New Gigabit service drops by 90%

I've been a Comcast customer for over 20 years. My home internet service that was delivering about 600 MBps prior to two weeks ago would suddenly drop to around 93 Mbps. Then last week I began troubleshooting ad nauseum with modem reset etc till I got very fed up with the hassle of it all. I scheduled a Comcast technician visit for last Friday. Before he arrived I arranged to trade in my SB6 modem for the new SB7 and at the same time upgraded my internet to 1 Gigabit or 1000 MBps. I installed the new SB7 and didn't see any change. So, I waited till the technician showed up on the 5th of March, 2021. Just before his arrival, the new modem sprang to life and started to deliver about 940 MBps. Wow, was I impressed. Hec, the technician wasn't there yet. I still kept the appointment.

Technician arrives and ran tests outside before coming into our high rise apartement building. Our lease manager opened the closet on our floor for him to check the connection to our apartment. Everything was just fine. Then he tested the connection on the inside of our pad from the existing coax cable and found no issues. He swapped out all the cables and the splitter that connects our TV and internet. Then we fired up my new custom built high end desktop that is hard wired directly from the SB 7 modem to the desktop.

After the boot and checking the speed of the service, it was a consistent 930-940 MBps. No more drops to 1/10th of that. I enjoyed uninterrupted 930-940 MBbps for over 3 and 1/2 days. Then horrors. On Tuesday evening, guess what(?), at about 22:30 the internet connection on my desktop drops back to 93 MBps. After attempting to restart the SB7 several times, guess what? No change. Still stuck at 90-93 MBps. Now I have another technician coming out on the 11th to try again. No I don't have wifi enabled on my desktop. It's off.

I'm a software product analyst. Been in IT for over 40 years. I'm working from home most days. Yes, I'm well versed in everything from the old 1200 baud modem to our latest technology. However, I can't make heads or tails on why this sudden drop to 1/10th of my expected download speed is a reocurring issue week after week after week.

I tried doing the following to no avail:

From an elevated Windows 10 Pro command prompt I ran the following:

    a.) ipconfig /flushdns

    b.) ipconfig /release

    c.) ipconfig /renew

    d.) netsh int ip reset follwowed by a restart of Windows 10 Pro

    e.) unplugging the modem for 2 minutes

Either the outside connection (where ever that is?) has massive issues where the strengh of the connection just drops for selected customers in high rise apartment buildings or Comcast reviews data rates of all customers/apartment dwellers at these high rise apartments and makes the assumption at this address that out of 80 residents most of them are only receiving/paying for 100 MBps service and so we'll drop the overall connection for building  to 100 MBps until they complain. Now, I don't want to make that jump just yet, but I'm close. 🙂

I actually had a Comcast agent tell me last week that I shouldn't expect to receive 940 MBps consistently. She mentioned that due to Covid-19 more people are sitting in their homes surfing the web and that is putting a drain on overall capacity. While not outright saying that her comments were plausible, it certainly didn't quell my suspisions that there is either extremely outdated equipment/bandwidth infrastructure in this city or just not enough line field technicians to cover a large city of over a million residents.

I'm sure before the technician arrives on Thursday the 11th that somehow without his direct intervention my 940 MBps service will be restored. Please, someone in management has to start looking at this problem.

Sincerely,

Frank