Comcast internet woes.

[CrossLOPER]

I'm at wit's end. I am tired of seeing the "Send" and "Recieve" lights flashing endlessly and having my family paying for service that goes away for weeks at a time. Oh, and when it decides to work? 5000 ping? Pure joy.

Anyone have a similar experience? Perhaps recommend another ISP?

Mods, please don't move this to the H & S forum. There are like three people there and they are too busy deciding whether or not Firefox is awesome.

[Lemur]

The HW/SW forum tends to light up when there's a good question. This would be one. Anyway, the obvious questions apply -- where do you live? Is DSL available? What forms of broadband are being offered?

[CrossLOPER]

Georgia. It looks like Bellsouth DSL, Direct TV... Maybe something else?

[TevashSzat]

Well up here in Maryland, Comcast is pretty nice actually. If you are having connection troubles, maybe its the physical connection near your house.

When I first got Comcast, I couldn't even connect at all. Later, it was found out that the cables connected to our house underground were all worn and had to be replaced. After they were replaced, everything was fine.

Did you ask other people in your area who have Comcast whether they have the same problem too?

[CrossLOPER]

A technician has been called. He is supposed to check the modem. If that isn't the issue, he's supposed to lay down a dedicated line. That, along with the visit, is going to cost about $60. Anything else I should request?

[TevashSzat]

Just make the technician stay until your connection seems to stay fast and stable.

Another thing that comes to mind is that the modem outlet thing in your house may be too old. In my basement, I had an outlet that would work, but barely. When I unscrewed the cover off, the wire ending that your cable connected too was frayed so I just cut it off and stripped off some of the cable to get a newer better ending.

[Martok]

My Comcast service is....okay. I get about 2-3 interruptions a month for maybe a few hours at a time. Otherwise, though, I've not had any real problems. [Knocks on wood.]

[CrossLOPER]

A month or two ago, I resorted to connecting the cable to the primary interior splitter in the attic which extends all cable connections throughout the entire house. It worked for several weeks, then it failed again. It comes back once in a while.

[Beirut]

To the Hardware forum and awayyyyyyyy!

[CrossLOPER]

To the Hardware forum and awayyyyyyyy!

You've doomed my thread!

[Whacker]

With an attitude like yours, I'm surprised that anyone took the time to reply to this thread. Best of luck.

[Beirut]

You've doomed my thread!

You underestimate Lemur's forum, me lad.

[Lemur]

Replacing the modem is an obvious first step. Truth is that cable is faster (generally) than DSL dollar for dollar, so you wants to stick with cable if you can.

If Comcast is willing to replace the modem and re-run the cable, you should be sitting pretty. Just be advised that Comcast does some serious traffic shaping, so if your World of Warcraft client tries to update with the bittorrent protocol, expect problems.

[PanzerJaeger]

Stick with Comcast.

I'm in the South as well, and Bellsouth is terrible.

The problem is most likely on your end. If they put in a dedicated line you'll be good to go. I would push for that even if the problem can be solved in another way for ping purposes. My family bought a penthouse in a very old bank building that was redone into flats. We love the eclectic atmosphere, but unfortunately it was not designed in the internet world and things had to be sorted.

I fought with Bellsouth's DSL for 2 years and they were jerks the entire time. I now have a dedicated Comcast cable line and I get excellent pings. Im getting like 40-80 on american servers and low hundreds on Euro ones.

*Gets the heck out of Lemur's playground before he assembles his posse...

[Husar]

I'm already annoyed if they disconnect me for a second, if they'd disconnect me for several hours several times a month I'd complain and if they would not change it I'd drop them and get another ISP ASAP. I use DSL though and here we have plenty of ISPs(hard to say, 10? 20? I may not even know them all ) offering DSL at low prices. Heard that cable can be really slow here around the time everybody watches TV (prime time?) and in addition they wanted me to pay >300EUR to get the house(not mine, I have a flat) connected in the first place.
Hard to say about the USA but here DSL seems to be the better option and I wouldn't put up with long downtimes, unless of course there are no alternatives, which sadly seems to be the case in the US.

