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Lord Yod
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I pay for a 16mb/s download, but between the hours of about 4pm-6am the fastest I've seen it in the last 4 months has been about 3mb/s, with incredibly low upload (like 300kb/s) and absurdly high ping (like 500+ ms). Every single time I call them up (going on like 20 times now) they make me go through this bullshit:
Them: Do you have a router?
Me: Of course I do.
Them: Well that's your problem, routers cause lag like that.
Me: o_O No, if that were the case the problem would persist when the repair technician comes and checks my connection at the cable outlet on the wall. The last 5 times he has done that there has been no change.
Them: Well it's probably your router.
And this tends to go on for an hour or more.
So what the fuck can I do to get internet that would allow me to play things online? Comcast is the only ISP in my area basically, I could pay for an even slower connection on a DSL but that's about it.
Them: Do you have a router?
Me: Of course I do.
Them: Well that's your problem, routers cause lag like that.
Me: o_O No, if that were the case the problem would persist when the repair technician comes and checks my connection at the cable outlet on the wall. The last 5 times he has done that there has been no change.
Them: Well it's probably your router.
And this tends to go on for an hour or more.
So what the fuck can I do to get internet that would allow me to play things online? Comcast is the only ISP in my area basically, I could pay for an even slower connection on a DSL but that's about it.
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Plug the modem into your computer directly right before you call, every time you call. Tell them you aren't using a router.
I had similar issues with AT&T at one point, and I believe also with Comcast 2 addresses ago. They will completely BS you as long as you give them the router as a potential out. Remove it from the equation, temporarily, and force them to go from there.
From 3PM on, you've got kids getting home from school, downloading as many illegal musics as they can get their mitts on, then the adults get back around 5-6PM, which adds their load to the system. Might get a bit of a reprieve around 7-8PM due to people eating dinner, but then its PRIME TIME TV! So around 11 or so some of the people go to bed, but then you get the Night-Owls, the Porn-Viddlers, and the kids are still influencing the issue due to having 23^e6 queued downloads.
Rinse and repeat for the next day.
At least this is how I've come to understand the dynamics of Cable Internet in a large install-base area. Hell, this isn't even calling into thought the technical issues that might come from shoddy wires, bad connections in the boxes, weathering, etc. etc.
Your only recourse is to switch as soon as you can. Thank god for FIOS.
The limed part is the truth. You're paying for speeds up to 16 Mb/s, which is in no way a guarantee that you will have that speed 24/7.
As long as you're close to 16 Mb/s the rest of the time, you're getting what you're paying them for.
What I do is make sure I document all the calls, so I know when I first see a problem. I call regularly while the problem persists, and always ask to speak with a supervisor if I don't feel my problem is being addressed. I also never let them get out of it by promising to call me back - politely let them know you're happy to wait on hold.
Once the issue is addressed (it has taken 6-8 weeks), I then call back and ask for a refund for the service I paid for from the time I first called. It's taken some persistence, but I've always gotten it.
EDIT: Also yes, if you're getting 3mb at peak times, they'll probably call that acceptable. I was seeing .2mbs at peak times, and it was unusable. They initially gave me the runaround that it was my router or that there wasn't a problem, but after enough badgering it was fixed.
Joke aside, the thing is that they advertise something that is actually not true, your internet connection will be faster when less customers (aka you) are not connected at the same time.
You are paying for "up to 8" and "sometimes under certain scenarios you might maybe get to 16 if you are lucky"
And seriously, 3mpbs connection and "500 ping" don't match. You don't get a 500 ping at DSL speeds.
But anyway, 300 upload ain't that bad for consumer broadband, yo.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
In the states, cable providers generally advertise in megabits, which customers think is the same as megabytes. Obviously, they are not the same thing.
NintendoID: Nailbunny 3DS: 3909-8796-4685
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
I could post a screenshot of my 500+ ping to a bunch of west coast TF2 servers if you'd like. I know it doesn't match, from what I can tell a 3mb/s connection should be good enough to play on but I can't get a solid connection in anything.
I don't run torrents when I'm at home, so that shouldn't be the problem, right?
Nah, they advertise as X mbps, with Speedboost up to Y mbps.
OP, have you checked your ping at speedtest.net?
Unfortunately, with broadband you're paying for a certain size tube. They don't guarantee that the interwebs will come gushing out of that tube like a firehose at all times. If you live in an apartment building where they have 50 apartments all hooked to one box or some similar scenario, you're likely just seeing the effects of peak usage.
Nobody is disputing your ping levels, but the point is that the quality of service as you describe it would have no bearing on a 500 ping.
It could be the route your packets are taking to the game server, torrents, or hey, guess what, your router.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
...what. Throughput and latency have zero connection. You could get "DSL speeds" or much, much higher with a satellite internet provider and have terrible latency. A ping like that to a nearby server is packet loss or throttling.
This. Do this and see what kind of speeds you get. It should give you an idea of what kinda of bandwidth you're actually getting, and then you can go from there with comsuck(cast).
High ping is caused by a saturated pipe somewhere. Internet routers that are receiving data faster than they can forward it (because of a saturated pipe) put your data in a waiting queue. If the queue fills up, it starts dropping packets -- TCP packets (not ping packets), because TCP is built to not only handle packetloss, but use it as a means of throttling control signaling.
