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Getting a higher level of support for T3 timeouts and random disconnects
Hi Folks,
I've been dealing with Comcast support on this issue since Aug 25th, and I'm going in circles and am looking for some help.
My internet and phone will randomly stop working. Phone has dialtone, but either can't dial out, or if it can the voice is so garbled people can't understand you. Internet just appears dead. The modem looks normal from a lights perspecitve.
If I call tech support and the automated system does a reset, or I power cycle the modem, 9 out of 10 times it will come back. The 10th time it won't and it will take an hour or 2 to reconnect.
When the modem goes into this state, I'd say about 50% of the time I can login to the interface at 10.0.0.1 the other 50% of the time I can't. I don't know if the FW is locked up, its stuck in a loop or what. When I can get in, I see many T3 timeout errors such as this:
[Docsis][950]: Unicast Maintenance Ranging attempted - No response - Retries exhausted
2020/9/15 17:57:22 Critical
[Docsis][950]: Ranging Request Retries exhausted
2020/9/15 17:57:22 Critical
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:57 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:56 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:55 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:53 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:52 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:51 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:50 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:49 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:47 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:46 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:45 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:44 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:42 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:41 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:40 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:56:39 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:49 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:48 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:47 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:46 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:44 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:43 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:42 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:41 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:39 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:38 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:37 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:36 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:34 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:33 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:32 Warning
[Docsis][950]: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
2020/9/15 17:53:31 Warning
I can get over 200 of those entries a day sometimes within an hour or 2 period.
Comcast has "thrown darts at the wall" trying to fix this by
- Replacing my modem on 8/27
- Replacing the amp feeding my street/cul-de-sac on 8/28
- Cutting off and replacing all the F connectors at
- The Tap
- The Comcast Side of the Grounding Block on my house
- The cable leading from the Grounding Block directly to my modem.
- Trying to upgrade me to the next higher performance tier (I said no, but somehow an order got put in anyways, which then messed up a service call)
- Another tech came out on 9/15 but when I told him my story above he just said its a neighborhood problem and didn't do anything. Also tried to blame it on the fires (which I'm not near), and general covid congestion. Up until Aug 25th I had no problems. All spring and summer sheltering at home things worked fine, so I don't buy either of those two answers. I get COVID congestion might cause slowdowns, but that's not what I'm seeing.
Yes, I run my modem in bridge mode and use my own router, but since this is also taking out the phone I can't fathom how anytihng on my router could be involved.
I have a solid piece of Coax from my grounding block to my modem. No splitters, no TVs, no extra cable looped up.
I even crawled under the house and in my attic where the COAX runs to inspect it just to make sure some rodent hadn't gotten into my house and chewed on it. Looks perfect (ok, I can't inspect the portion in the wall where it goes up from my crawlspace into my attic) and has no damage.
Here's the data from my XFINITY network stats page on the modem:
Downstream Data:
Channel Bonding Value Index 1 2 3 4 5 6 Lock Status Locked Locked Locked Locked Locked Locked Frequency 549 MHz 447 MHz 453 MHz 459 MHz 465 MHz 471 MHz SNR 38.605 dB 38.605 dB 38.605 dB 38.983 dB 38.983 dB 38.605 dB Power Level 2.400 dBmV 5.200 dBmV 5.300 dBmV 5.200 dBmV 4.900 dBmV 4.500 dBmV Modulation 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM Index 7 8 9 10 11 12 Lock Status Locked Locked Locked Locked Locked Locked Frequency 477 MHz 483 MHz 489 MHz 495 MHz 507 MHz 513 MHz SNR 38.983 dB 38.983 dB 38.983 dB 38.605 dB 38.605 dB 38.983 dB Power Level 4.500 dBmV 4.700 dBmV 4.800 dBmV 4.800 dBmV 4.500 dBmV 4.100 dBmV Modulation 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM Index 13 14 15 16 17 18 Lock Status Locked Locked Locked Locked Locked Locked Frequency 519 MHz 525 MHz 531 MHz 537 MHz 543 MHz 555 MHz SNR 38.983 dB 38.983 dB 38.983 dB 38.605 dB 38.605 dB 38.983 dB Power Level 3.700 dBmV 3.600 dBmV 3.400 dBmV 3.100 dBmV 2.700 dBmV 2.400 dBmV Modulation 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM Index 19 20 21 22 23 24 Lock Status Locked Locked Locked Locked Locked Locked Frequency 561 MHz 567 MHz 573 MHz 579 MHz 585 MHz 591 MHz SNR 38.605 dB 38.605 dB 38.983 dB 38.605 dB 38.605 dB 38.605 dB Power Level 2.500 dBmV 2.700 dBmV 3.000 dBmV 3.300 dBmV 3.600 dBmV 3.800 dBmV Modulation 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM 256 QAM
Upstream Data:
Channel Bonding Value Index 1 2 3 4 5 Lock Status Locked Locked Locked Locked Locked Frequency 36 MHz 17 MHz 30 MHz 41 MHz 23 MHz Symbol Rate 5120 KSym/sec 5120 KSym/sec 5120 KSym/sec 1280 KSym/sec 5120 KSym/sec Power Level 41.500 dBmV 40.250 dBmV 41.750 dBmV 38.500 dBmV 41.250 dBmV Modulation 64 QAM 64 QAM 64 QAM 64 QAM 64 QAM Channel Type ATDMA ATDMA ATDMA ATDMA ATDMA
CM Error Codewords
Unerrored Codewords 2359407530 2358091230 2358112177 2358106369 2358108318 2358094021 Correctable Codewords 1129 3672 2581 2635 2648 2527 Uncorrectable Codewords 7473 20047 17833 15767 12358 16663 Unerrored Codewords 2358074205 2358082791 2358087875 2358091118 2358061403 2358071743 Correctable Codewords 1491 2011 2332 30209 2583 2605 Uncorrectable Codewords 10927 13860 8070 10699 18182 17876 Unerrored Codewords 2358107690 2358068267 2358093603 2358093346 2358071294 2358079889 Correctable Codewords 2333 2340 2495 1856 1691 328 Uncorrectable Codewords 16117 18502 17635 13082 10506 1236 Unerrored Codewords 2358106077 2358068714 2358062084 2358092162 2358080606 2358060740 Correctable Codewords 153 118 103 92 100 84 Uncorrectable Codewords 1 1 0 0 0 0
I've spent hours on the phone with techs. Some are good, some are not. One told me my SNR and by BER were too high on the upstream channel. I was supposed to have a supervisor call me yesterday, but they didn't.
I am now looking to get some sort of a higher level tech out here who can hook up a meter, signal anaylzer, TDR or whatever you use on DOCSIS to start looking for the problem. I would expect something like this:
- Hook meter at Grounding Block. Signal Bad. Move to Tap.
- Hook meter to Tap, Signal still bad, Move to Amp.
- Hook meter to Amp, Signal still bad, move to next point up the line,
- Etc, etc, etc until the problem is identified.
I admit that I'm no DOCSIS expert, but if I was trying to solve an issue like this on the LAN/WAN at work this is an approach I would take. Personally I suspect something at the head-end. I think that's the CMTS but I don't know (nor do I know where that's located, but I assume somewhere in my neighborhood because I believe its near the HFC node).
Does anyone here know how to escalate this? 1-800-comcast isn't getting me there. I mean the folks are nice, but they are running from the script. The famliy has their pitchforks out blaming me everytime "Dad, the WiFi is down again".
Help, Insights, and pointers appreciated.
Thanks,
Brian.
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