10 ms·

Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

245 points by RadixDLT 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kev009 2y ago
The wholesale price of bandwidth is so low, I can't really understand this as anything other than BOFH-esqe behavior by the network planners, but maybe there is some path to a poorly executed attempt to eventually shakedown customers. Beyond the transit fees, its hard to imagine them struggling to backhaul with modern fiber optic data rates and the cable industry has always been a leader in fiber backhaul. Beyond all that, the protocols will almost certainly do the right thing. Further, having a ton of eyeballs pulling downstream gives Cox a ton of leverage in negotiating settlement-free peering that for instance a pure wholesale carrier would not have. Cox is also a carrier, so the eyeballs are valuable beyond just their subscription fees.
BrandoElFollito 2y ago
We only have unlimited access on France but the speed is never guaranteed. It is always "up to ..." and usually asymmetric. I have a 2.5 Gbps link which I would never saturate continuously no matter what because I have generic equipment at home (despite self-hosting a lot). I tried a few times to saturate it and whatever I managed to pull was never slow. This is probably because the ISPs allocate some realistic amount of people to the group of people who use the 10 Gbps provided to that group.
kkfx 2y ago
Formal complaint for false advertisement and contractual breach, nothing strange.
zoezoezoezoe 2y ago
I posted this on Reddit yesterday and I think it applies here "If your ISP isnt in the business of servicing internet, they should rethink their business model"
zoezoezoezoe 2y ago
As unfortunate as it is, ISPs are really in the business of scamming and monopolizing the market, lest we talk about how ISPs robbed nationwide fiber from us. ISPs dont want to charge for usage, because then they wouldnt get their ransom, but since they scam average users, those who put their claims to the test are punished.
sadler315 2y ago
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sadler315 2y ago
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- tencentshill 2y ago
  It's fascinating, "lord bubuza" is found all over different forums. I wonder why more spam filters don't have that keyword blocked.
sadler315 2y ago
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walrus01 2y ago
The root cause of the problem is that copper coaxial cable tv based (DOCSIS3.0, DOCSIS3.1, etc) last mile internet infrastructure is a shared/contended access medium for many modems connected to it. It's built on a limited number of RF channels in a certain segment that have many modems all going to a single "port" on a DOCSIS CMTS (cablemodem termination system). There is a great deal of absurdity in their claims to be selling a gigabit service product using coax-based technology, when the oversubscription ratio is INSANE. If you had more than a few customers on a segment trying to actually make use of gigabit speeds at one time (just 2 or 3 people downloading a torrent of a popular linux ISO at 980 Mbps will eat a huge amount of the total aggregate capacity of that coax segment). Cox and Comcast and RCN and similar operators are squeezing every last dollar possible for the ROI out of legacy copper coaxial last mile stuff. Only in places where the local phone company or another operator is building proper FTTH (GPON/XGSPON) are they starting to overbuild their own network with their own FTTH. Comcast is doing it in the Seattle area, for instance, in areas where the local telco (Ziply or Centurylink) offers a symmetric 1 Gbps product based on single strand FTTH/GPON. Your average coaxial cable tv last mile operator like Cox is a telecom industry dinosaur. The article here was published in early 2020 during peak covid19 lockdown but the general technology problem of copper/coaxial last mile stuff from 25+ years ago is exactly the same today.
- wmf 2y ago
  Cable is definitely shared but CMTSes added bandwidth management features years ago. Cox could just slow down the "hogs" but they're too lazy/incompetent or they're using really old equipment.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  The FTTH offerings from Ziply, Cox, Comcast, Google, ATT, Centurylink etc are all the same "shared media with high oversubscription" design too. Among them the typical ratio is ~32 PON users for the given "base rate" PON standard, similar to a typical ~20-50 for coax at a given DOCSIS standard. Both have better/worse examples (particularly early gigabit PON deployments were 64) but FTTH has rarely been about getting dedicated bandwidth up to the neighborhood box... honestly most of the time the lion's share of the benefits are "it's a sign your area just got upgraded cabling and equipment for the first time in many many years" than anything to do with the physicalities of the wire. For GPON that's 2.5 Gbps for downstream and 1.25 Gbps for upstream. So with a 32 split it's the same story of 2-3 people downloading a popular Linux ISO at 980 Mbps still eat up the entire fiber line for all 32 people. The difference on the fiber, outside the better upload symmetry we already see, is it will be able to scale a lot more in the future. Some places already have 10G PON (which, unlike GPON, is usually actually said speed) such as where ATT offers 2G and 5G symmetric service. The next step will be 25G PON (again, about the actual nominal speed).
h2odragon 2y ago
this isn't going to be fully effective until they name and shame. little popups (like viasat did) that say something like "your internet will continue to suck until your neighbor at $address stops torrenting the 100gb h0rse archive" and then they can get extra fees for "anonymous" as well as "unlimited"...
- stonethrowaway 2y ago
  > name and shame Can’t tell if this is serious or not. People here are doing basement and house work without any permits, without any gas line indicators, while being filmed. Neighbors are leaving because they fear a gas line puncture will lead to an explosion. The city won’t bother addressing it. Nobody, absolutely nobody gives a single infinitesimal fuck about a pipsqueak neighbor “naming and shaming” them over download limits. Laughable.
- alt187 2y ago
  I can't wait for this future.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    Like HoAs weren't already annoying. In this future, the ISPs will deputize the HoAs to have roaving bands of enforcers going door to door to encourage considerate bandwidth practices. Eventually, this will be escalated to authorized drone strikes on the offending addresses. So it will behoove you to ensure your neighbors are not borrowing your bandwidth.
- zer8k 2y ago
