About our crap Internet service.

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TrailBeast

TrailBeast

AKA Mopars4us on Youtube
Joined
Mar 11, 2011
Messages
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Location
Arizona
As some of you know I have a YouTube channel. (Mopers4us)
Some of you also know I am recently semi retired from my business as a computer and Internet tech after over 20+ years.
I have worked at and with multiple ISP’s over the last couple of decades.

Well here over the last few months our service goes off every day probably 50 times or more just long enough to read the message from our devices that there is no Internet connection, and then it comes back on again.

They know it’s happening in this area.
They have checked the signal at the local junction box and said there is a problem with the signal, but fix it? NOOOO.
They just say they don’t know where the problem is yet.
We pay for a gaming capable connection (300mb) over cable, so it’s not like weather or any above ground factors would be involved here generally.
In most of todays gaming it is mandatory to stay connected to the game server or it kicks you out of the game, and in some cases the only option is to start the game again.

I don’t game, but I use the net for all kinds of thing including YouTube for videos.
Our Son however is a gamer, and is getting himself a new game system besides his X box.
He’s fairly pissed off over the Internet access here, and as the one paying for it so am I.
The Wife uses the net a lot, but the stuff she commonly does isn’t affected by the problem that much.
She only really notices when it’s down long enough to keep an Instigram page or video from loading.
But if you know anything about online gaming you know any disruption in the connection will end your game instantly.
Well, I got a survey email from them this morning.
If I loose my service over it I can live with that I guess, but the next best service around here is DSL and we already ditched our 100 dollar a month business land line in trade for cell phones because of that regularly being down for days at a time.
Imagine, your business line being down for days??? WTF?

I guess my dream of sitting on a white sands beach with a drink in my hand when doing business is growing closer every day.:D

Thanks for letting me rant.
 
If the FCC was worth a ****, internet and cell service in this country would be a whole different deal. "I think" the FCC is responsible in some way for the CUSTOMER service as well as data/ phone service
 
Just reading this i get a wire wheel reply from your channel.

i live outside of fast internet other than a local wireless provider. We have been very fortunate with the great service we recieve. Have been using them since they first began providing service.
There was a government grant made available to aid with growth of these small businesses. government disqualified them,and a much larger company got the grant. I stick with the local provider, so glad i did, the other one has horrible customer service.
my daughter is the gamer,and i know its not the greatest,but
Here in rural manitoba we have never lost service for more than a few hours.

starlink is the up and coming provider,but will stick with my local family business.
 
Tooljunkie said:
Just reading this i get a wire wheel reply from your channel.

i live outside of fast internet other than a local wireless provider. We have been very fortunate with the great service we recieve. Have been using them since they first began providing service.
There was a government grant made available to aid with growth of these small businesses. government disqualified them,and a much larger company got the grant. I stick with the local provider, so glad i did, the other one has horrible customer service.
my daughter is the gamer,and i know its not the greatest,but
Here in rural manitoba we have never lost service for more than a few hours.

starlink is the up and coming provider,but will stick with my local family business.
Click to expand...

I thought I heard a lot of lies in the auto repair business, but it doesn’t come close to what I heard from some of the ISP’s I worked with.
I got yelled at once for telling a customer they got disconnected because a modem went down but we caught it and we are sorry it happened. (Dialup days)
I was ordered to tell a customer that it was the telephone company that caused the loss of connection.
Didn’t do it of course.
 
TrailBeast said:
As some of you know I have a YouTube channel. (Mopers4us)
Some of you also know I am recently semi retired from my business as a computer and Internet tech after over 20+ years.
I have worked at and with multiple ISP’s over the last couple of decades.

Well here over the last few months our service goes off every day probably 50 times or more just long enough to read the message from our devices that there is no Internet connection, and then it comes back on again.

They know it’s happening in this area.
They have checked the signal at the local junction box and said there is a problem with the signal, but fix it? NOOOO.
They just say they don’t know where the problem is yet.
We pay for a gaming capable connection (300mb) over cable, so it’s not like weather or any above ground factors would be involved here generally.
In most of todays gaming it is mandatory to stay connected to the game server or it kicks you out of the game, and in some cases the only option is to start the game again.

