About daWoofa

All will soon be made right given today's news reports that Comcast is purchasing Time Warner Cable for $44billion and thereby becoming the undisputed goliath of U.S. ISP's.  With their newfound monopolistic heft (courtesy of TWC's 11m subscribers to be added to the existing Comcast 20m strong subscriber base) Comcast will now have the scale to fix all the issues that plague us. And yes,  I am being sarcastic.  We plan to downsize to a smaller abode once our last birdie leaves the nest in a couple of years and I am moving "ISP with fibre optic delivery" (i.e., not Comcast) to the top of my list of what the new neighborhood must have.   That being said, we have not had to touch/re-set our TC8305C gateway device since late January as our wireless has behaved.  But:  we have had two or three episodes of our hardwired VOiP going dead in the middle of a call at the same time as our web page loading either slowing to a crawl or freezing on both our wired and wireless devices.  These episodes resolved themselves before I could pull out the the straightened paper clip reset device which takes me back to the idea that dodgy signal delivery in to our respective homes is the root cause of the wi-fi drop issues.  I cannot see that the common denominator is the hardware given the varying brands and types of modem/router/gateway devices that have been mentioned in this thread.  The only thing that is common to all of this is the Comcast internet feed coming in through our coax. ... View more

Update to my posting from Jan-17:  had to perform the soft gateway reset on my TC8305c device last Thu  i.e., 2 days before my first scheduled "every 2nd Saturday" calendar reminder.  Our network went spasmodic right after dinner on the 23rd:  the wireless re-started its constant drop/disconnect behavior across all our devices; our web-page loading slowed to a crawl even on the hardwired desktop; and our VOiP also ceased to place calls  (i.e., we started to get the recording that "The number you dialed was rejected by the service provider.") The gateway reset seems to have addressed the issues:  since then the wireless devices have been consistently connecting and the slow web-page loading has not been evident; however, the VOiP connection issue has resurfaced a couple of times since the reset, although it seems to resolve itself within a few minutes.   Given that the slow web-page loading is happening even on the hardwired desktop and the VOiP ATA  is also hardwired I am left to wonder if my issues are with a wonky Comcast signal into our home/neighborhood (e.g., the "continuity" that 425ranger mentioned in his post of Jan-12).  I spoke with a neighbor who is an original homeowner from back in 1977 when our subdivision was developed and she tells me that she has had cable TV since the start (well before Comcast was running the show) as well as cable internet with Comcast for the past dozen-plus years.  And, she tells me that there have always been recurring patterns of performance issues but the frequency has been becoming much more frequent.  She does not have wireless or VOiP in her setup but she shares the frustration with the more frequently occurring events of her internet slowing to a crawl (she tells me that this now happens at least once or twice a week at random times) as well as her cable TV going dark for 10-20 minutes across random stations at least once a week (and this latter issue is something that my wife now tells me that she has been noticing since Christmas as well).  So I’m now w-a-g-ing that there are kinks in the coax that was buried 37yr+ years ago (e.g., somebody scuffed a cable while putting down a fence post).  Or did Comcast roll out some type of new compression that doesn’t play nice across the older copper?   I know - I'm grasping at straws but I am curious if the other contributors to this thread have aged infrastructure as well.  As a final anecdote, a colleague in the office back east (I’m in the Rocky Mountain office) constantly boasts about the fiber into his house that he signed up for with Verizon about 5 years ago.  His Verizon fios (and the Verizon-supplied wireless router/gateway) not only gives him "flawless" internet but has also allowed him to cut the cable TV cord:  he uses wireless HDMI for the netflix, you-tube, and whatever-else internet feeds that he simultaneously streams via wireless to multiple TVs in his home.  He hates coming into the office because its "commercial grade" internet is no-where near as reliable or as fast as his home setup.  Lucky buggar.  I seriously doubt that Verizon fios is coming to my neighborhood any time soon. ... View more