  Or alternatively they could take some of their record profits and upgrade their 30 year old infrastructure. The modern world is internet-enabled and these people are the ones with their foot on the hose selling water.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    You mean, potentially have shareholders and executives get slightly less money? Preposterous! How would they afford their Aspen home or yacht in Monaco?
trothamel 2y ago
This article is from 2020.
- supportengineer 2y ago
  Must be Cox punishing us.
- kibwen 2y ago
  [flagged]
JohnMakin 2y ago
man, as much as I hate spectrum, I will say, as much as I want to pay them for bandwidth and speed they’ll give me what I want, and sometimes even more. YMMV of course. imho this is why net neutrality should be a thing.
- walrus01 2y ago
  The engineering problem here is in limitation in aggregate Mbps/Gbps capacity in a specific last-mile service segment for N number of end user residential customers, due to use of DOCSIS3 on coax vs more modern FTTH access methods. Nothing to do with peering/net neutrality at the local city's IX point or how the ISP exchanges traffic with other AS.
zer8k 2y ago
Very familiar with Cox as they are the only cable provider in my area and fiber largely has not made it to any other part of the city except the really new and wealthy areas. While I have not yet run into any caps with my gigabit plan I am painfully aware of how limited the so called "unlimited" gigabit plan is. During COVID it was particularly egregious. I was paying about what Mike was paying except from the hours of 11am to around 9pm my download would be capped at 10Mbps or so and my upload halved from whatever it is to around 2Mbps. Cox didn't have the common courtesy to tell anyone that they were QoSing entire city blocks because their "infrastructure couldn't handle it". I only learned this by isolating the network and running my own tests. After what felt like 30 escalations with their tech support and a large portion of my night they all but confirmed they were doing this to handle the "streaming services". I work from home - this was a major problem. Despite this I was simply upsold yet another super-duper plan rather than given anything I could work with. I get regular outages with them and run my own tests on the coax. Despite having noise levels that are pretty good for the most part their service still doesn't work right all the time. Despite my insistence calling a tech out their labyrinthine tech support tree all but prevents you from talking to anyone but a moron with a flowchart where all roads lead to "reset the modem" or "upsell hardware" and a hands free phone. I used to run my own modem as I prefer to control my hardware. When I upgraded to gigabit years ago I was forced to lease a modem from them as prior to this they refused to service my house with third party hardware installed. All problems were always blamed on my modem, or my router, or anything they could point to that wasn't them. Dealing with their technical support or on-call techs was worse than pulling teeth. It was like performing dental surgery with a sledgehammer. I won't get into what it was like cancelling my cable TV. Yet another mess made more complicated by the same situation. At least it was easy to drop off the set-top boxes at the local store. I hate the amount of control ISPs have over us with the last-mile laws. Companies like Cox can more-or-less do whatever they want in my town because they're the biggest players with the most pipes. The result is as expected - terrible service, fine print bear traps, and high cost.
- saxonww 2y ago
  I'm in the same city as Mike and have been a Cox customer for 15+ years. While I have had problems, for the most part I've been satisfied. I've not historically been a top-speed-tier customer though. They are running some kind of promotion right now where they've moved me from 500Mbps to 1Gbps for 12 months at no charge, and it's the first time where I've not gotten really anywhere close to the advertised speed (not even 500, now). I'm not sure what this accomplishes for them; maybe they'll cut speeds in half next year and try to suggest I just got accustomed to faster speeds. Support is challenging when you need it. You usually have to talk to multiple people before your problem is resolved. For example, last time I got a new modem I had to be handed off twice before I got to a level where they could 'reset my registration,' and I definitely got the figurative stink eye over the phone for not renting their modem (which, is probably why it didn't "just work"). They usually try to sell you something like wiring insurance as well, and really like to emphasize the potential cost to you if they feel like they have to roll a truck. Fortunately, I've only had perhaps 3 support engagements (1 truck) in that 15+ years. Otherwise I'd be a lot less satisfied. I'm hopeful that the various fiber providers 'coming soon to my area' will help with this. AT&T is here but not cheaper - they force you to rent their equipment - and I don't want to be an AT&T customer. At the very least it might stop Cox from raising rates $3-$6 a year.
Mistletoe 2y ago
I remember when we got Cox “Fiber” that wasn’t fiber at all. This company is absolute trash. https://www.lightreading.com/cable-technology/cox-called-out-for-powered-by-fiber-ad-claim https://www.lightreading.com/cable-technology/cox-called-out... https://www.cox.com/residential/internet.html https://www.cox.com/residential/internet.html
- walrus01 2y ago
  For many years the Canadian ILEC Telus branded its last mile copper based ASDL2+ and VDSL2 products (10 Mbps to 100 Mbps, approximately) as "Optik" with lots of marketing images of fiber optic cables, when it was of course anything but. The DSLAM would have a fiber uplink, sure, but definitely not the last mile.
- somethoughts 2y ago
  I think if the company could offer Fiber To The Curb and then the last 10-20 feet between the curb and the house's router was either DSL or Cable or 5G, that would ba huge win. FTTC would avoid this scenario at least where a heavy user brings down the whole neighborhood. But perhaps the bandwidth through the last 10 feet of DSL/cable/5G isn't enough to upsell customers to convince them the switch or modem equipment is too big to fit at the curb.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    Coax can certainly handle a short dedicated link. Or you could run an Ethernet cable into the house. Phone wiring I'd doubt the capacity, and wireless would cost the most and work badly.
majorchord 2y ago
I could only dream of having 10mbps upload... we are still stuck on DSL here, I am lucky to get close to 1mb upload, not enough to even watch my home camera feed reliably, especially with audio on.
- Loughla 2y ago
  During covid my local ISP got a grant to run rural fiber. We went from satellite to a full gig fiber connection. It has literally changed my home life.
