Grr Stupid Cable Companies..

[aidan80 9]

I'm sure am not alone when I scream at the thought of having to deal with my cable company?

Every weekend without fail my internet connection grinds to a halt! I'm originally from as you can see.. Ireland and I like to call back home while everyone's awake at the same time as me.. during the weekend only I cant as I use VOIP and comcast are saying it's not them it's all my fault or my VOIP company's fault but it just can't be them as all is fine in their world?

I checked with vonage all is fine, i ran a ping.. tracert and guess what pings are in the mid 100's and mid 200's during the weekend. During the week it's well below 100ms actually around 30ms or 40ms or a bit lower normally depending on things.. That’s great but everyone is either sleeping or at work or in some cases in the pub by the time i get in from work at about 5:30 or 10:30 back home.

So I tell the nice comcast woman that's in the Philippines whats wrong and she sticks with the line that it's on my end. She dodges my questions about the pings.. stating all is fine now. I tell her cable is shared, we all share the same few mhz and if someone down the street wants to download action movies all weekend then i end up suffering if he's eating all the juice. She tells me that it's my wifi that's shared and i try to explain that no it's not my wifi as i don't have wifi! I actually do have wifi but it's 110% secured, I know how to secure my network I am a certified and trained IT tech was so for over 5 years back home. It just go's on like this for a long, long time! Now all of this is in live chat from the comcast website.

Anyway we have a heated debate as i attempt to prove to this neanderthal that i know how to troubleshoot my hardware and the most logical reason for the high pings is I suspect one of their customers my be hogging the bandwidth during the weekend as it only ever happens during the weekend never weekdays?.. I ask her.. can you maybe check to see who it is and ask them nicely not to be greedy? She says no they can't do that they don't know who uses what bandwidth. At this point i want to explode so I ask nicely if i can talk to someone else... no response, i ask again.. no response..

She CUT ME OFF!!! I couldn't believe it, she shut off my internet everything was down. I musta really pissed her off because i didn't say at any time yes sure go ahead cut me off i don't want it anymore? So I liberate a nearby wifi connection (thank you old lady upstairs and sorry) and go back into "live chat" to tell the next eejit i want my connection back... i get it back and lodge a complaint against the first nut that disconnected me.

If you read this far thanks, I needed to get this out there. I can't believe she shut me off. Which she actually did... I talked to another person at comcast and they confirmed signals to my modem was terminated by... and they gave the persons op id. Insanity is it not? I really wish they'd property regulate these companies and force some competition, their all big fat greedy animals that have monopolies where they operate it isn't fair on us who pay for this #######!

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Did you try unplugging and plugging in your modem? ::::runs:::::

[MrsCat 6]

Aidan, this just ain't your week brother.

But the story is kinda funny. Only because it didn't happen to me.

[DeadPoolX 9]

I had Vonage at one time. The signal was terrible -- sometimes my wife could hear me, but I couldn't hear here (and vice-versa). If my Internet connection slowed down, the signal would degrade even more.

Whenever I called Vonage, they said it was my Internet service provider's fault. Whenever I called my ISP, they said they "didn't cover Vonage" so they weren't responsible for any issues with that service.

All in all, it was a very frustrating situation. I canceled Vonage later (something that's very difficult to do) and never went back to VOIP.

[John and Camie 39]

You have my sympathy, they're ALL like that. I live in an apartment complex, and just the other day, my cable/Internet got shut down on accident (the dum-dum was supposed to disconnect the people next door), to the point where it had to be manually reconnected by a maintenance person. Their fault, but still they told me they wouldn't be able to come to my place and reconnect it for three days!! And all that, what did I get for my trouble? On Demand movie credits. Yay. Now I can watch Twilight for free. My dream has come true.

[hxxrmonkey 0]

Oh Aidan... Unfortunately that's the way it goes, but I thought Comcast had started throttling people who were sucking up bandwidth?

I guess there's not another company that can provide you service huh? It's usually only one. Maybe AT&T? (Not that that would be any better, but at least it would be a different provider) Or ask your fam to try Skype? It seems to work most of the time, even on slow networks (although we personally get our call dropped every 10 minutes). I'm sure you've thought of that and there's a reason you're not using it...

My dum-dum fiance was downloading torrents unbeknownst to me and got our intarweb cut off. He got caught on Turok, of all things! I had to call them and pretend I was clueless and someone was stealing my wifi (haha, ya right, I'm in IT too) in order to get them to turn it back on

Unfortunately the only way they're going to do anything about your neighbor is if he downloads something and gets caught, like my fiance. It's so rare when it's movies and not games I just don't see it happening.

