Visitor
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16 Messages
Repeated loss of connectivity -- continued.
A few months ago I posted a note here about repeated loss of internet connectivity...link below...the issue still continues, so thought I would share a quick update and ask other folks how their similar issues have been resolved so we can put heads together on resolution.
- Summary: I see frequent drops/day in internet connectivity, disrupting video calls and gaming. It's infuriating when it happens. Have had 2 tech visits, each confirming the basics (good signal coming into house, no stray connections/splitters, etc.)
- The issue rarely perks up during 'download' viewing (YouTube/NetFlix/etc.) as those services handle connectivity disruption far better.
- Have swapped out routers and modems, no changes. Just talking wired connection here too, no wireless.
What's new: latest tech visit was last week, who was great to work with. After verifying signals and secure connections, he sent a ticket over to 'maintenance', which is Xfinity's network engineering team. The techs who visit our houses primarily handle from house to street, then the maintenance teams handle the network further upstream. During an internet chat with xfinity CSR, they confirmed that the T3 line coming into the neighborhood had been seeing timeouts, could be that I am downstream from these. My neighbors also experience internet hiccups, we're in a high tech neighborhood full of video meetings and all kinds of WFH information worker situations. So this means additional load on upstream channels, which is Xfinity's business to manage. I just want a reliable & stable internet connection.
So while I'm awaiting outcome from the maintenance ticket, certainly open to tools/techniques for how to monitor internet connection further stream from me. Even if it's comparing time stamps on hiccups with whoever monitors the network traffic.
Thanks for listening!
My primary issue details and logs are described here:
ckerwien
Visitor
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16 Messages
3 years ago
Weekend update
* 9 hiccups yesterday, disrupting 2 phone calls yesterday. 'Always-on' network reliability is abysmal.
* No word yet from Xfinity tech on ticket update from network engineering investigating potential T3/T4 timeouts.
* Stumbled upon a workaround, which may or may not work for some folks: use your phone & mobile carrier as a temporary hotspot for your computer comms/gaming. Reliant upon your signal connection and data plan of course. And could use Xfinity wifi if that's in range for you as well.
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Patrick_2190
Visitor
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1 Message
3 years ago
Same Issues here. I have been dealing with this for a year now. Tech have been checking on the neighborhood, they have been saying the issue is on the house, then outside the house, then outside the neighborhood.
I also change Modem with upgraded firmware and we are is still going down. Sometimes is many times a day, some days are good. BUT SERVICE IS UNRELIABLE.
Last tech that was in the house check and say the house installation was good. They charge me $100 and the issue did not go away. I spent hours with Support on the phone and chat. I never got the $100 refunded. Never got my issue fixed.
Ckervien: may be we are next door....
Now looking for other alternative providers in Boca Raton. I think the issue is that the Xfinity installation is very old, cables under my garden have more than 40 years and it seem they are not willing to update or do any work. They just send inexperience techs to look around and patch things, change connectors and splitters but no real upgrades to the installation.
Patrick
Ac#: [Edited: "Personal Information"]
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mingjuan_2
New Poster
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13 Messages
3 years ago
I am facing similar issues for the past couple of weeks too. Mine gets lost connection for 1-5 minutes in about 20-30 minutes. I talked to a CSR through chat and he is just telling me to make an appointment with their technician and offer me a higher speed plan. I also tried to change a modem, factory reset my router and even cables. None of the regular solutions worked. I am in the Fort Lauderdale area.
So I am glad that I found this post before the technician visit. I thought they might not be able to help and charge me $100 for nothing and wasting my time.
Awaiting solutions and considering another provider.
