Business Starter Plan Connections Speeds no longer getting WHY?

I have exactly the same problem in SW Mi. I have my business and 2 other customer sites using Comcast Business. We are all getting only about 50% thruput compared to my history records. This all started about 3-4 weeks ago. Calls to Comcast Support only seem to net me the "We don't see any problem" ...

Same result to comcasts speed sites -- but then since 99.99% of traffic goes off comcast network, it would be pretty stupid to limit testing to their network, plus I monitor bandwidth all the time and this problem didn't exist with multiple network test sites 4 weeks ago. Speed & Bandwidth are relative items -- since there is relative change the network is not performing the same in the last 4 weeks. 

Hello!

If I  had a dollar for every time some asked me why their internet is slow...:)

Seriously, though, if something is broken in the Comcast network, they should certainly be held accountable to find it and fix it.

Unfortunately, the most mundane answer is usually the right one :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversubscribed_(communications)

There are many variables that going into internet "speed", and oversubscription is just one of them.

Search for "why is my internet slow" and you will see what I mean. It may be tempting to just blame the ISP, but you will have do quite a bit more detective work before you can throw it back in their laps, especially if they have already given you the "everything looks good" response.

Take care!

John

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@demanl wrote:

 

In most businesses..if I only do have of the job...I only get paid Half...if I'm lucky.  I wonder if Comcast would be happy if I decided to prorate what I was to pay them for getting less than half of what I'm paying for....how would they react....?...badly I'm sure.

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Hello!

Your SLA will cover in detail any discounts you can take off the MRC if they are not hitting the agreed upon uptime and bandwidth.

Take care!

John

I have the same exact problem.

Check out my post http://forums.businesshelp.comcast.com/t5/Connectivity/Upload-dropping-down-to-1mb-at-Specific-hours/m-p/9879#U9879

I keep getting throttled on upload. I am still waiting for an answer to my problem.

It's occuring during the evening for me.

What about you??? You should log them and we should all unite our complaints. It's just wrong since we are paying TRIPLE what normal residentials are paying and THEY have faster internet sometimes.

Hello!

You are sharing bandwidth with your residential and business "neighbors". It could be something as simple as one or more of them having scehduled tasks that run at the same time every night to :

- backup to the cloud

- rsync between local and remote servers

- etc

And this is just one possibility. It could be something in your network. i.e. trojan.

You will really need to do alot more digging.

My first inclination is always "pilot error", so I would setup a program called MRTG or Cacti on my network and have it graph my bandwidth usage on the WAN connection. Once I had proven that it was not me using the bandwidth, I might complain to Comcast that my "neighbors" are being bandwidth pigs. YMMV

Take care!

John

I do graphing on my connection.  You might consider before posting that most of these people complaining probably do not know that the only way to do any bandwidth graphing is to install a managed switch because the Comcast routers don't give you diddly squat.

In any case,

Folks, this is a COPPER service.  It's NOT fiber.  That means that it can "partly fail"

When a backhoe digs up a fiber line, the glass can be sitting there with 3/4 of it's outer insulation jacket stripped off and as long as the strand is intact, you will get the same bandwidth and througput you always got.

In other words, with fiber it's either working or it's not, there's no in-between.

But copper can be compromised to the point that it partly works and partly doesen't.  Animals can chew it, the weather can cause insulation to shrink and crack,fittings can become unscrewed.  Thes problems show up as signal degradation in the modem.

You have a customer interface to the modem that while it's a real POS, it does at least give you signal strength's.  What are the signal strengths you have right now?

I am experiencing not only the same problem but getting the exact same numbers, 7 and 1. To all you know-it-all techs who want to dismiss people having issues, I challenge you on a couple of points. One, do you have more information that I do on MY situation? No. You are talking in general terms about things that MIGHT be the case. In other words, you have ZERO information about people's situations. You are just talking to talk. What do you expect people experiencing issues to do after they read your litany of possibilities, just go back to their crappy speeds?

Second, too many people are experiencing the exact same degradation in performance, the exact same numbers. And they are experiencing them repeatedly over a period of time. This is not due to some "cloud uploading" or "animal chewing on a line" or whatever other cockamamey stories the guy who trained you told you when you were a baby.

Stop clogging up the forums with this kind of non-information. How would you like it if, when you called in to report an issue, the support engineer pulled up about a dozen of your posts and started reading them back to you without any regard to your particular situation? I would pay about $59.95 a month to watch that happen....oh, wait. I think that actually is how Comcast support works. That is, if you can find a link or a phone number to actually reach them.

Hello!

Myself and others are just doing the best we can to help. I dont work for Comcast, but maybe an official support person will jump in to help.

There is no need to be nasty and insulting.

Take care!

John

I wasn't being insulting. I was being helpful by telling people to stop taking wild guesses with crazy suggestions based on no information.

If you notice, there is no place on all of Comcast business support site to submit a ticket unless you pay for premium support. This is terrible and a huge step backwards for Comcast.