I don’t game, but I use the net for all kinds of thing including YouTube for videos.
Our Son however is a gamer, and is getting himself a new game system besides his X box.
He’s fairly pissed off over the Internet access here, and as the one paying for it so am I.
The Wife uses the net a lot, but the stuff she commonly does isn’t affected by the problem that much.
She only really notices when it’s down long enough to keep an Instigram page or video from loading.
But if you know anything about online gaming you know any disruption in the connection will end your game instantly.
Well, I got a survey email from them this morning.
If I loose my service over it I can live with that I guess, but the next best service around here is DSL and we already ditched our 100 dollar a month business land line in trade for cell phones because of that regularly being down for days at a time.
Imagine, your business line being down for days??? WTF?

I guess my dream of sitting on a white sands beach with a drink in my hand when doing business is growing closer every day.:D

Thanks for letting me rant.
Click to expand...


Sounds like you are on a cable modem.

It's been 10 years since my computer service business, but remember those Cable Internet Service Providers use the Cable Modems that are different types of animals.

As you may know, believe there are batteries in the cable modems as backup power when the electric glitches off and or used as a fail safe for the Voice Over Internet part of the cable service.

When we Rebooted the Cable Modems, we had to disconnect the actual cable from the modem and any power source from the modem. Also needed to disconnect or remove the batteries in the modem so that it would 100% let go.

Then when rebooting with a clean modem, it will start up as brand new again, instead of resorting back to the previous configuration with the batteries still in it not allowing it to let go.

Long story short, reboot the cable modem with no external devices or power plugged in, including the batteries. When powered down for 60 seconds, install batteries, hook up power source, reinstall the cable. Reboot the associated computer, then reinstall the assiciated ethernet cable back into the computer after both the computer and cable modem have rebooted.

These cable modems were always extra steps to get the customers back online reliably again.

Give it a shot, hope this helps.

Would be interested in your download and upload speeds of your current cable service.

speedtest.net

for the line speed test.
 
Screenshot_20210322-201518_Chrome.jpg
 
Well, thanks for putting your time into this.
I am aware of all you mentioned and done all before they told me they were aware of the problem and it’s the entire area of our neighborhood and can see the problem on the cable at the junction box before it comes to the house.
Speed isn’t an issue either.
It’s the multiple daily drop offs that they can’t seem to find.
Hard to believe considering.
More likely it’s affecting such a small area that it’s not that important to them.


George Jets said:
Sounds like you are on a cable modem.

It's been 10 years since my computer service business, but remember those Cable Internet Service Providers use the Cable Modems that are different types of animals.

As you may know, believe there are batteries in the cable modems as backup power when the electric glitches off and or used as a fail safe for the Voice Over Internet part of the cable service.

When we Rebooted the Cable Modems, we had to disconnect the actual cable from the modem and any power source from the modem. Also needed to disconnect or remove the batteries in the modem so that it would 100% let go.

Then when rebooting with a clean modem, it will start up as brand new again, instead of resorting back to the previous configuration with the batteries still in it not allowing it to let go.

Long story short, reboot the cable modem with no external devices or power plugged in, including the batteries. When powered down for 60 seconds, install batteries, hook up power source, reinstall the cable. Reboot the associated computer, then reinstall the assiciated ethernet cable back into the computer after both the computer and cable modem have rebooted.

These cable modems were always extra steps to get the customers back online reliably again.

Give it a shot, hope this helps.

Would be interested in your download and upload speeds of your current cable service.

speedtest.net

for the line speed test.
Click to expand...

George Jets said:
View attachment 1715712308
Click to expand...

9B7C1D9D-5581-4676-A35D-B46765487AFE.png
 
TrailBeast said:
Well, thanks for putting your time into this.
I am aware of all you mentioned and done all before they told me they were aware of the problem and it’s the entire area of our neighborhood and can see the problem on the cable at the junction box before it comes to the house.
Speed isn’t an issue either.
It’s the multiple daily drop offs that they can’t seem to find.
Hard to believe considering.
More likely it’s affecting such a small area that it’s not that important to them.





View attachment 1715712324
Click to expand...

Very nice speed there.

I am on a 100 Mbps Fiber Optics line here. Comes across at 97 Mbps hard wired with the ethernet cable and 57 Mbps on the wifi here in the house.
Also have it cabled underground ethernet cable off the house fiber router a 100 feet to the shop into my Cradlepoint mbr 1000 wifi router in the shop.

Same speeds in the shop 100 ft away as the speeds in the house.