  - jhenkens 2y ago
    Any more context on this? We've got copper AT&T DSL as our only option, besides Starlink. Have been trying to work with the county, look for grants, etc to present to a local ISP who's mentioned interest.
    - Loughla 2y ago
      So I know part of the money was through the state. It was matching funds for federal dollars. I think it was through rural development, which is closed, but I'm not absolutely sure. I'll check with my neighbor (works for ISP) tomorrow to see if he knows. To be honest, we approached the ISP, who was offering fiber in a town 45 minutes away. They said if we could get sign ups at least every half mile, on average, they would make it happen. We had the signatures when they got the grant, so it was sort of a wasted effort on our part. I'll message here tomorrow if I figure it out though.
      - jhenkens 2y ago
        Thanks! Yeah, we have a local ISP that has laid fiber in other communities where they could get grants (namely native communities), but they are only doing WISP in our community right now, and it won't service about half the homes here.
        2y ago
throwaway48476 2y ago
"Heavy" use is just using what they pay for. If they can't guarantee that they should sell a lesser tier of service. Otherwise this is just fraud.
- dboreham 2y ago
  They paid for committed bandwidth? So they'd be paying $1000+/mo. But they're not.
  - wincy 2y ago
    I dunno, I pay $70 a month for gigabit from Google Fiber and absolutely saturate that thing all day long up and down. A Google PM got me on a call and asked me if I wanted 20 gigabit for $200 a month the other day. No restrictions, I could run my business off my $70 if I really wanted to. I don’t know what Cox is going on about, they need to get with the program.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      I pay $50 for 10 gigabits from Sonic. I don’t abuse it by deliberately running a speed test 24/7 or anything like that. I do use it for anything I want, at any time, without pausing to consider how much data it takes. Launch a NAS backup at 2PM on a weekday? Stream 4K video on 2 TVs at the same time? Download a mass of software updates? Without a second’s hesitation. The CEO is on record being very explicit that they sell you Internet access so you can use it as you see fit. I have the best ISP in the country. You can’t convince me otherwise.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        This one is probably in contention: https://epb.com/ https://epb.com/
        kstrauser 2y ago
        Other than being 6x the price though.
qwertyuiop_ 2y ago
Meanwhile billions and lofty promises don’t translate to benefits for real people. https://www.atr.org/senators-demand-bead-program-accountability-from-harris/ https://www.atr.org/senators-demand-bead-program-accountabil... https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/26/statement-from-vice-president-kamala-harris-on-new-administration-actions-to-increase-access-to-affordable-high-speed-internet/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases... https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kamala-harris-announces-plan-expand-internet-access-7hozc https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kamala-harris-announces-plan-...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
AyyEye 2y ago
Cox advertised gigabit to me. I always wanted it so I took the upsell. After six truckrolls (alternately telling me my signal was too strong -- installing attenuator, then too weak and removing it) for which I had to take a day off work every time, they eventually told me it was a mistake and my neighborhood didn't have gigabit. Then the cherry on top was they wouldn't even put me back on my old plan because it "wasn't offered any more". So they tried to charge me an extra $15/month for half the speed I was getting before. I switched to a local wireless ISP that ended up being even more expensive for even slower service -- but at least they weren't liars and when I had a problem I could talk directly with the owner if it wasn't sorted (and no data caps).
- createaccount99 2y ago
  Did you sue? Isn't that false advertising?
  - fn-mote 2y ago
    In the US you could seek recourse via your state Attorney General. You might hope the FCC would care (but they don’t). The GP already lost 6 days of work… how much would the likely payoff be to make it work their while to continue dealing with that company?
    - kevingadd 2y ago
      When Comcast tried to screw me out of $700 the FCC solved it for me pretty quick. I'd at least recommend giving them a try even if in the end they may not help.
    - thrtythreeforty 2y ago
      You can't buy the satisfaction that comes from forcing the phone company to do what you require.
      - kstrauser 2y ago
        > to do what you require. "To do what they advertised to you."
userbinator 2y ago
a gigabit customer who was paying $50 extra per month for unlimited data was flagged by Cox because he was using 8TB to 12TB a month "Unlimited data" should mean you can saturate the connection 24/7. Anything less is deceptive advertising. For a gigabit connection, that would mean around 300TB per month.
- beloch 2y ago
  I used to have an "unlimited bandwidth" account with Shaw Cable in Canada, back before Rogers bought them. "Unlimited" was very much front and centre in all the advertising, etc.. They started charging me overage fees. I called them up and asked them to explain why they were charging me overage fees on an unlimited bandwidth account. Their explanation was that the bandwidth was unlimited in when I could use it, not in how much I could use. Fortunately for me, there were other providers in the market that I could switch to. So I did.
  - userbinator 2y ago
    Did you ask them what times you are allowed to use a non-unlimited account?
- thunky 2y ago
  "Unlimited data" means that you can use as much as you want/can without being charged more based on usage. Otherwise there would be a cap and you are charged extra when you go over it. It has nothing to do with speed/bandwidth. Just like "unlimited text" plans don't charge per text message. But there is still a physical limit for how many texts you can send.
- fennecfoxy 2y ago
  In NZ if you buy x mbps then you must get x mbps, at all times.
- ReverseCold 2y ago
  I don’t know why they don’t advertise their oversubscription rate. The FCC should probably require this to be disclosed in some standard location. So many people are mad because “I paid for a gigabit and I can’t use the whole thing”… but like you didn’t pay for a gigabit you paid for a gigabit shared among 100 other people, which means peak-of-sums you should usually get gigabit, but it’s not guaranteed. The internet is a series of tubes! You can get a dedicated gigabit sized tube but it’ll cost 1-2 orders of magnitude more. E: Even elsewhere on this thread people are like > I dunno, I pay $70 a month for gigabit from Google Fiber and absolutely saturate that thing all day long up and down. Yes! You are the noisy neighbor getting lucky that your neighbors aren’t also noisy!
