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J_D_'s avatar
J_D_
New Contributor
10 years ago

Slow internet during peak hours (mostly in the evenings)

I am a fairly new customer with Cox and am paying for the 100Mbps service.  My service is very unstable in that my bandwidth slows down in the evenings during peak hours.  It starts slowing around 3-3:30pm and then becomes almost unusable by 7 or 8pm (5 Mbps).

I have been working with COX on this issue since I became a customer and had to get through the BS of proving it wasn't an issue with my hardware, my internal wiring, blah blah.

I finally convinced COX that its not anything to do with my hardware or my home.  They even went as far to replace the cable coming into my property from the street, upgrading it from a 6G to an 11G cable.  This of course, slightly improved my ping times, but did nothing for the saturation issue as you'd expect.

Others have reported this issue as well and I can tell you what is most likely happening.  The node in my neighborhood is saturated during peak hours.  There is no other explanation.  This happens when COX associates too many modems to a particular node.  The problem is convincing them that this in an issue so they submit a maintenance request to check it out.  

I'm working with some pretty helpful folks at COX to get this issue resolved, but its frustrating because my service has been substandard for the 3-4 weeks I've had service and I work from home and cannot have such an unstable internet connection.

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  • NicholeC's avatar
    NicholeC
    Moderator
    10 years ago
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    Hello J.D., 

    I'd like to investigate this further. Please email your full name and address to cox.help@cox.com.

    Thank you,
  • Health_Edge's avatar
    Health_Edge
    Valued Contributor III
    10 years ago
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    +1 For moderator taking a look. But incase the rest of us want to follow along, some questions;

    I can see node saturation making 100Mb run 75Mbps, but 5Mbps sounds like something else is going on. 

    Can you post your signal levels? Should be able to find them at 192.168.100.1 unless you have a gateway. If you do, reply with what kind and I can give further instructions.

    If it is pure node saturation, one thing that might help is a modem with more channel bonding capability. Its like a highway, the more lanes, the more traffic (congestion) you can have in the area without you being effected. 

    Last, can you post a couple speedtests? One when the problem is bad, and one where it's better, so we can compare. Things like download vs upload speeds and latency can give clues on whats causing the problem.

  • Rue_Du_Belier's avatar
    Rue_Du_Belier
    New Contributor
    10 years ago
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    Agree.  I'm paying to get 100Mbps.  COX cannot provide me with that speed and have checked speed tests to confirm it's 33% slower and at times up to 66% slower.  NOT HAPPY.  

    Last Result:
    Download Speed: 41872 kbps (5234 KB/sec transfer rate)
    Upload Speed: 11627 kbps (1453.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
    Latency: 24 ms
    Jitter: 4 ms
    9/19/2015, 10:40:07 AM

  • J_D_'s avatar
    J_D_
    New Contributor
    10 years ago
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    Hi,

    I will post my information later today, however I don't believe this has anything to do with my modem.  During the week (M-F), the download speed is consistently good in the morning hours and up to the early afternoon.  Around 3pm it starts going south which coincides with increased usage on the node.  

    I hadn't observed much on the weekends, but have started monitoring and as you might expect with more usage on the weekends, my speeds even in the morning are severely degraded.  For example, normally during the week in the morning (8-10am), my downstream speed is pegging at over 100Mbps...but this morning (Sat) I'm barely able to get 60Mbps down.  As is always the case, the upstream speed is consistently good 10-12Mbps no matter when I test it day or night.

    I have a surfboard docsis 3 modem 8X4 and am considering getting a SB6183 which is 16x4, but before doing so, I would like to troubleshoot this more with COX to help them what is going on with their network.

    The good (or bad) is that this issue with waning bandwidth speed happens every single day so in that regard its a bit easier to trouble shoot. 

    Just for baseline, my current download speed at 9:00am today is, 10ms ping, 103Mbps down, 12 Mbps up.  Here are my signal levels, which seem to be reasonable.  I will post similar information later today when the bandwidth starts dropping off the cliff.

    DownstreamBonding Channel Value
    Channel ID 73  74  75  76  81  82  83  84 
    Frequency 813000000 Hz  819000000 Hz  825000000 Hz  831000000 Hz  861000000 Hz  867000000 Hz  873000000 Hz  879000000 Hz 
    Signal to Noise Ratio 37 dB  37 dB  37 dB  37 dB  38 dB  37 dB  37 dB  37 dB 
    Downstream Modulation QAM256  QAM256  QAM256  QAM256  QAM256  QAM256  QAM256  QAM256 
    Power Level
    The Downstream Power Level reading is a snapshot taken at the time this page was requested. Please Reload/Refresh this Page for a new reading
    		0 dBmV   0 dBmV   0 dBmV   0 dBmV   0 dBmV   0 dBmV   0 dBmV   0 dBmV  
  • J_D_'s avatar
    J_D_
    New Contributor
    10 years ago
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    My modem speeds are down significantly already, well at least the download speed.  The upload speed is always good.

    I didn't include the signal numbers because other than one channel they are identical to the numbers I posted from this morning.

    Speed Test (5:40pm)

  • J_D_'s avatar
    J_D_
    New Contributor
    10 years ago
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    And just like clock work, here is my speed test results as of 9:05pm.  This is about the time it drops to almost unusable..

  • J_D_'s avatar
    J_D_
    New Contributor
    10 years ago
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    I have an update on my download speed woes.  As it turns out, the node is saturated big time.  There are over 700 modems associated to the node in my neighborhood.  Typically when there are 500 modems associated to a node it starts to degrade service so you can imaging what impact 700 modems has on bandwidth.

    The plan is to split the node in my neighborhood in early October which should address the bandwidth issue.  Also, in the meantime I am purchasing a 16x4 channel modem (currently have an 8x4 channel) which should help with the bandwidth issues in the short term till COX gets the node split.

    J.D.