About earl_anderson

How can we tie your action to some process on your end to close open customer support tickets properly?  Any 'bug number' or etc on your side to report to accomplish this?   Also, what changed on your end that caused the MTU length sensitivity in the first place?  Many of us were operating just fine for years with higher MTUs until about 25 January 2021.  Are you able to elaborate?   ... View more

FWIW:  I was able to run CMD as administrator (Win10) to run the command.   ... View more

Or this:  Why does Xfinity make it 100% impossible to discuss technical issues with anyone NOT reading from a script?   ... View more

What's annoying is that it's easy enough to find the IP address of the Xfinity mail server, but they've configured it to ignore pings.  If one could ping that server, it would be possible to sort out whether a basic connectivity problem is the issue (if you can't even reach the server due to some upstream router problem, there's no point in doing anything else on the computer end), or whether there is a configuration issue on the computer that needs to be addressed (e.g., port numbers or whatever). That would have been (and no doubt will be again in the future) a super helpful tool in sorting out these issues.  Basic rule of troubleshooting -- divide and conquer.  Is the problem 'over here' or 'over there' made impossible due to lack of a simple ping response.   Further, if one could ping their server, it is possible to adjust the MTU of the ping with the -l nnnn switch added, making it possible to experiment quickly with different values to see what works and what does not. ... View more

I need to figure out how to pick up your PM.  [Edit: Success on that].  Have never used Xfinity forum before.  Will see if I can pick apart the Wireshark packets.  As I'm sure you've seen, it's a fantastic tool, but the process itself can be quite tedious.   I doubt that we'll ever be able to make contact with anyone at Xfinity at a technical level capable of understanding the nature of the solution, much less back it up to isolating what was changed on the server that caused it.  That's the sad part.  I have two open tickets for which I've received no communication at all, one of them open since 1/27 when I realized that this wasn't going to 'heal' itself this time.   Anyway, I again want to express my appreciation for your tenacity.  Intentionally tweaking MTU values in an attempt to improve throughput by avoiding fragmentation isn't all that uncommon among 'powerusers', and this is the first time I've ever heard of that technique breaking something, much less breaking it this profoundly.  That yours had changed such a minor amount, and for unknown reasons, says that this problem may impact more Comcast/Xfinity users than the 'poweruser' group, and that Comcast/Xfinity really needs to understand what they did.   Just a warning to the 'poweruser' group.  Your router may ALSO have the ability to have its MTU adjusted to match any experimentally deteremined number you may have previously computed for the PC.   If the PC side is broken, be sure you hadn't also adjusted your router.  Beware!     ... View more

YES, YES ...  YEEESSS!   Comcast/Xfinity has blown up my POP3 connectivity every six months or so over the course of many years.  Calls to tech support are hopeless.  Always the same line about assuring port numbers & etc are correct, but no real help.  It's always something that changes on their end.  Usually, the problem 'heals' itself   Most often, the problem shows up as some sort of SSL/TLS error, often with error code 0x800CCC1A (encryption type issue), killing both send and receive.  This started for me sometime on 25 January 21.   More recently, they managed to get the outbound (SMTP) fixed, but it was coming up with 0x8004210A (timed out waiting for POP3 server) where the receive was now an issue, and would just time out.  What is bizarre is that the credential and SSL/TLS process is supposed to be identical for send/receive connections.   I'm hoping by posting both of those error codes above that searches for soluitions related to them point to your answer, as it resolved problems for both of those codes.     With their POP3 service failing (do NOT mention the acronym IMAP, please!), I was forced to their WebMail, which in turn, ALSO began to fail after a couple of days with timeouts at the same time as the send side of my POP3 started working again.  Even their own mail web page (the page where the user views and sends mail) acknowledged the problem, popping up a "Server unreachable" message in a little box at the bottom of the WebMail interface.   My MTU was set to something on the order of 4700.  I backed it down to the 'standard' 1500 that you used to resolve your problem, and amazingly enough, both WebMail and my POP3 Outlook mail are working again (not timing out).   Anyway, thanks VERY much for the work required to set us straight.  What tipped you to idea of making the minor change in the max packet size?  Yes, the Wireshark log would be fascinating to review if it doesn't disclose too much.    ... View more