maxlin 2y ago
what a bunch of Cox
ddtaylor 2y ago
A reminder of why we are getting FTC broadband labels: https://www.fcc.gov/broadbandlabels https://www.fcc.gov/broadbandlabels
- toast0 2y ago
  Labels aren't going to help when you don't have choices, and most people don't have choices. Just like prop 65 warnings don't help when everything has them.
  - ddtaylor 2y ago
    They will at the least not be able to claim unlimited data as easily since the label is required to differentiate between unlimited and throttled service.
xyst 2y ago
Story was reported on in 2020, during the peak of the lockdowns as well. We truly fucked ourselves by giving these national ISPs so much power. In return, they abuse us, they collude to make sure other ISPs do not compete against each other to justify high prices and low bandwidth, and hire lobbyists to implement/push stupid laws in various states to prevent municipal ISPs (eg, Texas).
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Voters should be demanding their local governments roll out fiber as a utility like Chattanooga, TN.
  - brewdad 2y ago
    I have a solid fiber service from a private company but my town is also building out a municipal fiber network. I’m bummed because the latest expansion zone stopped about 100 yards from my house and they won’t be doing the rest of my street until 2027. Like I said, I already have a pretty good service but muni fiber would save me almost $400 a year for the same speeds and reportedly the same or better reliability.
- verisimi 2y ago
  > We truly fucked ourselves by giving these national ISPs so much power. Why did you give them so much power? Maybe you should have asked questions, drawn up better agreements.
  - drdaeman 2y ago
    Is agreement negotiation even a thing in B2C nowadays, especially with any larger companies? I thought it’s all non-negotiable take-or-leave.
cavisne 2y ago
Article is from 2020, when there was a big load increase from WFH. They way HFC (cable internet) works you would have to cap upload speed for everyone on the network, as it uses time multiplexing for uploads.
- mh- 2y ago
  This isn't true, they could create a new config with the lower upload speed and only push it to the offenders modems. No different than when they change their speed plans and roll out new tiers.
OptionOfT 2y ago
Cox in general is horrible. Their caps are 1.25TB, even on 1 and 2 Gigabit connections. And it's not like they put you on slow speeds once you expire it, no, they charge you $10 per 50GB (!). Automatically. You cannot opt out. Oh, and their counter isn't real-time...
lolinder 2y ago
Needs (2020). They may or may not still be doing this, but this exact article was already on HN at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23460868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23460868
- jamesy0ung 2y ago
  Yeah I thought it was a bit odd the mention of Pandemic internet traffic given most companies are now forcing return to office. Makes sense now.
toofy 2y ago
with the ftc finally going after companies lately i really hope they go after these companies who make up entirely new meanings for words. for example, it’s crazy to me that we allowed companies to redefine “unlimited” to mean “limited”. when people pontificate on how we seem to be heading towards dangerous levels of low trust society—this is a great place to start. few things reach as many people as marketing. we can’t trust so much of what we’re being sold. that’s not good, at all.
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
I get 250 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload on Spectrum (Charter Communications) in semi-rural Texas for $60/month. (I'm itching to switch to GVEC.) Recently, I had Google Fiber 2 Gbps symmetric with an option for 5 and 8 Gbps with a trial for 20 Gbps.
tensility 2y ago
Why has this 4 year old article bubbled to the top of HN?
CatWChainsaw 2y ago
"Thank you for paying us to use our service, now stop using our service, we just want free money."
komali2 2y ago
Privatizing infrastructure clearly isn't working. It's time to nationalize. Cox is basically a mafia at this point, able to sell "service" and then threaten you to use the service in some arbitrary way, but keep paying btw or you get nothing.
fat_cantor 2y ago
A year ago, I had fast Cox internet for $70 per month. I moved a mile away, and Cox wanted at least $233 for any connection at any speed because AT&T was not a competitor in that neighborhood. I said no and relied on 5G until AT&T moved in a few months later with the $70 market rate. When business people take control of companies from engineers, we get enshittification. Cox has somehow managed to make me nostalgic for the enshittification phase, which has morphed into this logjammin phase where no one even pretends to be competent enough to fix the cable.
whatever1 2y ago
They always have the choice to change provihahahahahhaha. I am kidding, Cox is probably their only choice. They better write a letter to apologize as a neighborhood for their bad behavior.
daemonologist 2y ago
Went and looked at some FCC maps to fantasize about having ISP competition after reading, and it turns out North Dakota has the best fiber coverage in the US, followed by South Dakota. I assume it's a combination of government subsidies and the prevalence of telephone co-ops out there, but very interesting nonetheless. FCC Map - https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/location-summary/fixed?version=dec2023&zoom=4.19&vlon=-101.240438&vlat=37.735850&br=r&speed=1000_100&tech=3 https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/location-summary/fixed?version=... Vice article - https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-north-dakota-has-the-best-internet-in-the-united-states/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-north-dakota-has-the-bes... New America article - https://www.newamerica.org/oti/reports/united-states-broadband-map/how-did-north-dakota-become-the-crown-jewel-of-the-internet-in-the-midwest/ https://www.newamerica.org/oti/reports/united-states-broadba...
kylehotchkiss 2y ago
Cox (coaxial) is the only real viable ISP for me, in southern California, in a neighborhood built 25 years ago. Nobody wants to lay fiber in the neighborhood. A neighborhood with nearly 2,000 houses. If Cox wasn't around... we'd probably all have fios. I had faster, cheaper fiber a decade ago at my house in no-name Virginia city and while living aboard a few years in asia. So frustrating.

