Our Comcast adventure enters week 5 | Bob's Blitz

Our Comcast adventure enters week 5

We had chronicled our long term issues with Comcast's high speed internet service going out 3-4x per day over the past month here. And as that problem continued and, eventually, effected our phone too - we moved the diary here. And then there.

Now it's time to start again. No, really -- it is. Because we had a second go round with billing. Our speeds are still compromised and the intermittent interconnectivity problem continues. It may have lessened (really, it might have) in frequency (excuse the pun) -- but we're stuck. Comcast is trying, they really are. But where do they go from here?


2/23/14 12:00 AM -- DSL Reports indicates Latency ms of 1035 followed by 752.

Before leaving for vacation, Phil Mushnick of the NY Post fires a small salvo for us on the matter in his column.

2/24/14 11:25 AM -- Down 7, up 0.09! Reporting latency ms of 369 and 330.

3:25 PM ET -- .73 down, .44 up


4:25 PM ET -- Filing letter of complaint with State Sen. Linda Greenstein.

5:00 PM ET -- Phone sound quality has degraded. Then, we lost a dial tone. Power cycled the modem, tone back, sound still poor. Called Customer Service. Got disconnected. Called back. On now. Rep says, "Things don't look good. Need to send some signal to your modem." Boy, we've heard that before. Modem is refreshed, static sound remains. She's going to scheduled someone to come out and check this on Friday. If they show, and we're really not sure we really even want to do this, that would make 4 techs out.

2/25/14 -- Filed letter to U.S. Senator Bob Menendez urging him not to support Comcast takeover of Time Warner. Filed letter with our mayor.

8:55 AM ET


Followed by 3.6 down, 1.2 up. Followed by .92 down, .77 up

9:28 AM ET -- Spent 25 minutes with WiFi support. Tech 'could not see our modem.' Did a reset, again. Back up, now holding for 'Tier 1' support. Audio to follow.

9:55 AM ET -- Tier 1 support gives us a local number to call: 609-655-1300. That number is no longer in service. She says we have an appt Friday with that aforementioned tech again. Asked about our ticket that was to roll the truck to check the node to the pad, she indicates it is closed and we don't have any updated info there on what if anything they found. Despite evidence to the contrary, she denies any problem on Comcast's side. And nobody mentions this:


Or this.


Here is WiFi support this morning, about a month into us losing internet 3-4x per day for 20-45 minutes per day, 'fixing' the problem by having us reset the modem. Wait for the CSR's call back.



10:40 AM ET -- Less than 24 hours after emailing her, Sen. Linda R. Greenstein gave us a call.

4:30 PM -- Supervisor of tech who was out the past 2 times called. Good guys. They'll make a return today with a line technician.

7:30 PM -- Another corporate person calls.

2/26/14 -- Started a new smokeping. This doesn't look top notch.


DSL Reports provides what a good smokeping should look like.


In response to a note from the mayor, we've got 3 Comcast trucks outside. During the time they've been outside (9:00 to 9:30 AM) they see no issues and we've maintained avg 20 mbps downs (WiFi) despite the smokeping errors and this:


A tech is going to come back and hook up a 2nd modem in order to do a tracking. Just odd we could fail that badly (above) while they don't see anything.

12:30 PM ET -- The tech, very good by the way, hooked up a 2nd modem. A business class that should pull 110 Mbps for us to switch to if we have our low speed issue. IT, the new faster modem, fluctuates lower than our normal one. Call into supervisor. Leaving the modem here for now for use to monitor with.

2/27/14 -- Have had some slow DL speeds, to 9-10 Mbps, but not the low crashing speeds of above.

7:41 AM -- Phone call. No sound upon answering. No dial tone. Three times the phone rang and we couldn't connect with the caller. Called the tech from yesterday via cell phone.

7:51 AM -- Phone back.

9:30 AM -- Tech changed out all visible cable connectors. New dual 2.4/5GHz modem placed alongside our stock modem.

10:51 AM -- Getting 2 modems. One for phone, one for net. Rate codes were also wrong.

11:54 AM -- Tech and I hook up our old Belkin router. Same speeds. Move to within three feet of the modem. Same speeds. In addition to the interconnectivity issues which have no reared their ugly heads in the past day, rock solid WiFi speeds of ... 19Mbps are 30% lower than they should be. And, after 108 Speed wave tests 'COMCAST XFINITY FASTEST IN-HOME WI-FI' -- our averages are 14.09 down, 8.07 up, 22 ms avg ping.

