Cable modem woes

[Delirium]

Lately, I've been having really bad lag with my cable modem, and the service has been cutting out (cable light goes out) for a few seconds - long enough so I have to do a "leave game" and "join game" to re-establish the connection to the CL server. Now, the local phone company has really gotten some bad reviews, and they have to be involved in any DSL installation, which is part of the reason I went with Cable in the first place. I am considering trying DSL, but I have zero faith that it will be any better. Tech support with both appears incompetent.

I was wondering if anyone here has any ideas of things I can do to test what is wrong. Also, what tools do I use to test the lag time to the CL server?

[Konoko]

When I was having weird cable modem problems, I called them and from their end they did notice that a number of cable modems (mine included) cut out for a while.

They sent a guy over to check the line strength and something to do with the signal the cable modem receives and sends out. He hooked up so doodad to the modem and line to test stuff. There was some mumbo jumbo about where the signal to the modem and then the signal from the modem have to be in such-and-such a range. Mine was so over this range that the guy said it was impossible. The modem was reporting bad stats so he replaced it (but there was no problem with the workings of the modem). So I think the guy just guessed it was noise on the line or something. I only had trouble that week and not ever since...

So I guess to sum up, there are things the cable modem types can do to check stuff out.
In my little story there was nothing really wrong but that was just one example.

Good luck!

Konoko

[Kiriel]

Just an FYI, in the case of cable and local phone company DSL, they both typically suck. So it's really just a matter of who sucks less in your area. I have a business level DSL line at home, so I get better quality service because it's through an ISP which actually gives a damn, but anything that involves the line can still make the local phone company do their part, so none of us can completely escape sucky companies.

[Altir]

ooc:

Myself have had the problem with cable - had it for 3 years. It was tolerable at first, after about 8 months it became stable and great... the last 8 months it got terrible. You could be watching TV and see it fuzz a bit in the background and you KNEW you lost your internet cable at that time. It was at the point of going out 10-20 times like this during the day - like Delirium described. About 30 sec - 1 min down.

The @home folks switched out the cable modem and that did nothing because they said the line strength was fine. They tested line strength and it was strong. We called and called and called. They decided it must be a problem with the cable system and said it wasn't the @home - and the cable people would come out. They never did.

There was one point were it was getting bad - oh about a year ago... particularly during the rain. Come to find out a cable to our house was nicked, probably by a fallen branch and water worked it's way *in* the cable into the first splitter at the house. It was full of water! Amazing it worked somewhat but the signal was very weak at the splitter.... Replacing that and the damaged part of the cable fixed it for a time.

ADSL became available and we've switched. Latency is a little better, upload/download rates are much faster, and it's only dropped once the entire time in the last 3 weeks we've had it - during a storm...

I have to agree with Kiriel though, I've heard nightmares with both the cable internet and DSL/ADSL folks here locally. It will probably be different in different locations locally.... and sometimes you're picking between sucky providers. My phone company seems to actually maintain a schedule of maintaince weekly that you can read about online. I'm amazed. They seem to have gotten better while cable has gotten worse.

Even stranger, they haven't charged us yet for the service or the ethernet dsl modem yet. We managed to argue them into waiving the $200 installation fee since other providers do it for free.

I use IPNetMonitor to monitor the connection and with a trace you can typically get some idea of the lag at certain points. http://www.sustworks.com/

I use IPNetRouter to connect our ... plethera of 8 or some silly number of Macs to the network.

HWC Altir

[Mehan]

Originally posted by Altir
ooc:

Myself have had the problem with cable - had it for 3 years. It was tolerable at first, after about 8 months it became stable and great... the last 8 months it got terrible. You could be watching TV and see it fuzz a bit in the background and you KNEW you lost your internet cable at that time. It was at the point of going out 10-20 times like this during the day - like Delirium described. About 30 sec - 1 min down.

The @home folks switched out the cable modem and that did nothing because they said the line strength was fine. They tested line strength and it was strong. We called and called and called. They decided it must be a problem with the cable system and said it wasn't the @home - and the cable people would come out. They never did.



oh my gosh! We have @Home too, and it SUCKS!! lol. It always used to cut out, pain in the arse! They've *fixed* it for now, but I'm holding my breath.