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ktrachy753
Visitor
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5 Messages
3 years ago
Hi, I am located in (edit) and I've been experiencing network drops for four years. As I read the comments above I have had all those experiences too. In one year I had 22 technicians come to my house. They all did the same thing. They cut all my connectors, put new ones on, tested the levels and said everything was fine. But the problem is intermittent and sometimes 5 minutes later I'd experience another drop in connectivity. They have replaced the underground wire to the house, the amplifier at my house, and every connector. I have purchased all new cable modems and routers and laptops. I even had them install all their own equipment for a month (I paid them to install their equipment so they would stop blaming me.) The problem persisted and continues to persist. Last November I purchased a monitoring software and bought a laptop dedicated to monitor the Xfinity network. The software pings 3 high availability servers every 5 seconds. Google, Level3 and Cloudflare. When the network is up my pings are typically 15-28ms. But intermittently they exceed 200ms and turn red. Then the software quickly checks the other two servers. When all 3 of the servers are unreachable everything goes red and the software logs the date and time of the outage, the duration of the outage, and also logs the local LAN connection to my router. By the way, this is all hard wired (no wifi to blame). The software is called NetUptimeMonitor.com. You can see their website at https://netuptimemonitor.com/. It is only available for a PC. Which prompted me to purchase a dedicated PC laptop from Costco (I'm a MAC guy) to solely run this software.
FEBRUARY 2022 TO DATE
The above are just a sampling of just this month, February to date.
This is what the monitor looks like when all three of the Internet pings fail as well as if your internal connection to the router has failed. My internal doesn't ever fail so my LAN connection is always a green checkbox but everyone of the logged failures is marked with a big red, "Internet failure!" and X:
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ckerwien
Visitor
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16 Messages
3 years ago
Had a tech visit yesterday, let me share quick summary of that and a couple of tips to help with future tech visits...
* First...all of the techs have been great to work with...thank you. Xfinity's process for upstream troubleshooting is for customers to work with the tech, then the tech files tickets & follow-up for maintenance/network engineering team on issues further upstream.
* Tech has to confirm no issues with local signal/connections/etc. Realize this may be repetitive for those on repeat visits, but it's protocol and ensures there's nothing local happening. Tech also has ability to measure signals strength at house, as well as neighborhood utilization, which is the phrase used to describe how much network capacity is being used by local neighborhood. Some areas are worse than others right now, each area is different, it's not an issue for me currently.
* Realizing we're dealing some kind of upstream issue, we started a monitoring plan, which is essentially a log of when a hiccup happens - just capture the timestamp - then we'll hand the log over to network engineering who can take a closer at their logs and correlate to narrow down options. Unfortunately in my case, there is not an obvious "smoking gun" root case -- animal nest in an amplifier, blown out fuse, whatever. Also noted that my overall neighborhood is impacted, it's not just my house. Maintenance team really needs a log of events to follow-up with, as their typical monitoring toolbox isn't showing anything obvious.
* Couple of methods to establish a log here -- both are Windows/PC based -- so Mac folks will have to figure out their own.
1) Pull up a DOS prompt -- type CMD in the Windows search bar -- then use a PING command at the DOS prompt, which will fire off a quick hit to another web site every couple of seconds, where the main goal is wait/watch for a time out. In our case, we're using google.com like this: "ping google.com -t".
2) The NetUptime Monitor mentioned earlier in this thread is even handier with a nice interface, and automatically creates a log on outages. It's free to use for about an hour each time, unlimited number of uses, and you'll have pay a few bucks for a permanent license to get past the usage time limit. Handy tool, good find!
3) I've already logged a hiccup moment, so the documentation process is underway.
* So we'll take a week establishing a log, pass along, and keep at it. The issue has been super frustrating for me, so glad to finally get traction on this.
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ckerwien
Visitor
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16 Messages
3 years ago
The xfinity Community Mailer just emailed a reminder to me to "accept a solution" on this thread, which of course doesn't exist yet, so thought I would post a quick update.
* We are currently logging hiccup moments with a time stamp. I've had 5 over the past few days, which is significantly less than prior to the tech visit earlier this week.
* One item I forgot to mention during the tech visit -- which may or may not be significant -- he replaced the wall mount where the cable modem connects to the wall via the coax. Hard to say if this is significant, but it's frequently an overlooked item and I rarely see this mentioned in any online message. Even putting aside the obvious "is it a tight secure connection?" verification, the mounts work via screw-on compression to create a tight seal around the signal wire, and perhaps may have worked loose if it's been off and on a lot while troubleshooting issues. So if you're coming from a place of leave-no-stone-unturned, give that a look too, you never know.
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