My 100 Mbp line here works excellent for everything I need to do. I have access here through my fiber company 100, 200, 300, 500, and 1000 Mbps all at reasonable costs. Thing is I only need the 100 Mbps and that is super fast in itself. Down and Up same speeds, it symmetrical with fiber. Never Fails.

Wonder if you can have them turn down your service speed back to 100 Mbps for more reliable service.

Back in the day of DSL here, I am at the max distance of 3 miles from telephone company's switch box before the signal severely drops off.

They were turning up their line pressure as much as they thought realistic, before the signal would blow out the side of the underground phone cable before it got here.

So as comparison, pushing that much speed (over 300 Mbps) over the existing cable to your home, you may be experiencing the same signal blow out before it gets to your home.

Too much distance from the cable company's feed box to your home, plenty of speed but may be overwhelming the ability of the cable feeding your home ???

Try turning the line speed down, may solve your reliability problem. Less pressure with more constant steady flow, like water flowing through a garden hose.

Always have enjoyed working with multiple internet services and techniques to get service into people's homes. Whether it be: Wimax, Wifi, DSL, Cable, Fiber Optic, Mobile Wifi Hotspots, Hotspots off your phone, setting up Wifi in a small town powered off a single cable base.

All very interesting stuff, especially when it works.

Good Luck
 
Have kind of noticed over the years the cable internet service is like what I like to call the Water Tower Effect.

Would be like a water tower is feeding your little neighborhood there, the more people online at the same time the more drain it puts on the supply. Plenty of pressure but may not be enough volume as everyones demands are increasing with all of the devices each family is running.

Some services are running into huge demands they are having a hard time keeping up to the increase in demands. Think about all the kids at home trying to be schooled online, besides all the regular increases in internet traffic.

If everyone throttles back a little, more reliable service for everyone.

Just another thought of what may be going on. Huge demand for internet out there.
 
George Jets said:
Very nice speed there.

I am on a 100 Mbps Fiber Optics line here. Comes across at 97 Mbps hard wired with the ethernet cable and 57 Mbps on the wifi here in the house.
Also have it cabled underground ethernet cable off the house fiber router a 100 feet to the shop into my Cradlepoint mbr 1000 wifi router in the shop.

Same speeds in the shop 100 ft away as the speeds in the house.

My 100 Mbp line here works excellent for everything I need to do. I have access here through my fiber company 100, 200, 300, 500, and 1000 Mbps all at reasonable costs. Thing is I only need the 100 Mbps and that is super fast in itself. Down and Up same speeds, it symmetrical with fiber. Never Fails.

Wonder if you can have them turn down your service speed back to 100 Mbps for more reliable service.

Back in the day of DSL here, I am at the max distance of 3 miles from telephone company's switch box before the signal severely drops off.

They were turning up their line pressure as much as they thought realistic, before the signal would blow out the side of the underground phone cable before it got here.

So as comparison, pushing that much speed (over 300 Mbps) over the existing cable to your home, you may be experiencing the same signal blow out before it gets to your home.

Too much distance from the cable company's feed box to your home, plenty of speed but may be overwhelming the ability of the cable feeding your home ???

Try turning the line speed down, may solve your reliability problem. Less pressure with more constant steady flow, like water flowing through a garden hose.

Always have enjoyed working with multiple internet services and techniques to get service into people's homes. Whether it be: Wimax, Wifi, DSL, Cable, Fiber Optic, Mobile Wifi Hotspots, Hotspots off your phone, setting up Wifi in a small town powered off a single cable base.

All very interesting stuff, especially when it works.

Good Luck
Click to expand...

George Jets said:
Have kind of noticed over the years the cable internet service is like what I like to call the Water Tower Effect.

Would be like a water tower is feeding your little neighborhood there, the more people online at the same time the more drain it puts on the supply. Plenty of pressure but may not be enough volume as everyones demands are increasing with all of the devices each family is running.

Some services are running into huge demands they are having a hard time keeping up to the increase in demands. Think about all the kids at home trying to be schooled online, besides all the regular increases in internet traffic.

If everyone throttles back a little, more reliable service for everyone.

Just another thought of what may be going on. Huge demand for internet out there.
Click to expand...

I gotta say, I didn’t think about lowering the speed for the reliability issue.
Thank you for that.