[Niels Bohr 72]

If you have alot of young teens around your neighborhood, they may be pirating music during the weekend. This will cause your internet to slow down. Cable Internet Technology works by sharing the link lines with approximately 2000 people per node. However, if a lot of people are pirating in your neighborhood, this may cause sluggish internet use. The way it works is by a priority buffer queue, and the amount of TCP connection made.

Long story short, cable is fast. However, when there's a heavy load in the neighborhood you will get slow internet connections.

If you can't live without fast internet during weekend, I'd recommend DSL. DSL will provide you with dedicated bandwidth and it will not fluctuate based on demand like cable internet. Whatever floats your boat.

I agree. Cable Companies should have more competition.

[Krikit 1,165]

Wow. I can't believe she terminated your access!!!

Did you try unplugging and plugging in your modem? ::::runs:::::

[rebeccajo 14]

My husband works for a cable provider.

Our internet service was intermittently terrible and occasionally tolerable. In short - horrid - and I was certainly glad we weren't paying for it.

Finally they decided to do some work on the node. Since then, it's grand.

If you have connectivity trouble and you've had a rep out to check your connection, and you are CONFIDENT the trouble is not your browser or machine, you might want to suggest to them they spend a few bucks on node maintenance.

[mawilson 2,133]

Well, in Comcast's defense, they really did try to mess around with P2P traffic (slow it down to prioritize more

time-sensitive traffic), only to have the FCC rule against them:

FCC Rules Comcast Can't Slow Customers' Internet Traffic

[Niels Bohr 72]

VOIP service works find with me. All you need is a minimum of 60 kbs upload bandwidth, and about 70 kbs download bandwidth. I have T-Mobile@home service. Works great. I'm using DSL with down 768 kbs and up at 128 kbs. Cable has a higher bandwidth. However, the throughput of the pipeline isn't constant. Therefore, you may not achieve the quality you want from VOIP.

DSL throughput is consistent. It never goes fluctuate as much as 1-2 kbs from your rate as long as you're not using the browser at the same time you're talking.

[rclouse 0]

Did you try unplugging and plugging in your modem? ::::runs:::::

Try rebooting Windows.

[AnaAndDaniel 0]

Did you try unplugging and plugging in your modem? ::::runs:::::

Try rebooting Windows.

i turn it off and count to 10 before restarting.

Daniel

[aidan80 9]

God that was it all along I didn't plug it in or reboot windows lol.. seriously I got called out before back home to a house call where they guy couldn't get online.. he tried everything!.. I got their and his DSL wasn't plugged in lol!!!

Looking back at what I wrote I forgot the funniest part.. right at the start when I connected to live chat lol.. I gave them my details (it took them two weeks to find my house in the middle of a city with one of the cables in the living room) and guess what they said.. You shut down your account last month!!!.. Ahh right then I wanted to scream but I didn't.. my response was.. then explain how I'm on your network talking to you right now about an account I shut off last month? The response was.. do you have an account number! That's the same idiot that shut me off!

I got a call from a manager today who told me they would look into my complaint but they didn't know who has shut me down or why. I explained that I gave them the employee ID look it up and you'll see ohhh.. it's that asian lady we pay $hite to work a job you farmed out from the customers you claim to serve? Then the manager tried to assure me my modem was down only because they would have been working on it and to that I said.. really they worked from it from 10:30 till after midnight? I said no way, I was shut off be the ID I gave you and her response was we don't just shut people off. Of course not I imagined I wasn't online for about 2 hours last night here take some more of my money and piss it away on crappy service.

I did suggest to comcast they open up another channel.. it's only a few mhz and their response was to ignore the suggestion because the eejit didn't understand what i meant! I've thought about DSL but I'd hate to folk out $25 for DSL then maybe as much as $50 extra for a crappy phone service I wouldn't even use! To be honest I suspect the people next door for eating up a lot of bandwith as the house is full of teenagers and I too have thought.. mmm maybe their at the torrents at the weekend but it wouldn't be right to knock out their crappy router just to see.. Anyway I was thinking of dumping everything and just liberating nearby connections and going the T-Mobile @home route and saying fuk to it all. I'm being raped for crappy service and comcast couldn't care less because they own the market in this area.