Intermittent and slow internet with latency

Now see? This is what has been driving me crazy, another example of it, in this first picture of the speed test look at my download speed of only a little over 10 Mbps while the upload is over 6.

Waited about 2 minutes, check it again, now look at the stunning difference and notice the ping is 26ms comparable to the gaming screenshots in my first post. Yet, I can't figure out why this server will give the 26ms but my game still shows 45-50ms, or double, the ping sitting in the garage of the game without any action going on. Once I start into a battle then it gets much worse, stays up around the low 70s to high 80s in ping and get a bit of latency going on too which makes it difficult to play a game against other players in real-time when I have a small delay compared to them. Frustrating!

The only thing I can figure out why the speed test ping is so much lower than my game's ping to the same city is due to the fact of the difference in information flow. Obviously, when the speed test pings the server that's all it's doing, sending a solitary ping and reporting it. Catching a ping lag on a single ping is akin to catching lightning in a jar. Impossible. However, when I play the game the information starts flowing, the problem amplifies and suddenly that 45-50 ping in the garage doing nothing explodes into a 75-85 ping and sometimes even higher than that. Then comes the latency as the flow of information is being seemingly throttled (not by you guys Cox, I hope, but by whatever is causing the problem.) But even then, a speed test like the 2nd test will look rock solid normal. Until I keep checking and you start seeing the swings in the outputs like in the first one that dropped to 10.

And this being at 3am when most people are in bed and supposedly is the best time to be on the internet with low traffic, lol.

Ok, here's a few tests...

First test is to the Northern Virginia market nearest to where the game server is that I'm talking about. There's another one of the speed drops that I always get. The final rated speed and the speed you actually get during the test is greatly skewed as it doesn't track the lowest speed you get, only an average. Also notice the 29ms ping, but you can't get that witht he game as it shows constant 45-50ms ping with no action going on, double that with action going on.




Second screenshot is from an Atlanta market test showing big speed drops on the graph too but yet still managing to show a respectable final rated speed. But then, average speed in no way tells you the condition of the connection you have. That's why my Twitch quality ratings are often pretty low at times.




And look at this horrendous graph...

And this last one seemed to be about the most stable of the entire testing session.

And I'm not sold the Cox speed test, or even the Ookla speedtest.net, which are both run by the same people, actually do much good with respect to the actual quality of your internet connection. Just because you can run a test and get 62 Mbps speed doesn't mean you're always getting it nor does the initial ping check mean your ping always stays the same.

Ping should stay relatively the same throughout unless you are doing something so bandwidth intensive that you delay the data packets returning. And it would take some serious bandwidth to bring even 50 Mbps to it's knees. I've often streamed music, even streaming youtube videos in the background while gaming and never affected my ping or even latency.

That's one thing that your speed test needs to clarify. The ping test should be labeled as ping, not as latency. Labeling it as latency is misleading because that gives people the impression that there is very little delay when in actuality there may be lots of latency/delay despite having a very low ping such as 10ms.

You gotta admit, 32 bytes of data on a ping is not even a drop of water in the ocean to a 50 Mbps connection speed. Another comparison, $32  to $50,000,000 if we're talking money. It's so tiny as to be insignificant.

Now, add in some action while running a ping. If it goes up, you got problems. And that's why when I play my game it doubles in ping because of the data traffic and the poor condition of the connection most likely being caused by a bad run of cable or something I'm being told. Whatever it is, it's nuts and should be fixed.

For what it's worth here are the signal/power levels of my modem, some of which look a little on the iffy side to me.

Just for fun I tried putting the attenuator left behind by one of the techs for us to try to see if it helped. It seems to bring some levels back to a better position, for example the downstream power levels are supposed to be -15 to +5 so it brought those back towards the middle. The SNR and upstream I'm not sure about but the upstream numbers were raised from the previous screenshot of the modem readings without the attenuator.

Also, this has me curious now. I was looking at other information such as the firmware revision. My firmware was updated on December 16, 2015. That happens to be the same day that I could find where our game lag and ping being higher than it was in previous time periods. For example, that second screenshot showing the US East server with 55 ping and yellow latency. That started that day. Coincidence?

Also, might as well ask how I can find and ensure I have the latest firmware on my modem?

The worst part about this experience is that you guys raised the cost of my internet service by $6 a month and didn't increase my speed. Matter of fact, my speed has gone down significantly along with the stability getting much worse and lag greatly increasing.

Yeah, the modem is the only thing on the line. The modem package I got from the local Cox Store is everything I'm using. Came with about a 3 or 4 foot cable and that is plugged only  into the wall outlet and other in into the modem. The only thing that has ever been in there on that short run has been the attenuator that was tried recently. I'd say the cable is about 3 feet long as it's just long enough that it allows the cable modem to sit near the front edge of our entertainment center that we have along that wall. So there's not much there to go wrong and tech looked at the cable and didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with the cable. They were thinking everything was just something in the system somewhere since a neighbor about a half mile to three-quarters of a mile down the street was initially also being affected in the same way. Things have gotten better in the last 24 hours but it still had been noticeable last night when I was doing some surfing and gaming that it still wasn't quite right as there was still some occasional delays or lag spikes it seemed but it was at least more stable feeling some last night. We'll see how it goes tonight. Thanks for letting me know about the firmware update.

So far it doesn't seem like anything has changed. But obviously something changed in the last 24 hours or so because the internet is somewhat better and somewhat more stable, I can actually stream stuff now and do things that I couldn't before. But it's still not right and still get the occasional drops or high latency and buffering. Whether the attenuator is making things a bit more stable or not, dunno but could be what it's from.

Talked with phone tech support and they gave me a case number or whatever you call it, 2938560. The tech support person was gonna have one of the technicians handling the plant maintenance and wiring stuff call me and let me know what is going on with that and if anything has changed, etc.

By the way, also tried swapping out the short cable coming out of the wall for one of my old ones from my previous residence that I had in storage. Cable doesn't make a difference as things are still the same so put the original back on there that I got from you guys.

Our speeds were fluctuating again earlier too. Took some readings on my tablet that showed us getting 10 Mbps on one of the slowdowns and then later going up to more normal speeds near or just over 50 Mbps.

Seems your forums have been acting up too. Finally can respond to this to let you know none of that works. The wireless thing, yeah, there's a 2 or 3 others in the nearby area with internet service too. I even switched channels to one not used by the others and well in between. Still the same.

But then, the wifi has never been the problem, it works at 300 Mbps, compared to the 50 Mbps service we pay for. Our service is what was acting up. And it was most noticeable on our PCs that are connected via Ethernet cable. We have both cat 5e and 6e cables, We have short ones and long ones. None of that makes a difference. We were without service almost completely from March 25th until the 28th. Now, something happened between the 28th and 29th that caused the service to get better.

Any idea what that was? I was told someone would be calling me. It's been over a week now and nobody has called. Any idea what is going on? While our service has gotten better, it's still not back to being the way it used to be. But at least it's usable now.