Someone from Comcast did call my house and spoke to my wife. They want to come to my house and charge me a service fee. They said it could be "faulty equipment" or that my "wifi could be interfering". This is poppycock. Nothing has changed at my place for 2 years and wifi doesn't interfere with a wired router's speed. 

I have a 36 month contract whereby my equipment charge is supposed to be $7 per month. They suddenly changed that in May to $9.95. It's this lack of control and consistency over their own infrastructure that is almost certainly the issue. My account is being throttled somewhere but all of the burden will fall on me, the customer, to prove that. This is the way it always goes with utility companies - they constantly shift the burden to the customer instead of spending some time looking at other possibilities that don't involve burning gasoline to my house and me missing work to deal with a technician.

They don't have SolarWinds or some other monitoring software that can talk to my modem and analyze the signal quality and speed? Something that can pinpoint the bottleneck without sending someone out? I find that hard to believe. 

Hello!

Fact : The OP stated that Comcast tested the connection and stated that "everyting was fine".

Fact : In spite of this, the OP was still concerned that his speedtests were not hitting his provisioned rate.

Fact from the Comcast terms of service :

"2.2 Speed. Comcast makes no representation regarding

the speed of the Internet Service. Actual speeds may vary and

are not guaranteed. Many factors affect speed including, without

limitation, the number of workstations using a single

connection."

You can educate yourself at :

http://networkmanagement.comcast.net/

And more specifically :

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc6057/

These are the cold, hard facts on how the bandwidth works. You should mix this together with all of the anecdotal "what-ifs" that other community members have contributed to help generate an informed understanding of what the comcast service can and can not do. Take this newfound knowledge to help navigate the comcast tech support and build a sound case about how not being able to hit your provisioned rate at certain times of the day is absolutely a comcast problem that they must fix. Good luck.

Which reminds me...funny story...

Back in the day, when I was a baby, I had a 128k ISDN connection. It kept generating CRC errors every once in awhile, and I would call US WEST and complain. They would run a remote BERT test and say everyting was fine. One day as I was watching the CRC counter (I would watch my CRC counter all day long because I was so upset), I called and they just happened to have a truck in the area. The tech rolled out, hooked up his tester to the demarc, and said, "Your problem is about 1500ft away". He drove off and 30 minutes later he returned and said he had fixed the problem. Apparently, about 1500ft away my copper pair moved to overhead wires. Some squirrels had chewed through the casing, and every time it would rain I would get CRC errors until the line dried out. Those darn critters chewing on cables. Who would have thunk it!

John

newclique,

  I have learned that there's 2 kinds of people in the world when it comes to problems with machinery.  The first type gets really mad and tears the machine to llittle bits until they find the problem, then they put it back together.  The second type gets really mad and stands there kicking dents in the machine, making no effort to fix it.  That's you.

You have been given 2 explanations to consider, aggregation and cable failure.  I'll discuss both.

Aggregation:

  It is true that all ISP's aggregate customers together.  Just like you aren't setup to buy a dump truck full of toilet paper at a time, and you go to a retailer who does, then sells it a roll at a time, Comcast is buying bandwidth to the rest of the Internet in bulk, then splitting it up and selling chunks of it to it's subscribers.

  Comcast knows that if they oversubscribe that people will feel cheated and will quit service.  But they also know that they can't make money buying 20Mbt of bandwidth from a network interconnect that costs them $2000 a month then turn around and give all of it to a subscriber that's paying $200 a month.  So they operate under the assumption that 90% of their customers only use - on average - maybe 5% of the actual bandwidth that they have.  (I do not know the exact percentages but you get the idea)

  As long as this is the case everything works.  But, if you get a few customers who are using 100% of their bandwidth all of the time then things break down.  Comcast knows this and they have procedures to isolate those customers and make things uncomfortable for them.

  You said problems started a month ago - maybe there's a bandwidth hog who moved onto the segment that you are on.  It could be some spammer who is working the system, or it could be some little old lady who barely knows where the "any" key is, who is running a system that is infected with 500 different spambots that are pumping their junk to the world all day and night.  Your only option here is to continue filing trouble tickets and complaining to Comcast by calling in trouble tickets.  Or, leave and go to a competitor.

Cable problems

The second issue is potential cable problems.  Yes I read your scoffing but if you really believe what you said, then your a fool and an idiot.  All the screaming in the world doesen't change the fact that your on a copper service.  And if you are unwilling or unable to post your signal strengths - which any child could obtain from a modem in a few minutes - then you deserve to be blown off.

Comcast may be able to get your signal strengths by remoting into the modem but your entire assumption is that Comcast is at fault so why would you trust them when they say your signal strengths are good?  I certainly don't, before I ever call a trouble ticket into Comcast I make sure my modem signal strengths are good.  The fact is that bad cable can screw up signal at a customer modem, it happens all the time.