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I've been getting outages due to the upstream dropping out on my internet connection for more than 6 months now.
Downloads, watching streams, podcasts, hearing and seeing people on voice/video calls and are fine if they've already started.
Uploads drop, voice/video calls break up for listeners, website requests take forever, games get disconnected.
Modem upstream during packet loss:
Bottom row with red question marks is packet loss. Other rows are just hops which sometimes don't respond (`mtr one.one.one.one`):
It doesn't seem like this issue will every be fixed. I've burned a lot of my time (days and days), burned money upgrading hardware that was fine, talking with customer support, and waiting for techs.
I've been having to use my phone as a mobile hot-spot to ensure a consistent connection for voice and video calls. If this keeps up I think I'm just going to stop wasting money on useless internet and dump Cox and switch to a mobile hot-spot, since I end doing that anyway.
Update 11/23/2021
I've been monitoring for a few hours a day over the past 3 days and am seeing zero or near zero packet loss.
The rep and field escalation tech assigned to my FCC complaint have been on top of things looking at tickets and making sure they're truly resolved afterward and starting a new ticket if there was still noise or other issues with my internet connection.
Just at the most recent visit from a field tech I've been informed that several repairs had been made all the way out to the node. Since I'm at the end after a few amplifiers every bit of noise introduced up the chain was degrading the signal that finally reached my modem.
Among the fixes I was told:
So really a large part of neighborhood got a connection tune-up out of it.
Unfortunately after several calls and visits without a fix over several months I resorted to filing a complaint with the FCC and with a few days suddenly I started getting follow up calls and a team dedicated to fixing my issues. It still took over a month to fix, but I was informed about fixes along the way and I didn't have to start at the beginning each time a ticket was closed and the packet loss continued.
It would have been nice if Cox tech support followed up, looked at previous tickets and checked their work like this in the first place.
I've been through the same technician song and dance months ago and have just given up on having a solid connection. Do you think there's anyway to get my similar issue fixed without going through the same multiple technician then elevated claim to engineer process? Can i just skip to someone knowledgable?
Unfortunately some fixes require a lot of repairs as in my case and takes a while to diagnose.
The field escalation tech that came out was able to identify 6 tickets in their records although I feel like I had more visits than that.
One of the things he brought up was that there were only 2 people in the neighborhood who actually had called and got someone out making it harder to isolate the source of the problem.
I'm guessing some of my neighbors probably didn't notice drops because they're just using the internet for browsing the web, or either have more patience or don't want to go through the hassle of calling in.
Talk to your neighbors and see if they're having issues and encourage them to call to get it fixed.
Start documenting all your visits and outages if you haven't already. Get some monitoring tools and screenshot or keep logs on the packet loss. PingPlotter free and mtr are decent free ways to monitor packet loss, but there's a whole bunch of other tools you can use.
Make sure your modem is Cox certified or they'll point at that as the problem.
www.cox.com/.../cox-certified-cable-modems.html
Keep calling and try to get a tech out. The front line tech support is abysmal and they try to up-sell you other products with a promise of a fix. Go for the tech visit, they're the ones that can actually escalate the ticket.
If it isn't getting resolved or doesn't get escalated after several attempts as a last resort you can file a complaint with the FCC and include your records.
I finally resorted to filing a complaint because I work from home and there aren't really any other usable alternatives to Cox internet where I live. It really changed the customer service.
The fix still took over a month, but they started calling me, checking their work, keeping me updated on the progress of the fix and now it's much better.
If that's not worth your time and you have alternatives available that will work for you, I'd switch.