245 points by RadixDLT 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

The wholesale price of bandwidth is so low, I can't really understand this as anything other than BOFH-esqe behavior by the network planners, but maybe there is some path to a poorly executed attempt to eventually shakedown customers. Beyond the transit fees, its hard to imagine them struggling to backhaul with modern fiber optic data rates and the cable industry has always been a leader in fiber backhaul. Beyond all that, the protocols will almost certainly do the right thing. Further, having a ton of eyeballs pulling downstream gives Cox a ton of leverage in negotiating settlement-free peering that for instance a pure wholesale carrier would not have. Cox is also a carrier, so the eyeballs are valuable beyond just their subscription fees.

BrandoElFollito 2y ago

We only have unlimited access on France but the speed is never guaranteed. It is always "up to ..." and usually asymmetric. I have a 2.5 Gbps link which I would never saturate continuously no matter what because I have generic equipment at home (despite self-hosting a lot). I tried a few times to saturate it and whatever I managed to pull was never slow. This is probably because the ISPs allocate some realistic amount of people to the group of people who use the 10 Gbps provided to that group.

kkfx 2y ago

Formal complaint for false advertisement and contractual breach, nothing strange.

zoezoezoezoe 2y ago

I posted this on Reddit yesterday and I think it applies here "If your ISP isnt in the business of servicing internet, they should rethink their business model"

zoezoezoezoe 2y ago

As unfortunate as it is, ISPs are really in the business of scamming and monopolizing the market, lest we talk about how ISPs robbed nationwide fiber from us. ISPs dont want to charge for usage, because then they wouldnt get their ransom, but since they scam average users, those who put their claims to the test are punished.

sadler315 2y ago

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sadler315 2y ago

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tencentshill 2y ago
It's fascinating, "lord bubuza" is found all over different forums. I wonder why more spam filters don't have that keyword blocked.

sadler315 2y ago

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walrus01 2y ago

The root cause of the problem is that copper coaxial cable tv based (DOCSIS3.0, DOCSIS3.1, etc) last mile internet infrastructure is a shared/contended access medium for many modems connected to it. It's built on a limited number of RF channels in a certain segment that have many modems all going to a single "port" on a DOCSIS CMTS (cablemodem termination system). There is a great deal of absurdity in their claims to be selling a gigabit service product using coax-based technology, when the oversubscription ratio is INSANE. If you had more than a few customers on a segment trying to actually make use of gigabit speeds at one time (just 2 or 3 people downloading a torrent of a popular linux ISO at 980 Mbps will eat a huge amount of the total aggregate capacity of that coax segment). Cox and Comcast and RCN and similar operators are squeezing every last dollar possible for the ROI out of legacy copper coaxial last mile stuff. Only in places where the local phone company or another operator is building proper FTTH (GPON/XGSPON) are they starting to overbuild their own network with their own FTTH. Comcast is doing it in the Seattle area, for instance, in areas where the local telco (Ziply or Centurylink) offers a symmetric 1 Gbps product based on single strand FTTH/GPON. Your average coaxial cable tv last mile operator like Cox is a telecom industry dinosaur. The article here was published in early 2020 during peak covid19 lockdown but the general technology problem of copper/coaxial last mile stuff from 25+ years ago is exactly the same today.

wmf 2y ago
Cable is definitely shared but CMTSes added bandwidth management features years ago. Cox could just slow down the "hogs" but they're too lazy/incompetent or they're using really old equipment.
zamadatix 2y ago
The FTTH offerings from Ziply, Cox, Comcast, Google, ATT, Centurylink etc are all the same "shared media with high oversubscription" design too. Among them the typical ratio is ~32 PON users for the given "base rate" PON standard, similar to a typical ~20-50 for coax at a given DOCSIS standard. Both have better/worse examples (particularly early gigabit PON deployments were 64) but FTTH has rarely been about getting dedicated bandwidth up to the neighborhood box... honestly most of the time the lion's share of the benefits are "it's a sign your area just got upgraded cabling and equipment for the first time in many many years" than anything to do with the physicalities of the wire. For GPON that's 2.5 Gbps for downstream and 1.25 Gbps for upstream. So with a 32 split it's the same story of 2-3 people downloading a popular Linux ISO at 980 Mbps still eat up the entire fiber line for all 32 people. The difference on the fiber, outside the better upload symmetry we already see, is it will be able to scale a lot more in the future. Some places already have 10G PON (which, unlike GPON, is usually actually said speed) such as where ATT offers 2G and 5G symmetric service. The next step will be 25G PON (again, about the actual nominal speed).

h2odragon 2y ago

this isn't going to be fully effective until they name and shame. little popups (like viasat did) that say something like "your internet will continue to suck until your neighbor at $address stops torrenting the 100gb h0rse archive" and then they can get extra fees for "anonymous" as well as "unlimited"...

stonethrowaway 2y ago
> name and shame Can’t tell if this is serious or not. People here are doing basement and house work without any permits, without any gas line indicators, while being filmed. Neighbors are leaving because they fear a gas line puncture will lead to an explosion. The city won’t bother addressing it. Nobody, absolutely nobody gives a single infinitesimal fuck about a pipsqueak neighbor “naming and shaming” them over download limits. Laughable.
alt187 2y ago
I can't wait for this future.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Like HoAs weren't already annoying. In this future, the ISPs will deputize the HoAs to have roaving bands of enforcers going door to door to encourage considerate bandwidth practices. Eventually, this will be escalated to authorized drone strikes on the offending addresses. So it will behoove you to ensure your neighbors are not borrowing your bandwidth.
zer8k 2y ago
Or alternatively they could take some of their record profits and upgrade their 30 year old infrastructure. The modern world is internet-enabled and these people are the ones with their foot on the hose selling water.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  You mean, potentially have shareholders and executives get slightly less money? Preposterous! How would they afford their Aspen home or yacht in Monaco?

