OT: My Broadband Saga

[BigKahuna13]

Cablevision is KILLING me.

I've been without reliable broadband access from home for about a week now. Basic symptom I have is that my connection will all of sudden die, after a variable length of time and be down for a variable length of time.

Problem seems to happen most often when I'm putting a load on the network. For example I'll do a continuous ping to the default gateway in Cablevision's network and it'll work just fine. However, the instant I
try to copy a file (say the newest version of firefox) the connection dies.
Done that about a dozen times, same thing happens each time.

I've discounted my router as a problem - I've directly connected three different PCs directly to the modem and have seen the same problem. I've had cablevision techs out three times in the last week and they've replaced the modem and all the plumbing out to the pole - after finding that the line failed a BERT test - so I now have a very clean signal from the pole to the modem. No change.

Yesterday they checked the wiring from the pole out to whatever the next access point in their network is. Don't know what the result of that check was (they didn't bother to tell me) but I still have no Internet access.

Have a call scheduled with their 3rd level support people for this afternoon. Unless there's something like a flaky connection or termination somewhere deep in the bowels of their network, I have haven't the faintest idea of what might be wrong. Haven't discounted a routing problem but I'm tending to think it's physical layer.

In the interim I've been visiting the local library and Panera Bread - they have free WiFi - and sitting in my backyard and "borrowing" one of my neighbor's unsecure connections (when it's not r*ining that is).

[XtremeJibber2001]

Hmm....that's odd. Are the rest of the people in your neighborhood experiencing the same problem?

[Walstib]

I had the same problem last year.
Turned out to be water damage at the telephone pole.

[SkiDork]

I had the same problem last year.
Turned out to be water damage at the telephone pole.

Cablevision or Verizon?

[SkiDork]

Billy Preston

RIP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Preston

[BigKahuna13]

Interesting rathole there dork.

Well it seems that the outside plant people referred my problem to their network engineering organization who're busily scurrying around cablevision's data center, with the singleminded resolve of cockroaches chasing down a crumb of food, going about making me a happy customer.

We shall see what happens..........

[XtremeJibber2001]

Interesting rathole there dork.

Well it seems that the outside plant people referred my problem to their network engineering organization who're busily scurrying around cablevision's data center, with the singleminded resolve of cockroaches chasing down a crumb of food, going about making me a happy customer.

We shall see what happens..........

Probably Squirrels....

[SkiDork]

I meant to post that in the music thread.

[Geoff]

Interesting rathole there dork.

Well it seems that the outside plant people referred my problem to their network engineering organization who're busily scurrying around cablevision's data center, with the singleminded resolve of cockroaches chasing down a crumb of food, going about making me a happy customer.

We shall see what happens..........

This is almost always plant noise. You share that wiring plant with a bunch of other houses and you're picking noise up somewhere.

If it were in my lab, I'd check the following:
*The SNMP MIB on the cable modem. The table with all the things they'd care about is called docsIfSignalQualityTable. There's a similar MIB on the CMTS.

[BigKahuna13]

Interesting rathole there dork.

Well it seems that the outside plant people referred my problem to their network engineering organization who're busily scurrying around cablevision's data center, with the singleminded resolve of cockroaches chasing down a crumb of food, going about making me a happy customer.

We shall see what happens..........

This is almost always plant noise. You share that wiring plant with a bunch of other houses and you're picking noise up somewhere.

If it were in my lab, I'd check the following:
*The SNMP MIB on the cable modem. The table with all the things they'd care about is called docsIfSignalQualityTable. There's a similar MIB on the CMTS.

Interesting. Thanks. Wonder what the odds are that they left the default SMNP community string on the thing. We'll see tonight :)

Know a decent free MIB browser??

[BigKahuna13]

Just got off the phone with one of the network engineers. Seems they have a router that's misbehaving and causing problems for me and 40 or so other customers.

The engineer says their change control process will take a couple of more days to go through before they can patch the router.

When I played network manager if I took 10 days to diagnose a router problem, I'd still be unemployed.

[Geoff]

When I played network manager if I took 10 days to diagnose a router problem, I'd still be unemployed.

Right. ...but you don't work for a monopoly.

I have a pretty long list of horror stories about cable data networks since I'm trying to run primary line residential telephony on top of them. They don't exactly have their operational procedures down yet.

[andyzee]

When I played network manager if I took 10 days to diagnose a router problem, I'd still be unemployed.

Right. ...but you don't work for a monopoly.

I have a pretty long list of horror stories about cable data networks since I'm trying to run primary line residential telephony on top of them. They don't exactly have their operational procedures down yet.

Have you tried DSL, I did. Love my cable.

[BigKahuna13]

When I played network manager if I took 10 days to diagnose a router problem, I'd still be unemployed.

Right. ...but you don't work for a monopoly.

I have a pretty long list of horror stories about cable data networks since I'm trying to run primary line residential telephony on top of them. They don't exactly have their operational procedures down yet.

Have you tried DSL, I did. Love my cable.

Have DSL in the condo. Cable is much faster. When it's working I usually get
20-25Mbs downstream and 3 Mbs upstream. Cablevision has been pretty reliable too. This is the only major outage I've suffered in the 7 years I've been using them. That said, 10 days is still too long to get something fixed. Hate to think what happens when people who don't understand networks have to deal with them.

[SkiDork]

I can't wait for FIOS to come to my neighborhood