4 ms·

Last summer I had consistent "micro drops" in my upstream cable connection with a frequency of a couple times per hour up to dozens of times. The peaks were ge

Last summer I had consistent "micro drops" in my upstream cable connection with a frequency of a couple times per hour up to dozens of times. The peaks were generally weekday afternoons. The symptom was the same each time, which was a roughly 5-10 second period where my download would work perfectly, but no data could be uploaded. This was frustrating at work and at play. For the former, I'd see and hear everyone in a virtual meeting, but they'd lose my audio and video during that time. At play, I'd just get dropped from whatever online game I was playing. Looking at the modem's status screen, I could see that I only had a single upstream channel connected. Looking to bypass wiring, I connected my modem directly to where the home wiring connects to the wire from the street. Same result. When I called Xfinity, they let me know it was probably inside wiring, even after I let them know about the test at the wire entry point. They really didn't want to send someone, and warned me it'd be $150 if it was found that the issue was inside wiring. The next available tech appointment was 13 days away. The good news was that FIOS was available and they could come the next day. Even better, I was able to convince the tech to run the new cable to a much more convenient location for my desk & router.

bscphil 3y ago
> Looking at the modem's status screen, I could see that I only had a single upstream channel connected. Is this really a reliable indicator of a problem? I'm also on Xfinity, and see the same thing - 3 out of 4 upstream bonded channels are in the "not locked" state according to my modem. They've been that way ever since I moved here. However, I receive the full upstream bandwidth that Xfinity allocates for my plan (a pathetic 20 Mbps), and it has been extremely reliable, no outages. Since it looked like this from day 1, I made the assumption that Xfinity only uses one of the channels since the bandwidth they provide is so low. The power levels and SNRs for all locked channels (up and down) are green across the board.
- fatnoah 3y ago
  > Is this really a reliable indicator of a problem? Apparently it was a problem (according to a tech I spoke with over chat) because having a single connection meant that any interruption in that single channel meant the entire connection goes down. Depending on DOCSIS version that channel does support the full bandwidth. My upstream was generally around 10Mbps, which worked fine for nearly everything we did, but when things were bad, it'd drop to 1-2kbps or lower.
sidewndr46 3y ago
Wtf kind of company is Xfinity running? Spectrum offered to replace my internal wiring for free. I just didn't want some guy running around in my attic, so I did it myself.
- fatnoah 3y ago
  > Wtf kind of company is Xfinity running? What made it even worse was that when internet was down, I thought I'd just watch TV, which I also had through Xfinity. Nope, even though I could see and hear the channel, the STB requires full connection to operate, so my show would be on in the background, but 80% of the screen would be taken by a dialog telling me the STB could tune channels. As it turns out, EVERY SINGLE REMOTE CONTROL PRESS received by the STB is then round-tripped to an Xfinity server, so when the internet has an issue, you can't watch TV. That made ditching cable and moving entirely to streaming a very easy choice since it killed cable's main advantage.
  - sidewndr46 3y ago
    So it's truly a remote control then, because it requires a remote server!

bscphil 3y ago

> Looking at the modem's status screen, I could see that I only had a single upstream channel connected. Is this really a reliable indicator of a problem? I'm also on Xfinity, and see the same thing - 3 out of 4 upstream bonded channels are in the "not locked" state according to my modem. They've been that way ever since I moved here. However, I receive the full upstream bandwidth that Xfinity allocates for my plan (a pathetic 20 Mbps), and it has been extremely reliable, no outages. Since it looked like this from day 1, I made the assumption that Xfinity only uses one of the channels since the bandwidth they provide is so low. The power levels and SNRs for all locked channels (up and down) are green across the board.

fatnoah 3y ago
> Is this really a reliable indicator of a problem? Apparently it was a problem (according to a tech I spoke with over chat) because having a single connection meant that any interruption in that single channel meant the entire connection goes down. Depending on DOCSIS version that channel does support the full bandwidth. My upstream was generally around 10Mbps, which worked fine for nearly everything we did, but when things were bad, it'd drop to 1-2kbps or lower.

sidewndr46 3y ago

Wtf kind of company is Xfinity running? Spectrum offered to replace my internal wiring for free. I just didn't want some guy running around in my attic, so I did it myself.

fatnoah 3y ago
> Wtf kind of company is Xfinity running? What made it even worse was that when internet was down, I thought I'd just watch TV, which I also had through Xfinity. Nope, even though I could see and hear the channel, the STB requires full connection to operate, so my show would be on in the background, but 80% of the screen would be taken by a dialog telling me the STB could tune channels. As it turns out, EVERY SINGLE REMOTE CONTROL PRESS received by the STB is then round-tripped to an Xfinity server, so when the internet has an issue, you can't watch TV. That made ditching cable and moving entirely to streaming a very easy choice since it killed cable's main advantage.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  So it's truly a remote control then, because it requires a remote server!