Cable 'net problem

Good evening!

I have been having a lot of disconnects lately, and have had a few techs here to find my problem, they never seem to find it, saying everything seems ok. They changed out connectors,splitters and so on to be safe. When I phone in to tech support night time, they can see problems from their end.

Anyways, I seem to notice that it mainly occurs in the evening/nights. I also noticed that my cable TV has some static, so I went looking at all my cable connections.

I noticed that the 2 cable lines pass by my AC/heating/fan unit ( ~1ft away roughly)..and led me to thinking. It's late fall here in Canada, and slightly cold, hence the heat turning on in the evenings. Would I be getting interference of some sort from the fans magnetic/electromagnetic field or something similar?

My modem is also reasonably close to the unit, being roughly 2-3 ft through a wall away.

Am I on a possible right track, or just dreaming?

Thanks
C

I had the same problem when i lived in college apartments, my signal would drop randomly and my connection speeds were horrible, after having (no lie ) over 50 techs come out to the house in the coarse of one year, i finally manged to get the problem solved, turned out that it had nothing to do with my lines, or connectors or anything, but the central hub i was connected had way to many users connected to it, and once evening came and people got online it would take a crap, after fighting and fighting with the cable company and speaking to countless managers/supervisors ect.. i managed to get a work order in and have them go out and replace the hub...after that things worked well. I'm not saying this is your particular problem, but if everything else has been done it's a possibility, since you said that you are getting static on your tv you may want to check the interal cable lines in your house, they might have put a staple through your coax cable (happens quite a bit)
hope this helps somewhat..do what i did get dsl!!

I've had this problem to, actually still do. I've got RR, and some evenings my ping's will jump up by 100-200 ms in the evening and not go down till I get up the next morning. I thought it was that they didn't bury the wire properly but too many users is probably the real reason. I live in a real nice neighberhood and it wouldn't suprise me if atleast half the houses around here were hooked up to RR. Fed, how exactly did you get them to replace the hub? just non-stop badgering? And how did you get a hold of any one in a position of athourity at your cable company? If I have to raise hell to get this to go away I have no problem doing it, I just need to know were to start.

BTW my line runs no were near my heating/AC unit, I doubt it would be that any ways.

It is possible that the heating fan is causing interferance. You can take two approaches to check this.

1) re-route the cable away from the fan.

2) use shielded cable.

Hope that helps.

yes i complained and screamed so many times, i actually went down to the RR corporate office and refused to leave until i spoke to the person who was in charge, i threatened legal action too. basically i would not take no for an answer and finally they caved. of course all this happend like 3 months before my lease expired and i moved out and got dsl, but that wasnt the point. the nice thing was since i complained soooo many times i only paid about 60 bucks total for over a year's worth of crappy cable modem service because i kept getting credit's on my account. if you live in a big city chances are the load is too high for the hub and thats why your getting screwed by them.

Some one needs to publish this and tell them to stop screwing people over. I'm thinking about switching to DSL now, knew shared bandwith was a mistake from the start.

errrr....double post......errrrrr

Thankfully I am in an area of the city with not many on my hub so I dont really see any hits on cable speed. But I did have a problem once of my line started having some very bad intermittant packetloss and latency issues, not all the time but every once in a while. I had them come out a few times and test the lines. Did my own packetloss tests and took screen shots to send in. Finally exhausted everything except my modem. Yap my toshiba modem was the culprit. I went out and got a motorola and havn't had a problem since.....BTW anyone need a Toshiba cable modem cheap? works but you cant game with it....

Yeah, with the heating ducts....

The heat does change the resistance of the material surrounding the copper wire. THis is what shields it. If the cable gets bent too far, or gets heated up, resistance changes, and the signal gets interference. (Distance and heat affect the resistance)

All I can tell you is that this is the technical feedback on the issue from the cable providers. This also occurs during hot and muggy days, where the wiring gets heated up and/or moist. Depending on the cabling, you may not have a problem. But heat and moisture will affect the cabling, especially if you do like most people and buy the cheapest stuff from Home Depot, which isn't greatly rated, but is white, so it matches the walls, and it's CHEAP! Some people wonder why their wiring goes bad when they spend the least amount possible on it.

Im on my 3rd or 4th modem now, and they re did the majority of the wiring today, Im hoping that takes care of it.

I've been with these guys 3 years now, and have had problems for at least 1/2 that time in 2 diffrerent locations, I wish there was a better selection around here. We get to choose from dialup, Telus ADSL ( up/down limited), or Shaw cable.

Well, I'll take that back, just modem just went off 3x in the space of about 3-4 min.
Does anyone know a program a guy could run in the background to track my online/offline and such?

Maybe I could send some more crap in to these guys. 125~ bucks a month for cable/net and $%#$ service, and I get to do all the investigating myself.

cjc_75 said:

Well, I'll take that back, just modem just went off 3x in the space of about 3-4 min.
Does anyone know a program a guy could run in the background to track my online/offline and such?

Maybe I could send some more crap in to these guys. 125~ bucks a month for cable/net and $%#$ service, and I get to do all the investigating myself.

Click to expand...

I had a similar problem with my ISP, (cable provider) disconnects, outages. I kept a log of when I did'nt have service (date, time etc) I'd power cycle my modem and router, and life would be good again, for a while (couple of days, if that)After a month of this bs every other day, I contacted my ISP and they said they had made a 'change'. Well this 'change' affected my service. They looked and noticed a lot of resets on my modem, DUH, cause I powere cycled it. Dorks. That was last summer, now I am experiencing more 'outages' mainly during the weekends. Now I have to power cycle my modem and router, to get hooked up again.

Most ISPs have the ability to track a lot of info on your connection (I know this for certain). So really, anything you send them will be far, far less significant than what they see on their tests. Their test will often times show the true usage, read from the modem, instead of usage read from your computer. Often times, the modem works just fine, but the compter does not. The tests they have would show the signal levels to the modem and also the bandwidth, among other things. The distinction between what they see in modem signal levels and bandwidth and what YOU see in merely bandwidth, is often what is the determining factor in their taking action. If their readings from the modem are all over tha place, they'll send someone out. Otherwise, if it is just the bandwidth, they'll most likely conclude problems with the comp (because the modem signal is reading just fine) and not take much action.

But they do see a lot. Trust me on this.