Internet slows down at around 4pm

[Jschmuck2]

So, what can I do about it? I have cable and when I spoke to the tech on the phone, I said the word "traceroute" and I could hear her brain melt. She said:

"Do you have the trace route up on your screen now?

"Yes."

"Well, can you tell it to me?"

"...tell you what?

"All of it."

"..."

They're clueless. From about 4pm to 8pm every day for the last week I've had some terrible slowdown. So, what can I do? I've ruled out anything on my end - checked and rechecked the router and the modem as well as my settings. Everything goes at it's proper speed at other times of the day.

Help?

 

[Jamsan]

Most likely due to heavy usage by other people in your neighborhood. Cable is a shared resource within a certain area, so you're pretty much SOL unless you go around cutting people's cable feeds into their house.

 

[Jschmuck2]

Well, that's not very reassuring. Surely there is something they can do?

 

[spidey07]

Not really. That's the start of busy time. What's the traceroute look like?

 

[Jschmuck2]

Well, it varies. Sometimes it gets hung up on a very predictable hop (the 5th) other times, the traceroute looks totally fine but webpages still load super-slow. It's running fine right now but the next time things slow down a ton I'll post one up here.
That's really surprising to hear that there isn't anything to be done.

 

[spidey07]

Could be a number of things, especially the 5th hop - that's closer to their core network or peer. Send them the traceroute, you could also be having slow DNS name resolution.

 

[Jschmuck2]

Thanks for the protip - I wish I knew more about this sort of thing, but I don't.

When I called and spoke to the woman who had no fucking clue what I was talking about, I politely asked if there was a level 2 tech around that I could talk to. She said that there wasn't but I might be able to speak to her supervisor. When I asked if he would know more about it than she did, she said "probably not."

Bad sign?

I'm with Charter fwiw.

 

[spidey07]

No, her supervisor is the boss of 1st level. You can ask for your ticket to get escalated, that's really all you can do - follow the ticket management process. By providing ping times, traceroutes and having them put it in the ticket level2/3 might actually care and not think "some guy says his internet is slow". Or do what I do and call the network operator. :evil:

 

[Jschmuck2]

Well, she did tell me there was no one else I could talk to, which is bunk. How does a normal like me call the network operator?

 

[spidey07]

You can't escalate the ticket? That's the key word. "I'd like to escalate the ticket", it will take some time but eventually tier 1 will get fed up with you and punt the ticket up.

If some of their interfaces/links are overloaded, they already know about it.

 

[Jschmuck2]

...explain to me, slowly, as if to a child, what interfaces and links are.

 

[spidey07]

Interfaces are like network interface cards on a router - they are the input/output of the router. Packets come in, router looks where to send them, sends them out appropriate interface...think of a PC with 25 network cards.

Links are nothing more than the lines connecting these interfaces. Each IP address on your traceroute is a interface on a router, starting with the one closest to you, your default gateway (router).

 

[Jschmuck2]

Thanks for the explanation =)

I wonder though, what they can do to help me out.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Jschmuck2
Thanks for the explanation =)

I wonder though, what they can do to help me out.

They need to upgrade their hardware. Either by beefing up existing hardware, or breaking your node into two nodes and adding additional hardware.

Cable companies have always, and always will oversell their lines. That's just the way it works. They give 100 people up to 6 Mbit of bandwidth and may only have 300 Mbit of bandwidth actually available. What are the odds more than 50 of those people will want to use their connection at the exact same time? Slim... unless you're talking about peak usage hours, and 1-2 hours a day of degraded service may be acceptable to them vs. the cost of upgrading the network to handle more traffic.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Jschmuck2
Well, she did tell me there was no one else I could talk to, which is bunk. How does a normal like me call the network operator?

It's not bunk... at least not where I work. There's a process to be followed that can't be circumvented because we don't have the information required to circumvent it. For example... a customer wanted to talk to a particular group that handles a particular service. Normally we send tickets through our ticketing system to them. This person wanted to talk to them NOW. It wasn't possible because I don't have contact information for them. There's no phone number or extension or name or anything else I could have given him or transfer him to in order to put him in touch with that group. Sure we have our corporate phone list, but job titles aren't listed and we have 700-800 people in the corporate office. I don't know what each of them does. It must follow the process... ticket gets sent to them, they review it and either send the ticket back to us with the fix in the notes, or they contact the customer directly.

As spidey said, escalation is the key. It may not get escalated right away as there's also processes and escalation paths. But if you keep calling on it and building a case history (ask for and record case/ticket numbers yourself), it will be more likely that something will get done. And remember... residential Internet services almost always state "up to." Bandwidth and latency are not guaranteed.

 

[Wardawg1001]

As stated above its an issue with it being peak hours and a lot of people using the same total bandwidth. This is just how cable works. The chances of you actually getting to someone with the power to do anything about it? Slim to none. Its likely a group of people anyways who have no more knowledge of these things work than you do, and make those kinds of decisions based purely on estimates, speculation, and numbers, and financial issues (these will be business people, not engineers or technicians). In the event of you getting through to someone with that kind of power, the chances of them actually doing anything about it because you want them to? Even less likely. The hardware upgrades will happen when they want them to happen, and it wont be because someone called in and complained about slow speeds for a couple hours a day. It will be a marketing move, designed to bring in more customers and/or win back lost customers, more than likely it will be accompanied with some new product (higher advertised speed, new features, new service types, etc).

One very important point is mentioned above my Jeff7181:

And remember... residential Internet services almost always state "up to." Bandwidth and latency are not guaranteed.

This is really at the heart of why you wont receive any service for this issue. If all else fails they will fall back on this, and then probably offer you a couple free months if you threaten to cancel anyways.

This is all assuming that you dont have any individual line issues, which seems likely since you dont have problems with your speed during non-peak hours. If this is the case, dont expect constant calls and escalations to do you any good. By all means though call in until you can really determine whether its an issue with your particular line or not, but don't waste your time if they keep telling you everything is working as intended.

So, what can you do about it? Move to DSL. It has its own share of problems (more of them, and more serious, IMO) but for some people it will provide better overall service.

 

[SithSolo1]

I've also been having this issue and I'm also with charter. Sometimes it happens mid-morning, other times it happens about now(6-11pm). After trace routing and pinging Google a number of times I'm having anywhere from 10-60% packet loss. It also randomly affects different hops each time. I've even had it on the 2nd hop. I've reset the modem and router multiple times but to no avail. It started right about when school started back and the city population increased by at least 50% in the span of 2 days.