Yea, it is all very interesting.
Until a person has no power over it not working right.:D
 
My download speed is 11.11 and upload is 1.1. LOL
 
RustyRatRod said:
My download speed is 11.11 and upload is 1.1. LOL
Click to expand...

Actually that is good speed, like a 10 Mbps incoming line.

My previous DSL speed in the country was 3 Mbps download with upload of 1/10th of that at .325 mbps. And was glad to get the service as most people around here could not even get service period.

Could still function ^^^^^ online with this.

Went to Florida and got on to a 10 Mbps media com cable like you have Rusty, thought I died and went to heaven. Was such a huge improvement.

As luck would have it a Fiber Optics company was bringing a feed cable past my house here, so was able to hook up to that at 100 Mbps.

Crazy part lots of other neighbors can't get it because the cable doesn't go by their homes. So I got super lucky on this.

So yeah, now I am spoiled. Super nice hookup for logging into my remote computer with the web cams on it when I am out of state, just like sitting right there at the home computer with the great speed.

So yeah line speeds are incressing, but still nothing wrong with a reliable 10 Mbps line. That will get the work done.
 
George Jets said:
Actually that is good speed, like a 10 Mbps incoming line.

My previous DSL speed in the country was 3 Mbps download with upload of 1/10th of that at .325 mbps. And was glad to get the service as most people around here could not even get service period.

Could still function ^^^^^ online with this.

Went to Florida and got on to a 10 Mbps media com cable like you have Rusty, thought I died and went to heaven. Was such a huge improvement.

As luck would have it a Fiber Optics company was bringing a feed cable past my house here, so was able to hook up to that at 100 Mbps.

Crazy part lots of other neighbors can't get it because the cable doesn't go by their homes. So I got super lucky on this.

So yeah, now I am spoiled. Super nice hookup for logging into my remote computer with the web cams on it when I am out of state, just like sitting right there at the home computer with the great speed.

So yeah line speeds are incressing, but still nothing wrong with a reliable 10 Mbps line. That will get the work done.
Click to expand...

What's unfair is, even if I wanted OR could afford a better ISP, we have no choice. Windstream has a monopoly in this area and they know it. No other ISP will service this area, so we'e kinda stuck with it. Not that it matters, because this forum, eBay, and the news sites are all I do.
 
RustyRatRod said:
What's unfair is, even if I wanted OR could afford a better ISP, we have no choice. Windstream has a monopoly in this area and they know it. No other ISP will service this area, so we'e kinda stuck with it. Not that it matters, because this forum, eBay, and the news sites are all I do.
Click to expand...

As long as you can upload you mopar photos to this site, that is a good service.

Might have to wait a little sometimes for things to upload, but as long as it does not kick you off you are Golden.
 
George Jets said:
As long as you can upload you mopar photos to this site, that is a good service.

Might have to wait a little sometimes for things to upload, but as long as it does not kick you off you are Golden.
Click to expand...

Naw, I've never had a problem there. It's not like I wanna do much else on here anyway. lol
 
The last time I had to deal with a major ISP (verizon) about multiple sites with intermittent issues I had to tell them to check to see if all the sites were on the same card in their router/switch.

What do you know, they were and after they figured out who to call in their company to change it out, the problems all went away.

I've also had to tell them what piece of test equipment to use (and I've never even seen one- a "T-Bird").

verizon was by far the worst I've ever dealt with as far as blaming and threatening to charge the customer for outage repairs.

Spectrum is night and day difference in customer service.
 
One last thing as I wake up here this morning. @TrailBeast

Try hard wiring your laptop in with up to a 25' ethernet cable direct from the Cable Modem.

Not sure if today's cable modems have the built in wifi broadcast capabilities. If not then they are probably jumping to an additional wifi router in your home. One more possible link for line drop failure.

As you know, can't beat a hard line direct connection from the cable modem vs wifi connection for reliability and performance.

Most everyone has everything hooked up on wifi in there homes nowadays.

Got a wifi TV, wifi access thermostat for your furnace/AC, wifi access for opening your door locks and roll up garage doors, wifi surveillance cameras??

All these electronic wifi add ons can degrade your useful wifi signal, not leaving you a whole lot left to work with.

I am sure as you know . . making the best use of the internet service that is being provided to your home, can bring your reliability way up.
 