12:22 PM -- Tech is leaving. We now have to call billing because we've had a 'CCOWPS' code (commercial) added to our account due to the modem that was attached yesterday. The modem is gone but they won't remove the code FOR HIM. We're not getting 2 modems, we're back with our (third) original one.

12:40 Mary in billing in Manilla sees our bill costs doubled again and cleanly seems to understand and fix the problem. Sounds OK, but we'll wait until we see the changes.

12:56 PM -- Unusable internet speeds. .73 down, .95 up speeds have been like this for 6 minutes. At 12:58 PM we're back to our normal slow speeds of 20 / 10ish. At exactly the same time, modem log reads "Thu Feb 27 12:56:30 2014 Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=44:32:c8:25:fc:ed;CMTS-MAC=00:01:5c:24:52:c2;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;" We leave a message with our tech because they are apparently monitoring our line.

2/28/14 -- Our mid grade WiFi speeds of 18-23 have been steady since yesterday. Phone call this morning, recipient could not hear us. We're going to swap in a new phone and see if that helps. Our caller-ID problem continues (recipients see our city instead of our name...meaning they don't often answer.

4:12 PM -- No major outages and no modem errors. Phone: While speaking to folks via XFINITY® Voice from Comcast...sometimes they hear phone key tone sounds. Sometimes we hear it.

3/1/14 -- 1:31 AM Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=44:32:c8:25:fc:ed;CMTS-MAC=00:01:5c:24:52:c2;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;

7:38 AM 6 down, 1.4 up. 15 down, 11 up. 17 down, 11 up. 19.52, 10.95.

4:27 PM -- Steady lower than they should be speeds today of 20/11. Charging new phone for hookup tomorrow.

3/2/14 -- Not on much today. Pulled a bunch of errors (below). Installed new telephone. Wait, watch.

Sun Mar 02 06:50:40 2014 Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=44:32:c8:25:fc:ed;CMTS-MAC=00:01:5c:24:52:c2;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;

Sun Mar 02 01:07:45 2014 Notice (6) TLV-11 - unrecognized OID;CM-MAC=44:32:c8:25:fc:ed;CMTS-MAC=00:01:5c:24:52:c2;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;

Sun Mar 02 01:07:45 2014 Warning (5) DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response ;CM-MAC=44:32:c8:25:fc:ed;CMTS-MAC=00:01:5c:24:52:c2;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;

Sun Mar 02 01:07:36 2014 Notice (6) Overriding MDD IP initialization parameters; IP provisioning mode = IPv4

Sun Mar 02 01:06:49 2014 Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=44:32:c8:25:fc:ed;CMTS-MAC=00:01:5c:24:52:c2;CM-QOS=1.0;CM-VER=3.0;

Sun Mar 02 01:06:31 2014 Critical (3) Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Unicast Maintenance opportunities received - T4 time out;CM-MAC=44:32:c8:25:fc:ed;CMTS-MAC=00:01:5c:24:52:c2;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;

Sun Mar 02 01:05:58 2014 Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=44:32:c8:25:fc:ed;CMTS-MAC=00:01:5c:24:52:c2;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;

3/3/14 -- "Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=44:32:c8:25:fc:ed;CMTS-MAC=00:01:5c:24:52:c2;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;" with speed of .73 down, .04 up. Calling WiFi support. Multiple Speedtest tests result in related unusable speeds.

Support had us wire up directly with an ethernet cable. Fixed nothing. Had us run the test on the Xfinity website, speeds of 0 up, 0 down. I ask if he sees anything and the answer is 'upstream noise.' Recommends getting a tech. I say good-bye.


Reset the modem. Error: "Mon Mar 03 07:03:15 2014 Notice (6) TLV-11 - unrecognized OID;CM-MAC=44:32:c8:25:fc:ed;CMTS-MAC=00:01:5c:24:52:c2;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;" Followed by "Mon Mar 03 07:09:12 2014 Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=44:32:c8:25:fc:ed;CMTS-MAC=00:01:5c:24:52:c2;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;"

7:13 AM ET we finally are back at our normal bad speed of around 20 Mbps. This weekend we were told 30% loss is expected when taking wired v WiFi speeds. We pay for 50 so 20 is...60% degradation.

Moving Comcast XFINITY service thread here.

**Follow us on Twitter, Subscribe by Email, View via Our Mobile Site, or Return Home