[TevashSzat]

In the US, cable is usually about 5 times faster or so than DSL, but about 2-3 times more expensive.

I had to stick to Comcast since Verizon, which is the only DSL provider where I live, does not service my community. Right after I got Comcast, Verizon started installing cables for FIOS

[LeftEyeNine]

With an attitude like yours, I'm surprised that anyone took the time to reply to this thread. Best of luck.

What's up? Anybody cares to elaborate through PM ?

[Gregoshi]

I'm with Verizon FiOS currently, but I had Comcast for a number of years. I'm in suburban Philadelphia and had no complaints at all about the internet service provided by Comcast. In fact, in the several years I had it, I might have experience one service outage - maybe. I can't recall for sure. I only switched away from Comcast because I had a better deal from Verizon. Unfortunately for Comcast, their "triple play" offer (internet, phone, TV) came a couple of months too late.

I'm inclined to agree with PJ - it is more than likely an issue at your end. As Tevash said, don't let the technicial leave until he's isolated and corrected the problem. I'm not much of a hardware techie, but those splitters in the attic have my spider senses tingling. How good are the splitters and how many splits before the signal goes to the modem? I have no idea what I just asked, but it sounded good to me.

[LeftEyeNine]

Mods, please don't move this to the H & S forum. There are like three people there and they are too busy deciding whether or not Firefox is awesome.

We three goblins here dwell on the important parts. And I'm quoting that above as the unimportant part of it so as to underline our comprehension.

You're welcome anytime.

"H&S Forum - Satisfying Every Need, And Even More"


RRRukk RRRukk !

[CrossLOPER]

....RRRukk RRRukk !

You guys had your chance a month or so ago.

jk

The technicians came in and found that the cable lines in the house were all hooked up into an amplifier. One of them connected a wire that apparently dampens the signal. Apparently the modem (an apparently humorous Motorola 5120) was unable the receive the signal because of the amplifier. Anyway, problem appears to be solved for now. Thanks for the encouragement.

btw, three guesses how much this cost.

[Gregoshi]

Was the amplifier your equipment or theirs? If it was all their equipment, it should be free.

[CrossLOPER]

Was the amplifier your equipment or theirs? If it was all their equipment, it should be free.

I'm fairly sure AT&T installed it a while ago. Comcast did not take off in the area until a few years ago.

[Lemur]

Perhaps Comcast's internal PowerPoint show about why they suck would be of interest? Warning -- link is to 7.9 meg PPS file. But oh-so-worth-it.

[Gregoshi]

Lemur, is that an actual internal Comcast Powerpoint presentation? If so, I guess I'll consider myself one of the lucky few.

[Lemur]

Yup, this was a slideshow that was being passed around within Comcast, which is a bit different from saying it's an official Comcast document. Background here.

[CrossLOPER]

I'm fairly sure AT&T installed it a while ago. Comcast did not take off in the area until a few years ago.

I'm apparently wrong.

Darn, Lemur! Where's the competition???

[Gregoshi]

Lemur: thanks for the info.

CrossLOPER: so how much did Comcast charge you for the service call?

[CrossLOPER]

Lemur: thanks for the info.

CrossLOPER: so how much did Comcast charge you for the service call?

HSI VID/CDV 42.95 (this is apparently just for showing up)
DIG PREMIER 105.25 (this is apparently for the five-inch wire)
GUIDE 3.40 (this is for..... I have no clue. It had better not be the wire.)

= $151.60

That's more than twice the amount that I was initially set to pay. I LOVE monopolies.

[LeftEyeNine]

HSI VID/CDV 42.95 (this is apparently just for showing up)
DIG PREMIER 105.25 (this is apparently for the five-inch wire)
GUIDE 3.40 (this is for..... I have no clue. It had better not be the wire.)

= $151.60

That's more than twice the amount that I was initially set to pay. I LOVE monopolies.

OMG.

Apparently they are worse than three goblins. OMG.

[Lemur]

$151.60