Update:  my fixes from Jan-13 are holding as wifi performance has been solid for the last four days.   To Jmatus:  in re-reading my post from Jan-13 I see that I may not have completely conveyed Franklin's guidance (i.e., Franklin is the Comcast tech with whom I spoke).  He advised me that finding the best channel to work with is a trial-&-error process and that his experience with the TC8305c unit is that one should start with channel 6 and then cycle to 11 and then cycle to 1 as one of these three choices seems to resolve the dropped wifi issue; moreover, he did not eliminate continuing to cycle through the other channels as needed.   I found another Comcast forum that speaks specifically to the TC8305c gateway device: lots of complaints but there is one post that praises the device http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Home-Networking-Router-WiFi/Technicolor-TC8305C-WARNIING-wireless-gateway-not-working/td-p/1932557   I also determined that the TC8305c manufacturer is a French company:  www.technicolor.com.  Here is their webpage regarding the TC8305 family of devices:  http://www.technicolor.com/en/solutions-services/connected-home/modems-gateways/cable-modems-gateways/tc8200-tc8305.     Lastly, here is the TC8305c Setup & User Manual that can be downloaded from what appears to be the vendor’s document library:  http://docs.technicolor.com/data/files/cm/DMS-CTC-20130228-0000.pdf.   ... View more

And a quick note to jnchahn : I started to investigate replacing my Comcast gateway device with the  WNDR3700v4 device that you identified but was stopped cold by the security holes of the WNDR3700v4 firmware that were identified last October:  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2057260/vulnerabilities-in-some-netgear-router-and-nas-products-open-door-to-remote-attacks.html.   I see that Netgear finally issued a firmware update last week (http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/24413) which tells me that the security holes have been there for some time.  Hopefully the device that you have came with this latest firmware already installed.   Another example of the sentiment that I tried to get across in my previous post:  a product or service is seldom what it seems on the surface. ... View more

jnchahn - Just so I'm sure that I'm reading you right, your new WNDR3700v4 router hardware resolved your wi-fi drops in addition to providing you the great (and consistent?) up/down velocity that you quote in your post? ... View more

425Ranger:  thanks for posting the chat transcript.  For what its worth:  the steps that Richard performed are identical to those that Sunita peformed during a chat that I had back on Dec-27.  And guess what:  my wi-fi drops were not resolved.   I agree with Majeen6 that this looks to be systemic as all the posts to this thread indicate a December emergence of the issue.  I am suspicious that Comcast rolled out something in their network that is producing these wi-fi issues.   And Sunita pulled the same little Barnum & Bailey routine with me: http://speedtest.comcast.net is a farce as it uses the Comcast server closest to the user.  Which ensures that the Comcast burst mode is used to juice the "speed" results.  Go to speedtest.net (i.e., without the Comcast filter pre-selected) and pick a server that is not Comcast and see what the speed results are when Comcast's smoke and mirrors are eliminated;  I see a drop of at least 25-50% for both up and down when I do this.  So much for guaranteed performance. ... View more

I will add to the list of frustrated and unhappy users whose wi-fi randomly drops and then re-establishes.  I started having issues in early December when the old Comcast supplied Netgear wireless router simply quit working: the online Tech guy had me go through a test and the router did not restart at which point he told me that Comcast would replace the failed unit.  So off to the Comcast Service Center I went (and this was barely 2 months after another visit to replace our Comcast supplied cable-dvr box after it, too, failed) and I was provided with a replacement Gateway TC8305c device that took the place of both the old (and still functioning) cable modem and the failed Netgear router.  And since then we have experienced wi-fi fails on our three wireless laptops, our Kindle Fire, and my smart-phone (i.e., everything that we depend on Comcast for our wi-fi).  Our old hardwired desktop has also experienced more "cannot load web page" regardless of the browser that we are using.  So:  is it a crappy piece of hardware (i.e., I could tell that the "new" Gateway device was actually a refurb, as was the cable-dvr box that we received earlier) or is it a problem with the incoming Comcast feed (i.e., we have had more than a few service outages for both internet and TV in the last couple of months).   I have reset the Gateway at least a 1/2-dozen times and Comcast has logged on and refreshed the signal once as well.  And the wi-fi fails are occurring with ever increasing frequency.   Not at all happy with this. ... View more