If ping packets are being dropped because of a truly faulty connection somewhere, some applications (like video games) will represent dropped ping packets as a latency spike. This is why you sometimes see your ping go 50ms to 600ms, then back down to 60, etc. In this case, though, it's misrepresenting your latency. Your latency *is* 50-60ms, it just has packetloss. Low latency + packetloss has much different causes and symptoms than high latency + no packetloss.
I know that. What I mean is, all things being equal, assuming your and their system is working normally, having a 3mpbs download rate is not going to be "the reason" that your ping is bad.
It was an attempt to highlight that he is focusing on the wrong metric if his primary concern is ping, so even if Comcast jacks up his MPBS to 50, it won't matter. Something else is wrong.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
if you are on windows, open command prompt and run
tracert www.google.com
and see what the pings look like.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
One thing I had to do in order to get my router to work properly with Comcast was clone my mac address. Might be worth a shot for you. See this:
http://www.elifulkerson.com/articles/router-vs-comcast.php
That shouldn't be necessary anymore. They used to require approval when changing the connected device (cloning MAC got around that,) but I'm fairly certain that's been lifted for at least a year.
I'm in Wilmington and we piggyback the Philly market.
NintendoID: Nailbunny 3DS: 3909-8796-4685
With us, the problem we were having was when playing games, it would be fine for a bit, then all of a sudden horrible lag spikes / disconnects. They sent out a tech several times too, and never found anything wrong, and kept trying to tell us there was no problem.
My suggestion is actually going to be to try the DSL in your area. That's what we ended up doing. Comcast was supposed to have better speed, but we had so many interruptions that it made gaming just about impossible. We switched over to AT&T's DSL because we were so frustrated with Comcast's sporadic internet and terrible customer service, and actually ended up being quite satisfied with it. No, it's not as fast as the prime Comcast speed was supposed to be, but since switching I never had any problems when gaming.
If you know someone in the area on the DSL service, maybe you could take your favorite game over there for an afternoon and just try playing for an hour and seeing what you think of the service and whether it will work for you. YMMV, but for us even though DSL had lower advertised speeds than Comcast cable, it ended up being the better solution.
Maybe they just gave me a really old modem then, but when I got Comcast last year, I couldn't get to the Internet at all through the router until I cloned my MAC address. I'd try turning off the cloning setting to see if I actually don't need it anymore, but it would be a pain in the ass if it turned out I had to clone all over again =p
I'm not going to be a shill for the company, but it's fucking useless in this thread.
Step 1. Connect directly to your modem.
Step 2. Test connections, if still slow, call tech support.
Step 3. They will have you do the basics like clear cache, clear cookies, reset tcp/ip stack etc etc.
Step 4. If still not resolved they will schedule a technician.
Step 5. If said technician can not resolve the issue they will schedule another
Step 6. If 2nd technician can not resolve issue (within 30 days of first technician) they will schedule a supervisor field call. ask for this.
Step 7. If the supervisor level tech can not resolve the issue, it won't be fixed without months of arguing, having street level cables replaced and you continuing to pay for shitty internet through all of it.. if you reach this step, find another provider, it's not worth it.
DO NOT complain to the representative on the phone about how shitty the company is and how you can't stand it.
DO NOT shout or yell or act like a child. It's not going to get you anywhere except off the phone with internet problems unresolved.
DO NOT lie about how many techs you've had come out, what the actual speed ratings are, or how many times you've had the modem replaced already.
DO bypass your router before calling.
DO kindly explain the situation.
DO be at your computer when you make the call.
Honestly all this bullshit about paying for UP TO, is retarded. yes you are paying for UP TO a certain amount, but no one is going to expect you to pay for an advertised 16mbps package and receive 3... 13 or 14 and they might call you a nit picker, but 3? yeah, Comcast understands that 3 is not acceptable.
Oh, and for all you silly gooses saying "Comcast only wants your money not for your service to work, hurf durf durf" guess what? the agents on the floor are ranked on a few metrics the most important of which is first call resolution. it's in their own best interest to fix your problem, not make you call back a thousand times because they're feeding you a line about your shitty router.
EDIT:
http://www.elifulkerson.com/articles/router-vs-comcast.php
I just read that article.
It's laughable. right up there with shadow people and alien anal probes in terms of conspiracy lunacy.
For the record, Comcast home networking is the modem boot file for a "gateway" which is a modem/router in one device, as opposed to regular high speed internet, which uses a regular modem. There is absolutely nothing in place with Comcast that prevents you from using a router instead of a pc.. as a matter of fact, these days comcast is giving away free routers for people who rent modems from them. www.comcast.com/wirelessrouter.. check it out.
This is the step I'm at now so I guess I'll switch providers.
I only do this to the reps that act like assholes.
Regardless, its not necessarily mac address locking alone. Some Comcast hookups apparently detect whether or not the Ethernet port you plug into their equipment is sending out spanning-tree packets (which your PCs NIC probably isn't, but a router or other piece of network equipment likely would be) as a means of deliberately preventing network equipment from functioning. I'm pretty sure its a holdover in their system from the old days when routers were an uncommon luxury that they could charge more for rather than a policy they are deliberately being dicks about today.
One of the open source router firmwares tipped me off about this - dd-wrt or m0n0wall or something - they have a "Comcast" setting which just flicks off the spanning tree on the uplink port and all is happy again.
The emails I've gotten from people in different parts of the country seem to indicate that some people have the mac problem, some have the spanning tree problem, and some have user error. Heterogeneous legacy systems at Comcast seem to give everybody a slightly different issue