to replace the flaky router for sure.

    Then I'm going through the router's app and see a buried message that there's an issue with my WAN port speed, and that perhaps the patch cable can't support 1g speeds. When the tech was here we actually changed that cable to no effect. I had a brand new one lying around so I swapped it. Boom, full speed again, no more error message about the WAN port. The new patch cable is CAT6. The old one was 5E. Hmm. CAT5 is only certified to 100 mbps. 5E is not an "official designation" but is supposed to be better. CAT6 is rated to handle 10 gbps at < 121 feet. Ah, massive improvement.

    This seems to be the final solution, and my presumption is that it was a patch cable issue the entire time. The only weird thing about that theory is why was it working fine for the same 12 hours every day, then throttling down to 1/10th speed the other 12? That remains a mystery. All I care is that all is well now.

    Thanks to everyone who responded, and thanks to the excellent Cox peeps that responded to my email and helped me get the tech scheduled, which is a NIGHTMARE to attempt to do via phone support. And thanks to the tech himself, he was awesome.