George Jets said:
One last thing as I wake up here this morning. @TrailBeast

Try hard wiring your laptop in with up to a 25' ethernet cable direct from the Cable Modem.

Not sure if today's cable modems have the built in wifi broadcast capabilities. If not then they are probably jumping to an additional wifi router in your home. One more possible link for line drop failure.

As you know, can't beat a hard line direct connection from the cable modem vs wifi connection for reliability and performance.

Most everyone has everything hooked up on wifi in there homes nowadays.

Got a wifi TV, wifi access thermostat for your furnace/AC, wifi access for opening your door locks and roll up garage doors, wifi surveillance cameras??

All these electronic wifi add ons can degrade your useful wifi signal, not leaving you a whole lot left to work with.

I am sure as you know . . making the best use of the internet service that is being provided to your home, can bring your reliability way up.
Click to expand...

We only have one modem/router and it is wireless broadcast.
One of our computers is hard wired and has the same issue.
Nothing but 3 computers, 3 phones, 2 Roku’s and a network connected wireless laserjet.
 
Lengthy response here
Broadband in America from an insider.
"line pressure" has nothing to do with signal quality. fittings and splices are the majority of all cable modem issues as well as distance and overprovisioning of DSL lines. DSL is distance limited and if your ISP tries to provision your line for 6M and you can only support 3m at 12000 feet, your signal to noise ratio is going to suck and your modem will drop out. Fiber is king. Get it if you can but 100M is probably the tops that I would pay for as there is nothing short of a PS4 update that needs that type of bandwidth. You can stream a hi-def channel on only 3M! hard wire your **** if you can, especially on 50M or greater internet speeds. In 10 years, resi internet will all be 5G like wireless. Demand will drive wireless costs down.
 
Last edited:
I have very fast and reliable internet at my house but it has not always been that way. I used to get random drops all the time and had to reboot the modem to reconnect. They said it was my router hardware was old and out of date. I highly doubted that but I went ahead and bought a new one. Sure enough that fixed the problem. If your router / modem is old you might consider trying to upgrade.
 
TrailBeast said:
As some of you know I have a YouTube channel. (Mopers4us)
Some of you also know I am recently semi retired from my business as a computer and Internet tech after over 20+ years.
I have worked at and with multiple ISP’s over the last couple of decades.

Well here over the last few months our service goes off every day probably 50 times or more just long enough to read the message from our devices that there is no Internet connection, and then it comes back on again.

They know it’s happening in this area.
They have checked the signal at the local junction box and said there is a problem with the signal, but fix it? NOOOO.
They just say they don’t know where the problem is yet.
We pay for a gaming capable connection (300mb) over cable, so it’s not like weather or any above ground factors would be involved here generally.
In most of todays gaming it is mandatory to stay connected to the game server or it kicks you out of the game, and in some cases the only option is to start the game again.

I don’t game, but I use the net for all kinds of thing including YouTube for videos.
Our Son however is a gamer, and is getting himself a new game system besides his X box.
He’s fairly pissed off over the Internet access here, and as the one paying for it so am I.
The Wife uses the net a lot, but the stuff she commonly does isn’t affected by the problem that much.
She only really notices when it’s down long enough to keep an Instigram page or video from loading.
But if you know anything about online gaming you know any disruption in the connection will end your game instantly.
Well, I got a survey email from them this morning.
If I loose my service over it I can live with that I guess, but the next best service around here is DSL and we already ditched our 100 dollar a month business land line in trade for cell phones because of that regularly being down for days at a time.
Imagine, your business line being down for days??? WTF?

I guess my dream of sitting on a white sands beach with a drink in my hand when doing business is growing closer every day.:D

Thanks for letting me rant.
Click to expand...
I live JUST out in the boonies.
I pay $147 for data capped, satellite dish based, internet.
Can’t watch Amazon, Disney because of buffering. At all.

the net speed & data I pay for is for daily college (& daughter’s 2nd grade zoom) zoom classes.

we get dropped regularly.

Tesla is $500 down and $100 a month if you can reach them.

Am looking into them
 
How's your cell coverage? T-MOBILE has $50 a month 5G home internet here 500mb down. I believe its not capped. Thats a screaming deal and I will be pitching this to my subs that cant get more than 3 on my system as we're not building out new broadband service to non fiber addresses out past 10000 feet. One of my crew members has it and says its awesome.
 
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