trothamel 2y ago

This article is from 2020.

supportengineer 2y ago
Must be Cox punishing us.
kibwen 2y ago
[flagged]

JohnMakin 2y ago

man, as much as I hate spectrum, I will say, as much as I want to pay them for bandwidth and speed they’ll give me what I want, and sometimes even more. YMMV of course. imho this is why net neutrality should be a thing.

walrus01 2y ago
The engineering problem here is in limitation in aggregate Mbps/Gbps capacity in a specific last-mile service segment for N number of end user residential customers, due to use of DOCSIS3 on coax vs more modern FTTH access methods. Nothing to do with peering/net neutrality at the local city's IX point or how the ISP exchanges traffic with other AS.

zer8k 2y ago

Very familiar with Cox as they are the only cable provider in my area and fiber largely has not made it to any other part of the city except the really new and wealthy areas. While I have not yet run into any caps with my gigabit plan I am painfully aware of how limited the so called "unlimited" gigabit plan is. During COVID it was particularly egregious. I was paying about what Mike was paying except from the hours of 11am to around 9pm my download would be capped at 10Mbps or so and my upload halved from whatever it is to around 2Mbps. Cox didn't have the common courtesy to tell anyone that they were QoSing entire city blocks because their "infrastructure couldn't handle it". I only learned this by isolating the network and running my own tests. After what felt like 30 escalations with their tech support and a large portion of my night they all but confirmed they were doing this to handle the "streaming services". I work from home - this was a major problem. Despite this I was simply upsold yet another super-duper plan rather than given anything I could work with. I get regular outages with them and run my own tests on the coax. Despite having noise levels that are pretty good for the most part their service still doesn't work right all the time. Despite my insistence calling a tech out their labyrinthine tech support tree all but prevents you from talking to anyone but a moron with a flowchart where all roads lead to "reset the modem" or "upsell hardware" and a hands free phone. I used to run my own modem as I prefer to control my hardware. When I upgraded to gigabit years ago I was forced to lease a modem from them as prior to this they refused to service my house with third party hardware installed. All problems were always blamed on my modem, or my router, or anything they could point to that wasn't them. Dealing with their technical support or on-call techs was worse than pulling teeth. It was like performing dental surgery with a sledgehammer. I won't get into what it was like cancelling my cable TV. Yet another mess made more complicated by the same situation. At least it was easy to drop off the set-top boxes at the local store. I hate the amount of control ISPs have over us with the last-mile laws. Companies like Cox can more-or-less do whatever they want in my town because they're the biggest players with the most pipes. The result is as expected - terrible service, fine print bear traps, and high cost.

saxonww 2y ago
I'm in the same city as Mike and have been a Cox customer for 15+ years. While I have had problems, for the most part I've been satisfied. I've not historically been a top-speed-tier customer though. They are running some kind of promotion right now where they've moved me from 500Mbps to 1Gbps for 12 months at no charge, and it's the first time where I've not gotten really anywhere close to the advertised speed (not even 500, now). I'm not sure what this accomplishes for them; maybe they'll cut speeds in half next year and try to suggest I just got accustomed to faster speeds. Support is challenging when you need it. You usually have to talk to multiple people before your problem is resolved. For example, last time I got a new modem I had to be handed off twice before I got to a level where they could 'reset my registration,' and I definitely got the figurative stink eye over the phone for not renting their modem (which, is probably why it didn't "just work"). They usually try to sell you something like wiring insurance as well, and really like to emphasize the potential cost to you if they feel like they have to roll a truck. Fortunately, I've only had perhaps 3 support engagements (1 truck) in that 15+ years. Otherwise I'd be a lot less satisfied. I'm hopeful that the various fiber providers 'coming soon to my area' will help with this. AT&T is here but not cheaper - they force you to rent their equipment - and I don't want to be an AT&T customer. At the very least it might stop Cox from raising rates $3-$6 a year.

Mistletoe 2y ago

I remember when we got Cox “Fiber” that wasn’t fiber at all. This company is absolute trash. https://www.lightreading.com/cable-technology/cox-called-out-for-powered-by-fiber-ad-claim https://www.lightreading.com/cable-technology/cox-called-out... https://www.cox.com/residential/internet.html https://www.cox.com/residential/internet.html

walrus01 2y ago
For many years the Canadian ILEC Telus branded its last mile copper based ASDL2+ and VDSL2 products (10 Mbps to 100 Mbps, approximately) as "Optik" with lots of marketing images of fiber optic cables, when it was of course anything but. The DSLAM would have a fiber uplink, sure, but definitely not the last mile.
somethoughts 2y ago
I think if the company could offer Fiber To The Curb and then the last 10-20 feet between the curb and the house's router was either DSL or Cable or 5G, that would ba huge win. FTTC would avoid this scenario at least where a heavy user brings down the whole neighborhood. But perhaps the bandwidth through the last 10 feet of DSL/cable/5G isn't enough to upsell customers to convince them the switch or modem equipment is too big to fit at the curb.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  Coax can certainly handle a short dedicated link. Or you could run an Ethernet cable into the house. Phone wiring I'd doubt the capacity, and wireless would cost the most and work badly.

majorchord 2y ago

I could only dream of having 10mbps upload... we are still stuck on DSL here, I am lucky to get close to 1mb upload, not enough to even watch my home camera feed reliably, especially with audio on.

