It comes at a great advantage to the knowledgeable tech when dealing with a company like Comcast who almost never looks to say the issue is on their end in terms of residential accounts. I just had an issue where at the house where i had severe packet loss resulting in slow speeds and making things nearly unusable here. I got onto the chat to get them to run a diagnostic. The diagnostic showed a 28% packet loss. here was their steps of deflecting acknowledgement:
1. It’s WiFi. Nope not using WiFi
2. It’s a loose connection inside my home or the modem is on a splitter that’s not a Comcast one. Possibly. They then tried to end the call until I pointed out the wiring was installed BY COMCAST.
3. It’s my router(Standard line). I don’t have a router. I have a computer plugged directly into the cable modem.
4. The tech now out of the normal outs FINALLY runs the diagnostic I requested. I did not say it couldn’t be the mode(it is one I bought but i did not tell them that). Results: 28% packet loss. ouch.
5. I am now asked if I am using a surge suppressor. Nope. I am using a network grade Tripp-Lite UPS that is showing all system nominal. This UPS actually helped me prove the power issues we had been having for the past couple of years were the transformer outside and not my house but that’s another post.
This tech’s solution? It must be the UPS. Please plug the mode directly into the wall. Now I am on an active chat. If I unplug and go directly to the wall where do I go? Offline. I stopped there and said no. The tech then insisted this was a valid troubleshooting technique and needed to be done to rule out the UPS. I though I had heard it all. I figured they were call shedding as when I signed on I was 100 in the queue but within 5 minutes I had this tech. I figured I was in a call shedding situation but I wanted to see how bad it was.
I disconnected with this tech and embarked on my own solution. I shutdown my firewall vm and then unplugged the cable modem from power AND the coax. While that was sitting i changed the MAC address of the virtual nic on the firewall facing the modem by one digit. I then fired up the firewall..reconnected the modem and powered it up. True to cableco form i now had a new ip address and my problems are greatly reduced if not eliminated. I am monitoring for further deterioration.