not my blog

My rant in Comcast’s Forums:

Here’s my situation, for the most part my connection works OK (a little slow on the down side, but I can deal), unless I need to use my upstream bandwidth for anything of weight. I’m not sure what the magic number is, but it seems anything over like 5-10K of data just causes my upstream connection to **** out. Not enough to effect web browsing, but horrible if I need to send a file via email or upload a file to my website. Here is my network setup at home:

Cable Modem
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WRT54G (V2.2 w/HyperWRT Firmware, latest version with startup config to correct WRT incomplete connection issues) using Level3s DNS servers… haven’t used Comcast’s since the beginning of the year.
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| Wired to WRT
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Desktop (Pentium D 3Ghz, 1GB Ram, Gigabit nic, Win XP Pro) running only CA’s eTrust AV Corp
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| Wired to WRT
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Desktop (Junk box, 1Ghz, 256MB Ram, 100MB nic, Win XP Pro)
No AV, no firewall, no antispyware
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| Wireless
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Laptop (Pentium M 1.7Ghz, 512 MB Ram, Broadcom Wireless, Win XP Pro)
Symantec Corporate, Sygate Pro Firewall, no AS
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| Wireless
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Laptp (Pentium 2.66, 512 MB Ram, Netgear Wireless, Win XP Pro)
Avast! Home, no firewall, running MSAS

Cable Modem stats:
WebSTAR DPX100
Recieve Power: -.18 dB (nice)
Upstream Power: 55 dB (a bit high, usually around 45-48dB)

Now on to what I’ve seen:

Attempting to send an attachment with an email can take 8+ hours, or more. I wouldn’t know if it takes longer because if I got to another location it works instantly. (It’s not the email server, I’ve tried 4 seperate SMTP boxes that I have access to and all do the same).

Upload a file via FTP craps out after about 30-40K of transfer and wants to restart. This occurs over and over. File never uploads.

Tried a speedtest just for fun and got about 5.8mb (a good bit lower than my 8mb plan, but whatever) and it completely fails on the upstream test. Get no speed whatsoever.

Troubleshooting Process:
Tried doing the same thing on all three of my computers (everything but the second laptop, wife’s and she would hurt me if I did anythind “bad” to it), such as send email, try to ftp or even do a speed test. All pretty much fail the same with spectacular results.

As a example of how I know it is something involving my connection and not my PCs. I tried sending two very important emails this morning with no luck (stuck in my outbox for two hours). As soon as I left and arrived at a customers office today, they both sent immediately as soon as I opened Outlook. It’s getting so bad I might have to break out my Verizon card for any upstream traffic I may need.

Ok, they all fail miserably, so I take my router out of the loop and hook my laptop up directly to the cable modem. Same sets of issues. Try connecting my main desktop to the cable modem. Still issues. And yes as a note, I did disable the firewall on the laptop when I was on, still no change.

So finally it’s off to call Comcast and deal with their wonderfully helpful tech support. Got a wonderfully cheery fellow by the name of Hugo. Hugo of course goes through the standard Comcast rhetoric even after I went through my entire run down of my troubleshooting process.

- Oh, it is probably some sort of firewall issue.
- Well when is the last time you checked for viruses or spyware (never, but that’s besides the point, I’ll post HJT logs of all three of the computers I use and will challenge ANYONE to find evidence of virii/spyware on my systems)
- Well the signal is a just outside the spec, but that shouldn’t be causing any issues, I can ping your modem just fine.

Wow genius, you just told me that my signal is out of spec (which I already knew) and you tell me it couldn’t possibly cause any issues. Now how is it that there is a spec if it doesn’t matter if something meets said specification. Next your are finally begrudgingly send someone out but say you are probably going to be charged because they won’t be able to find anything wrong!? What a **** minute, you already told me that my signal is out of spec, so even if that doesn’t fix my issue, OBVIOUSLY there is SOMETHING wrong if my upstream is out of spec… even if it is “just barely out, so it can’t cause any issues”. I find this amazingly hard to swallow, I’ve witnessed in person plenty of people with upstream levels of 56 and 57 not even be able to synch with the head-end. So why wouldn’t 55dB cause some odd issues?

So now if someone has some other troubleshooting steps I could take to look into this problem I’d be more than happy to take a look at them, but as it stands I’m stuck waiting till tuesday for a tech to come out. Well if nothing else, hopefully my signal will get back in range it was before these issues happen.

As an intersting side note, after some checking, I can send stuff through Comcast’s email servers, but no attachments anywhere else. WTF? My brain hurts. I’m going to go play some more Splinter Cell and I’ll worry about this tomorrow.