Weird Google Issue for the Past Few Days

I've had intermittent outages for Google services including their search page, YouTube, Google Notes, DNS and others.

I set up a EMCO Ping Monitor today to track the problem.

I have pings to 1.1.1.1, 192.168.1.1 (my gateway), 208.67.222.222, 8.8.8.8, bing.com and google.com.

All have 100% uptime over the course of the whole day today except google.com.

It's uptime is currently 60.98%

And from the random Google searches and YouTube access, etc. I've done today that seems accurate.

Also, this issue is not on 1 computer only.

I've restarted my modem and firewall (pfSense) and went over all settings I could think of.

Nothing in my network configuration has changed before this started happening.

I suspect a routing issue on the Xfinity network near my home.

Any ideas?

EDIT:

I forgot to mention that if I start a ping from the command line to 8.8.8.8 during one of the outages it does not go through.

Also once a YouTube video starts playing it is not interrupted.

EDIT2:

Using ProtonVPN on one of my PCs seems to resolve the issue.

Edit3:
Set up a WireGuard connection to ProtonVPN on my firewall so all of my devices can use it.
Everything is working properly now.

Edit4:
I believe the problem may be a result of packet fragmentation.
I found that on my normal Xfinity connection I could ping up to 1416 packet size.
On the VPN I can ping with a larger packet size.
I've set my router's WAN interface MTU to 1444 and things seem to be running okay now without the VPN connection.

I do not know why this has just become an issue recently. The only thing I can think of is something has changed on the Xfinity network.

Edit5:
Posted too soon. Still having intermittent issues with Google services.

Responses

Accepted Solution

U

user_8b3c07

4 Messages

8 months ago

I think I may have solved my issue.

I rebooted my Motorola SB6120 modem (not rented) and it was not getting back online.

It kept rebooting during the last initialization step.

I found a post online of someone mentioning that they had to "reactivate" their modem on the Xfinity network and they were having similar issues to me with intermittent outages.

So I used the Xfinity app on my phone to reactivate my modem. The first time it didn't work. (I couldn't even access the modem's web portal and it just kept rebooting)

So I tried again but this time I chose Arris as the make instead of Motorola. The branding on the modem itself is Motorola but on the modem's web portal it says Arris.

Anyway after doing this a second (or third time? I can't remember) it rebooted multiple times but eventually started working.

It has been hours since then and I have not had a problem yet. The ping tests are solid so far.

I think Xfinity had done upgrades in my area recently and informed me of increased speeds. I'm assuming new equipment was installed and perhaps my modem's MAC was not populated to all equipment or otherwise not properly registered.

I really hope this is resolved now but if not I will post back here again with more information.

Thanks for the replies and suggestions.

4

0

XfinityChristy

Official Employee

•

1.7K Messages

user_8b3c07 Thank you for sharing this update with our team and anyone else having this experience. I have set a reminder to follow up with you on Friday to make sure things are still going well. Please reach out if you need us before then.

I am an Official Xfinity Employee.
Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
We ask that you post publicly so people with similar questions may benefit from the conversation.
Was your question answered? Please, mark a reply as the Accepted Answer. tick

8 months ago

0

XfinityOrlandoM

Official Employee

•

1.5K Messages

Hello how's everything been working?

I am an Official Xfinity Employee.
Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
We ask that you post publicly so people with similar questions may benefit from the conversation.
Was your question answered? Please, mark a reply as the Accepted Answer. tick

8 months ago

0

U

user_8b3c07

4 Messages

Hello. Sorry for the delay.

I have experienced no internet connectivity issues after "re-registering" my modem.

I'm surprised this procedure could be a fix for this type of problem but I'm assuming this situation is also very rare.

Hopefully anyone else who has this problem will come across this post.

Thank you for the assistance.

8 months ago

0

XfinityJamesC

Official Employee

•

1.8K Messages

Thank you for following up, @user_8b3c07! I'm happy to hear the solution was relatively easy to perform, even if the diagnosis was considerably more frustrating. Please feel free to create a new post if you ever need assistance with anything else. Our amazing community is always ready to help, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I am an Official Xfinity Employee.
Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
We ask that you post publicly so people with similar questions may benefit from the conversation.
Was your question answered? Please, mark a reply as the Accepted Answer. tick

8 months ago

0

XfinityAlfonso

Official Employee

•

1.3K Messages

8 months ago

Hey there user_8b3c07 is the 60.98% drop happening on all ping hops you've tested? You mentioned this is still ongoing - is that with WireGuard and Proton VPN still active? Or is this only happening without the VPN active?

2

0

U

user_8b3c07

4 Messages

Hello and thank you for responding.

The 60% ping rate was for google.com only. All other ping tests I was running (bing.com, amazon.com, 1.1.1.1, etc.) have been normal.

I haven't been running it today but I can say Google services are still giving me intermittent problems. Very slow page loads (or not at all).

But if I can get a YouTube video to start playing it will play without interruption. It's really only an issue on a page load/refresh.

And again, as far as I can tell, it's only with Google services like gmail, google search, youtube, etc.

Also, I've configured the VPN to only work for some of my devices and I've been testing with it active and inactive to try to get to the bottom of what is going on.

The one thing I have not done yet is to remove my pfSense firewall from the network completely to make sure it is not the problem.

However, I had made no network changes before this issue started so I'm assuming it is not my network configuration that is causing the problem.

I was hopeful after I had changed my MTU value and things seemed to be working well.

I think maybe it was only a coincidence though and I'm still suspicious that it's actually an issue on the Xfinity network in my area that is causing my trouble.

Again, thank you for responding.

8 months ago

0

XfinityJamesC

Official Employee

•

1.8K Messages

That is definitely unusual, @user_8b3c07. It will be interesting to see what kind of impact your firewall may be having. At one point, you mentioned setting a specific connection on your firewall seemed to briefly resolve the issue, but it eventually resurfaced. The firewall may be conflicting with some undetermined point in the trace path, or there could be a different conflict happening that gets temporarily bypassed through the VPN. It's interesting that the connection will hold up once it has been established, like with a YouTube video that has already started playing. Please let us know if you are able to identify any other inconsistencies that can pinpoint where things are conflicting.

I am an Official Xfinity Employee.
Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
We ask that you post publicly so people with similar questions may benefit from the conversation.
Was your question answered? Please, mark a reply as the Accepted Answer. tick

8 months ago

0

Your Home Network

user_8b3c07

Weird Google Issue for the Past Few Days

Was this helpful?

user_8b3c07

XfinityChristy

XfinityOrlandoM

user_8b3c07

XfinityJamesC

XfinityAlfonso

user_8b3c07

XfinityJamesC

New to the Community?