Loughla 2y ago
During covid my local ISP got a grant to run rural fiber. We went from satellite to a full gig fiber connection. It has literally changed my home life.
- jhenkens 2y ago
  Any more context on this? We've got copper AT&T DSL as our only option, besides Starlink. Have been trying to work with the county, look for grants, etc to present to a local ISP who's mentioned interest.
  - Loughla 2y ago
    So I know part of the money was through the state. It was matching funds for federal dollars. I think it was through rural development, which is closed, but I'm not absolutely sure. I'll check with my neighbor (works for ISP) tomorrow to see if he knows. To be honest, we approached the ISP, who was offering fiber in a town 45 minutes away. They said if we could get sign ups at least every half mile, on average, they would make it happen. We had the signatures when they got the grant, so it was sort of a wasted effort on our part. I'll message here tomorrow if I figure it out though.
    - jhenkens 2y ago
      Thanks! Yeah, we have a local ISP that has laid fiber in other communities where they could get grants (namely native communities), but they are only doing WISP in our community right now, and it won't service about half the homes here.
      - 2y ago

throwaway48476 2y ago

"Heavy" use is just using what they pay for. If they can't guarantee that they should sell a lesser tier of service. Otherwise this is just fraud.

dboreham 2y ago
They paid for committed bandwidth? So they'd be paying $1000+/mo. But they're not.
- wincy 2y ago
  I dunno, I pay $70 a month for gigabit from Google Fiber and absolutely saturate that thing all day long up and down. A Google PM got me on a call and asked me if I wanted 20 gigabit for $200 a month the other day. No restrictions, I could run my business off my $70 if I really wanted to. I don’t know what Cox is going on about, they need to get with the program.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    I pay $50 for 10 gigabits from Sonic. I don’t abuse it by deliberately running a speed test 24/7 or anything like that. I do use it for anything I want, at any time, without pausing to consider how much data it takes. Launch a NAS backup at 2PM on a weekday? Stream 4K video on 2 TVs at the same time? Download a mass of software updates? Without a second’s hesitation. The CEO is on record being very explicit that they sell you Internet access so you can use it as you see fit. I have the best ISP in the country. You can’t convince me otherwise.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      This one is probably in contention: https://epb.com/ https://epb.com/
      - kstrauser 2y ago
        Other than being 6x the price though.

qwertyuiop_ 2y ago

Meanwhile billions and lofty promises don’t translate to benefits for real people. https://www.atr.org/senators-demand-bead-program-accountability-from-harris/ https://www.atr.org/senators-demand-bead-program-accountabil... https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/26/statement-from-vice-president-kamala-harris-on-new-administration-actions-to-increase-access-to-affordable-high-speed-internet/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases... https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kamala-harris-announces-plan-expand-internet-access-7hozc https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kamala-harris-announces-plan-...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

AyyEye 2y ago

Cox advertised gigabit to me. I always wanted it so I took the upsell. After six truckrolls (alternately telling me my signal was too strong -- installing attenuator, then too weak and removing it) for which I had to take a day off work every time, they eventually told me it was a mistake and my neighborhood didn't have gigabit. Then the cherry on top was they wouldn't even put me back on my old plan because it "wasn't offered any more". So they tried to charge me an extra $15/month for half the speed I was getting before. I switched to a local wireless ISP that ended up being even more expensive for even slower service -- but at least they weren't liars and when I had a problem I could talk directly with the owner if it wasn't sorted (and no data caps).

createaccount99 2y ago
Did you sue? Isn't that false advertising?
- fn-mote 2y ago
  In the US you could seek recourse via your state Attorney General. You might hope the FCC would care (but they don’t). The GP already lost 6 days of work… how much would the likely payoff be to make it work their while to continue dealing with that company?
  - kevingadd 2y ago
    When Comcast tried to screw me out of $700 the FCC solved it for me pretty quick. I'd at least recommend giving them a try even if in the end they may not help.
  - thrtythreeforty 2y ago
    You can't buy the satisfaction that comes from forcing the phone company to do what you require.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      > to do what you require. "To do what they advertised to you."

userbinator 2y ago

a gigabit customer who was paying $50 extra per month for unlimited data was flagged by Cox because he was using 8TB to 12TB a month "Unlimited data" should mean you can saturate the connection 24/7. Anything less is deceptive advertising. For a gigabit connection, that would mean around 300TB per month.

beloch 2y ago
I used to have an "unlimited bandwidth" account with Shaw Cable in Canada, back before Rogers bought them. "Unlimited" was very much front and centre in all the advertising, etc.. They started charging me overage fees. I called them up and asked them to explain why they were charging me overage fees on an unlimited bandwidth account. Their explanation was that the bandwidth was unlimited in when I could use it, not in how much I could use. Fortunately for me, there were other providers in the market that I could switch to. So I did.
- userbinator 2y ago
  Did you ask them what times you are allowed to use a non-unlimited account?
thunky 2y ago
"Unlimited data" means that you can use as much as you want/can without being charged more based on usage. Otherwise there would be a cap and you are charged extra when you go over it. It has nothing to do with speed/bandwidth. Just like "unlimited text" plans don't charge per text message. But there is still a physical limit for how many texts you can send.
fennecfoxy 2y ago
In NZ if you buy x mbps then you must get x mbps, at all times.
ReverseCold 2y ago
I don’t know why they don’t advertise their oversubscription rate. The FCC should probably require this to be disclosed in some standard location. So many people are mad because “I paid for a gigabit and I can’t use the whole thing”… but like you didn’t pay for a gigabit you paid for a gigabit shared among 100 other people, which means peak-of-sums you should usually get gigabit, but it’s not guaranteed. The internet is a series of tubes! You can get a dedicated gigabit sized tube but it’ll cost 1-2 orders of magnitude more. E: Even elsewhere on this thread people are like > I dunno, I pay $70 a month for gigabit from Google Fiber and absolutely saturate that thing all day long up and down. Yes! You are the noisy neighbor getting lucky that your neighbors aren’t also noisy!

