Cox throttling speeds to gaming servers? I think so.
So I've just had it with Cox and their seemingly dishonest practice of blaming everything on the customer... I just got the 300mbps service in Las Vegas, and suspiciously get 500% increases in ping to gaming services as opposed to standard browsing/streaming service. I've validated everything is good to go on my end, and spent an hour or more being treated like a fool with Cox "technical support" people who don't even know what ping or traceroute are. As a background I've worked in IT for 15+ years and manage large load balanced networks like this for a living... Either there is an immense amount of ineptitude and apathy going on, or they're trying to push gamers to spend more money. My modem is a DOCSIS 3.1 enabled modem. My router is a gigabit router. I'm wired into the router with CAT6 cable, directly. My connection to the COX gateway is fast, and fine. The issue is the Cox internal routing. In this case, I'm going to use League of Legends for an example since they post their server IPs publicly. All I need to do to show where the breakdown is occurring is run a simple tracert. It's clear that I'm getting solid ping to Cox's gateway - langbprj01-ae1.rd.la.cox.net [68.1.1.13] - but they're choosing to route gaming traffic specifically through some kind of WAF, concentrator, or other type of internal network device which is throttling all traffic to 60-70ms (at lowest) The glaring technical evidence: Tracing route to 104.160.131.3 over a maximum of 30 hops 1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1 2 9 ms 8 ms 7 ms 10.67.0.1 3 8 ms 8 ms 7 ms 100.127.4.164 4 11 ms 7 ms 11 ms 100.120.102.24 5 15 ms 16 ms 12 ms langbprj01-ae1.rd.la.cox.net [68.1.1.13] 6 60 ms 61 ms 61 ms 72.215.224.162 <---- the offending Cox IP. 7 61 ms 67 ms 65 ms 104.160.152.223 8 62 ms 61 ms 60 ms 104.160.152.227 9 67 ms 70 ms 70 ms 104.160.159.100 10 68 ms 67 ms 68 ms 104.160.131.3 So why are they throttling gaming speeds to 60-70ms? It doesn't really make sense until you realize they've just started marketing their "Cox Elite Gaming" service to unlock higher speeds for a premium monthly rate. The only problem? I CAN'T EVEN BUY THEIR EXTRA SERVICE IN MY AREA. Come on! If you're going to scam me into buying a premium service, at least offer the option to buy it! My only option has been to reduce my service to the 150mgps service (why bother with bandwidth if it's slow), and subscribe to Haste for a slight ping boost to try and compensate. Note - COX - you're losing money here. In the end I'm just getting screwed, and Cox is showing how dishonest they are. If they could explain exactly what that IP is and why they refuse to address it internally, maybe it will matter. Until then I'll be planning my exit ASAP.
Internet Speed Capped to 100 Mbps
I have been a Cox customer for about 10 months and within the last month I moved and transferred my service. Every since then, I have been unable to obtain download speeds higher then 100 Mbps. I have been paying for Gigablast the entire time and I also pay for unlimited data. I have contacted multiple support representatives and I have not gotten a clear answer as to why this is happening. Most tell me that it is my equipment that is causing the issue and that I should contact the manufacturer. They have even stated that if my equipment wasn't the issue, then there wasn't anything else Cox could or would do for me on this issue. I am using an Arris SB 8200 that is just about 11 months old and a new Amplifi Mesh WiFi system that is less then 2 months old, all of which where working just fine until I moved into this new place. But never the less I have contacted both of them and they can not find anything wrong with their equipment. With that in mind, I reset both to factory settings twice in the last month and I still am not able to download anything faster then 100 Mbps. The last service representative I spoke with scheduled a technician to come out to my home to attempt to resolve the issue. I am skeptical that this will work because when I asked what the tech will do during the appointment, the representative said " hopefully they can fix it, if not they will just have to run it up the ladder and escalate it." They said they had the same problem at there home and that the technician could not resolve it so they have just been dealing with it. So now I will just get to wait and see what happens on Thursday. Hopefully someone can offer up a solution a solution other just then dealing with it, or down-grading my internet package.