T3 Timeouts - Followup
Posting here because I wanted to follow up on my post from a couple months ago - T3 Timeouts. Wanted to update the community on my experience and what I had to do to get the issue resolved.
My issue was that I was seeing intermittent (but crippling) packet loss on a daily basis. Going through normal Cox support channels, I had at least 6 different techs come out to work on the problem. Some couldn't see the problem (if the packet loss wasn't happening when they were testing, most techs would just leave and charge us a fee for the visit without doing anything) and some would just change lines without doing any testing and call the problem fixed. Eventually, a tech came out and saw the problem. He created an ESR ticket to deal with the issue and gave me the ticket number to keep tabs on the problem. That's where the previous post ended.
About a week later, I checked in with Cox support about the ticket. The ticket had been closed and some work apparently had been done in my neighborhood, but I wasn't seeing any improvement. I had two more techs come out to the house, neither of whom were able to identify and fix the issue. I was very hopeful when the original ESR ticket was created, but after it was closed I was basically starting back at square one to get Cox to acknowledge and fix the problem. At this point, I decided it was time to file an informal complaint with the FCC.
I was contacted by Cox in I believe less than 24 hours after I filed the informal complaint. I was connected with the executive escalations team, and a tech was out the next day. There were at least 5 more tech visits after this one, but at least now there was a ticket being kept open until the issue was fixed and I wasn't starting from scratch each visit. Eventually, I was given the plant supervisor's cell number to text whenever I was seeing the packet loss so he could send someone out to check the neighborhood for interference.
I was seeing multiple bucket trucks in my area over the past week and a half - from my conversations with the techs, I was told that there were a lot of locations near me where they identified some interference/ingress and had fixed the problem. Unfortunately for me, these fixes still weren't resolving my packet loss issue (hopefully the nail salon down the street is enjoying a very stable connection now). Last Friday, the escalations team let me know that the issue should finally be resolved. Despite that, the issue became so severe over the weekend that my modem would completely disconnect from the internet multiple times and all of my real time applications became essentially unusable.
This morning, I texted the plant supervisor letting him know that my issue was getting worse. I think they may have already had some indication that there was an issue, because there was someone out checking the pole in front of my house in less than 5 minutes of the text. Shortly after, the plant supervisor responded saying they'd identified interference on some of the lines, and that the tech had resolved it. For the first time in several months, I am seeing 0% packet loss consistently and my jitter is finally looking stable.
I am cautiously optimistic that my problem has been dealt with. Beyond getting extremely lucky, I don't know how this would've been fixed without filing an informal FCC complaint. Even with the help of the higher tier support, it was difficult to track down and fix the problem. It blows my mind a little that the problem seems to have been right out in front of my house at the pole and yet they were combing the entire neighborhood for the issue, but I realize tracking down ingress is sort of like finding a needle in a haystack. It was also illuminating to speak to the techs and hear about how pitiful the state of their infrastructure is at the moment. I live in the Gulf South, and there are apparently innumerable problems from hurricane damage that Cox has not been able to address for years.
So to sum it up, there's no way I would've reached a resolution without filing an informal FCC complaint. At least in my area, there are tons of problems that the company is very sluggishly dealing with. Had I not made some noise, it could've been years before they fixed it (assuming they'd ever fix it at all). The plant supervisor basically said they've been seeing the intermittent packet loss for long time, but since no one was complaining about it, they weren't committing resources to fixing it. Hopefully, it's resolved for good and I can finally stop stressing about it.