maxlin 2y ago

what a bunch of Cox

ddtaylor 2y ago

A reminder of why we are getting FTC broadband labels: https://www.fcc.gov/broadbandlabels https://www.fcc.gov/broadbandlabels

toast0 2y ago
Labels aren't going to help when you don't have choices, and most people don't have choices. Just like prop 65 warnings don't help when everything has them.
- ddtaylor 2y ago
  They will at the least not be able to claim unlimited data as easily since the label is required to differentiate between unlimited and throttled service.

xyst 2y ago

Story was reported on in 2020, during the peak of the lockdowns as well. We truly fucked ourselves by giving these national ISPs so much power. In return, they abuse us, they collude to make sure other ISPs do not compete against each other to justify high prices and low bandwidth, and hire lobbyists to implement/push stupid laws in various states to prevent municipal ISPs (eg, Texas).

lotsofpulp 2y ago
Voters should be demanding their local governments roll out fiber as a utility like Chattanooga, TN.
- brewdad 2y ago
  I have a solid fiber service from a private company but my town is also building out a municipal fiber network. I’m bummed because the latest expansion zone stopped about 100 yards from my house and they won’t be doing the rest of my street until 2027. Like I said, I already have a pretty good service but muni fiber would save me almost $400 a year for the same speeds and reportedly the same or better reliability.
verisimi 2y ago
> We truly fucked ourselves by giving these national ISPs so much power. Why did you give them so much power? Maybe you should have asked questions, drawn up better agreements.
- drdaeman 2y ago
  Is agreement negotiation even a thing in B2C nowadays, especially with any larger companies? I thought it’s all non-negotiable take-or-leave.

cavisne 2y ago

Article is from 2020, when there was a big load increase from WFH. They way HFC (cable internet) works you would have to cap upload speed for everyone on the network, as it uses time multiplexing for uploads.

mh- 2y ago
This isn't true, they could create a new config with the lower upload speed and only push it to the offenders modems. No different than when they change their speed plans and roll out new tiers.

OptionOfT 2y ago

Cox in general is horrible. Their caps are 1.25TB, even on 1 and 2 Gigabit connections. And it's not like they put you on slow speeds once you expire it, no, they charge you $10 per 50GB (!). Automatically. You cannot opt out. Oh, and their counter isn't real-time...

lolinder 2y ago

Needs (2020). They may or may not still be doing this, but this exact article was already on HN at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23460868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23460868

jamesy0ung 2y ago
Yeah I thought it was a bit odd the mention of Pandemic internet traffic given most companies are now forcing return to office. Makes sense now.

toofy 2y ago

with the ftc finally going after companies lately i really hope they go after these companies who make up entirely new meanings for words. for example, it’s crazy to me that we allowed companies to redefine “unlimited” to mean “limited”. when people pontificate on how we seem to be heading towards dangerous levels of low trust society—this is a great place to start. few things reach as many people as marketing. we can’t trust so much of what we’re being sold. that’s not good, at all.

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

I get 250 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload on Spectrum (Charter Communications) in semi-rural Texas for $60/month. (I'm itching to switch to GVEC.) Recently, I had Google Fiber 2 Gbps symmetric with an option for 5 and 8 Gbps with a trial for 20 Gbps.

tensility 2y ago

Why has this 4 year old article bubbled to the top of HN?

CatWChainsaw 2y ago

"Thank you for paying us to use our service, now stop using our service, we just want free money."

komali2 2y ago

Privatizing infrastructure clearly isn't working. It's time to nationalize. Cox is basically a mafia at this point, able to sell "service" and then threaten you to use the service in some arbitrary way, but keep paying btw or you get nothing.

fat_cantor 2y ago

A year ago, I had fast Cox internet for $70 per month. I moved a mile away, and Cox wanted at least $233 for any connection at any speed because AT&T was not a competitor in that neighborhood. I said no and relied on 5G until AT&T moved in a few months later with the $70 market rate. When business people take control of companies from engineers, we get enshittification. Cox has somehow managed to make me nostalgic for the enshittification phase, which has morphed into this logjammin phase where no one even pretends to be competent enough to fix the cable.

whatever1 2y ago

They always have the choice to change provihahahahahhaha. I am kidding, Cox is probably their only choice. They better write a letter to apologize as a neighborhood for their bad behavior.

daemonologist 2y ago

Went and looked at some FCC maps to fantasize about having ISP competition after reading, and it turns out North Dakota has the best fiber coverage in the US, followed by South Dakota. I assume it's a combination of government subsidies and the prevalence of telephone co-ops out there, but very interesting nonetheless. FCC Map - https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/location-summary/fixed?version=dec2023&zoom=4.19&vlon=-101.240438&vlat=37.735850&br=r&speed=1000_100&tech=3 https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/location-summary/fixed?version=... Vice article - https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-north-dakota-has-the-best-internet-in-the-united-states/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-north-dakota-has-the-bes... New America article - https://www.newamerica.org/oti/reports/united-states-broadband-map/how-did-north-dakota-become-the-crown-jewel-of-the-internet-in-the-midwest/ https://www.newamerica.org/oti/reports/united-states-broadba...

kylehotchkiss 2y ago

Cox (coaxial) is the only real viable ISP for me, in southern California, in a neighborhood built 25 years ago. Nobody wants to lay fiber in the neighborhood. A neighborhood with nearly 2,000 houses. If Cox wasn't around... we'd probably all have fios. I had faster, cheaper fiber a decade ago at my house in no-name Virginia city and while living aboard a few years in asia. So frustrating.