Comcast, outbound dropouts, questions - Resolved

Posts: 2 · Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 12:43 pm Post subject:

I too have had such horrible luck with Comcast customer support. They are very rude 99% of the time. Comcast is the only gig in my area, so I'm stuck until Verizon gets FIOS out here.

Posts: 114 · Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 12:08 pm Post subject:

These comments about poor and rude Comcast customer service surprises me. While the techs I've talked to weren't "top notch", they were all polite and for the most part, showed up on time.

Blowing up a tier 1 support person at a large company like Comcast goes nowhere (and usually laughed at). They truly do not care if you jump to FIOS (or another ISP) - they actually prefer it since you won't be blowing up at them in the future.

The first tech that came to my house didn't really seem interested in his job. He told me that he'd call me later in the day to see if what he did resolved my issue (it didn't, and he didn't call). Luckily, all subsequent visits were by another tech who was much more into his job and was more concerned about the issue (kept scratching his head, called his supervisor many times, etc). The final tech (tier 2) stayed in front of my house for 2-3 hours, monitoring the line. Two days later, unknowingly to me, someone else came out and replaced wires underground that fixed the issue. I then got a follow up call asking if what they did resolved my issue.

I've heard about the reputation of Comcast showing up late (if at all) for appointments, but I've had nothing but on-time arrivals. It also helps to schedule things in the morning before their appointments fall behind.

-Craig

Posts: 6 · Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 5:41 pm Post subject:

FYI, I'm experiencing the same issues here in Boston. The problem is definitely with Comcast rather than Vonage - I see intermittent, high packet loss - 50% or more at times, 2% at others. This translates to lags in loading web pages, but more importantly dropped audio (outboiund) for periods of 2-5 seconds such that the other party can't hear me and asks "what? what? what? are you there??"

I've been through one Comcast tech so far - they are sending another next week, and then they will escalate to a line tech. Seems like standard protocol. I recognized the first tech from the original install two years ago - he suggested that he'd seen similar problems around the area and that they've coincided with comcasts recent changes to bandwidth - they're experimenting with bursting in my area, so that download speeds can spike beyond 10 Mbs - seems that this may created a few problems that need fixing.

This thread is quite useful for this issue - I hope folks continue to post there experiences here - thanks to Craig for starting it up! Glad to find out it's not just me.

Best,
Kevin

Posts: 28 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: May 15, 2006 Posts: 28

2 days ago, comcast sent a senior tech. to my house. Guy shows up, i say, "So, you're a senior tech, right?" and the guy says, "Well, this is my first day on HSI" OMG.

Anyway, i showed him the problem and he basically played telephone with 2nd level support. We ran through everything again (this time, someone at the 2nd level support said they've been having issues with the motorola 5xxx series of cable modems downloading the wrong config file - we checked mine - it was correct). We replaced the cable modem, no luck. We ran a test line from the street to my cable modem, no luck. After awhile, the guy escalates the issue and leaves.

Fortunately, he was a really nice guy, but i guess that doesn't count for much as I still have the problem.

Jeff

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 30, 2005 Posts: 12

probably not much, but I had the same issue with Comcast in Alexandria, VA. I did many things, including replacing my old D-Link router with the TrendNet one (with QoS) and that alone did not do anything as far as I could tell.

However, since my house was built in 1952, it was clearly not wired for cable, so the first thing I did when I bought it a year ago was run cable everywhere. Well, by the time it got to the modem, it had been split twice and spliced together 3 times. The TV signal wasn't degraded and the Internet worked fine, so I figured no big deal. Even Vonage worked OK for about a year without any MAJOR usability issues, so I just lived with it.

Then starting in about March, it got really bad. Drop outs of around 5-15 seconds, occuring every 2-5 minutes. It was at the point where my wife wanted it cancelled, but I didn't want to lose the phone number. Yeah, I know, Vonage claims they'll port your number back out, but let's be real. Anyway, my final solution was to move the router all the way to the beginning on the wire coming into my house, so it's the first device. It worked like a charm! I haven't had any dropped calls or spotty voice service on the line since. It's been about 2 weeks and I think it is solved.

