I have a friend who is in a 3 year business class contract with Comcast who has been unable to get a consistent packet loss issue addressed by tech support. Since first reporting this issue back in early May, he has gone through two cable modems. He first had the SMC modem and currently has the Cisco one. To date he has had three technician visits, two of which attempted to diagnose/locate the issue, and the third just replaced all the coax to the box.
All the tech support people over the phone saw this outgoing packet loss issue, but each time they dispatched a technician, they were unable to really see that packet loss issue themselves. Any time packet loss was seen during one of these scheduled appointments, the technician commented it might be an issue beyond the modem.
He has tried both using exclusively Comcast's provided user equipment as well as running the modem in bridge mode and using his own RT-66U ASUS router, and running in bridge mode and hooking his desktop up directly. It doesn't make any improvement or difference.
I have been over there a couple times myself and looked at the modem stats and the only issue I really saw with the statistics was a within specification variation between the upstream and downstream channels. I have attempted to tunnel through with a VPN on his connection as well but the issue still remains unchanged.
My friend seems unable to get this issue escalated any higher than a tech that does coax/modem swaps. I suspect this may be a maintenance issue which may be beyond the box he connected to, that or there is some kind of issue with the node. It seems to get worse as the evening progresses to the point that over 50% of voice conversation in skype from his end is garbled. More interestingly is the fact that voice communication going the other direction is not affected. We have had skype calls with half a dozen people and all their voices come in clear on his end, but his voice is always glitching on ours.
The way this issue affects skype conversations also seems to affect him the same way in games as well. In multiplayer games, everyone else in game to him is fine, except himself. He is lagging out or notices lag on his own player. It seems limited to an upstream only issue. No uploads or file transfers are going at the time he is gaming or skyping.
He doesn't really know how to proceed from here. Repeat calls to support and even attempting to use the comcast direct forums on here hasn't gotten him anywhere. Since he is in a three year business contract, he feels that he is trapped in this situation until the end of contract before he can seek an alternatives.
My friend lives in Indianapolis in the general area where I465 and I69 meet. Anyone have any suggestions on getting this escalated or is in the same boat that would have an idea on where we should go from here?
Thanks
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