Comcast Integrity

[AntiFreze]

Hello,

I'm trying to help a friend out who has comcast in the chicago land area. Lately his connection has been dropping more and more. Everything "seems" ok on his end and I wont be able to look at it till I fly their next week for christmas.

What can I do to check the integrity of his connection? I can find speed tests but that only works when he is connected and seems fine at that time. When he is disconnected he cant ping yahoo.com or the IP address of yahoo.com. Seems like he has a valid IP address at the time, and a release and a refresh of an IP address doesnt fix it. Power cycling the modem doesnt work either. Seems pretty random.

I was thinking that comcast could be messing with the lines/construction. Anyone have some tools/methods they can point me to so that I can help him out?

Thanks in advance.

 

[AntiFreze]

quick thought... he runs a bittorent client - could he be getting throttled (sounds funny but I think it's the term)

 

[spidey07]

1) Remove any and all home networking gear and use the service directly.
2) Stop downloading illegal crap.

Once this is done then call the provider. Many providers are starting to put an end to P2P so it would be best to elliminate it before calling.

 

[AntiFreze]

good call, ill relay that to him. No sites that can check line integrity though?

 

[spidey07]

dslreports has some rudimentary tools, but nothing like what information/stats/troubleshooting the provider has.

 

[AntiFreze]

sounds good, thank you much

 

[Fardringle]

When he loses connectivity, do the lights on the modem turn off completely, or do they stay on? If they are turning off completely, then the modem is losing it's signal from Comcast. If the modem lights are staying on, I would suspect that Bittorrent is overloading his router with too many incoming connection attempts.

As Spidey said, turn off Bittorrent and try with the computer connected directly to the modem (with a software firewall running).

 

[BurnItDwn]

Have your friend go to 192.168.100.1
find out the Downstream and upstream Signal Strength and Signal to Noise Ratio

The power levels have to be within a certain range, otherwise the cable will not work at all, or it will work off and on.
For instance, at my new house, they installed cable and it worked great for about 2 days, then all the sudden, the internet went out we couldn't get back on. I disconnected a 4 way splitter that I had, and instead placed a 2 way splitter (with a 3db tap) and plugged the cable modem right into the splitter (getting the full signal, not the -3db tap) ... That "fixed" my problem. The tech came out and checked the signal level coming into the house, and sure enough ... the buried line in the backyard had too much noise/loss so it had to be replaced. Since it's winter and the ground is frozen, he just ran a cable from the pole to the house, they will bury it in the spring.

For your friend ... I recommend remove any splitters and plug the cable modem in directly, if it helps, then he's probably got a weak signal ....

Has he called Comcast to come out and take a look at it?
Their phone tech support is mostly a joke, but the techs that actually come out and service houses seem to be a lot better .... YMMV though of course ...

 

[SandEagle]

this was in the news about a month ago:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21818555/

 

[AntiFreze]

Update:

So he called them the other day and they said that they have been working on the lines and it should be all fixed now.

I find it a bit peculiar that the day he calls he gets "oh yeah, all better", but he said that he hasn't had a problem since that magical phone call.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: AntiFreze
I find it a bit peculiar that the day he calls he gets "oh yeah, all better", but he said that he hasn't had a problem since that magical phone call.

That's pretty much how it works. You call and are told there's NOTHING wrong on their side. But, suddently, their side gets fixed. It's one of life's miracles.