Worth a try if you're only alternative is to cancel.

Posts: 6 · Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 9:17 am Post subject:

Update to earlier post

I had my second tech visit from Comcast yesterday - actually the same guy that came by the first time. He again confirmed that the signals coming into my cable modem were solid. I showed him the dropped packets with a simple ping test to comcast.net, and he saw the same issues when he hooked his laptop up to my modem. Interestingly, he had the comcast 'home office' ping the modem adn they only saw 1 lost packet - but, they never tried more than 25 pings. What I see is bursts of packet loss - so I end up with 10 to 25% loss over 100 to 1000 pings. The tech speculated that the burst loss was due to a faulty router on the comcast system somewhere and mentioned that they had recently had a piece of equipment fail in one of their routing centers. He asked for print-outs of my ping tests so he could take them to his boss. Supposedly Comcast is sending a line tech to try to figure out where things are breaking down in the neighborhood. The home tech seemed pretty frustrated - the phone support should know better that this is a Comcast network issue and has nothing to do with the end user. I'll post again next time there's some progress.

In response to the above post - I ran new cable wiring a bit under 2 years ago when I moved into my house. Signals coming into my modem are great. I think a number of people are experiencing the problem of dropped outbound audio such that one can hear the caller at the other end, but they can't hear you for several seconds. The call itself is not dropped or disconnected and the audio comes back if you wait long enough... but then it just happens again and again. This is due to the Comcast network not performing up to spec. Try testyourvoip.com and you can see what kind of loss you're getting under detailed results.

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 30, 2005 Posts: 12

My test your Voip score was usually around 4.4 calling Boston when I would run the tests, but something was obviously wrong. My point is, don't rely too much on testyourvoip.com because if a good score were all you needed for Vonage to work, I would never have had a problem.

Posts: 114 · Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 2:55 pm Post subject:

kdog wrote:

This thread is quite useful for this issue - I hope folks continue to post there experiences here - thanks to Craig for starting it up! Glad to find out it's not just me.

Best,
Kevin

I'm glad that this thread is helping people out on the process and on the road to get things resolved through Comcast. Having lived through it, it can be very demanding on ones patience. During the process, I even called Verizon to see when FIOS would be available in my area (not until 2007 at the earliest even though the surrounding towns have it).

-Craig

Posts: 28 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: May 15, 2006 Posts: 28

I looked into Fios too - I know i'm fed up and if i had another viable choice, i would take it (too far from CO for DSL, no FIOS yet).

I am also looking at switching to DirectTV - but right now they don't carry NESN in hi-def... bummer! Soon, i'm told...

One day i will be free of Comcast!

Posts: 6 · Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 8:06 am Post subject:

*sigh*

Okay, so I've called the comcast office twice since the last tech was out - they keep giving me the run around that they can't schedule a line tech until the last tech who visited enters his notes into the system...

After I explain that I'm seeing 10% to 30% avg packet loss, and that is happens in bursts (need to ping at least 50 or more times to see it; best results over 500 or 1000 pings) the tech on the phone says she pinged my modem 100 times and saw absolutely no packet loss. I immediately pinged back to comcast.net and saw 15% packet loss...

If she's being honest, I wonder if this is a one-direction issue? With Voip, I never have problems with downstream audio (I can always hear the speaker on the other end) but the outbound audio drops for periods of 5+ seconds every 20 seconds or so (seems random). Is it possible that pinging from the comcast office to my cable modem would not pick up on this issue?

Any thoughts on this would be helpful, as would how best to get the comcast tech support to take this seriously.

I've given up on Voip for now and am having all calls routed through my cell phone (for the past 3 wks already!!!). If I didn't need to keep my original number, I'd just cancel the Voip and give up.