Charter Broadband and Cable Modem Transmit Level Help

[Apoptosis]

My internet has been not working for more days than working during the past month. I have Charter Cable Internet for my broadband service and it has been fine for the past few years, but all of a sudden the service has gone to complete ****. They gave me a full credit for last month, but I'd rather have internet than getting a month free of half usage.

Charter came out to my house to service my connection two times last month and gave me a new two way spliter and then gave me new coaxial patch cables to use from the wall to the cable modem. The tech said it was a signal issue inside the home. Nothing has been changed for a signal issue to take place though.

This weekend my internet was 100% down all day Saturday and all day Sunday. Late Sunday night I called Charter and they again said they need to send a tech out to find where my signal issue it coming from.

Fed up on waiting for Charter I tried to do my own signal fixing... First I logged into teh cable modem and pulled up the numbers.

The first place I checked with the log and found it full of errors:


I did a search on Google and found out what the ideal cable modem numbers should look like and I found that one of my numbers was off.

The upstream transmit power will lie within the range +8 to +58 dBmV, with many ISPs specifying a target commissioning level below +55 dBmV. Values in the forties are the most common. Many cable modems are unable to transmit any more powerfully than +58 dBmV. One cannot tell how far this is below the figure that the UBR would need to see a strong enough signal at its end to maintain satisfactory performance, so a figure as high as +58 dBmV is normally a sign of an unacceptable return path. If other problem symptoms are also present, an upstream transmit power of +58 dBmV would constitute valid supporting evidence for requesting technical support from a cable ISP.

My upstream transmit power level was at 63.8 dBmV! I then removed my spliter and the Linksys router and the upstream transmit power level decreased to 45.0 and I was back on the internet.

After Removing the Spliter and Linksys Router:


If I try using the router or the spliter I can't get the cable modem to work and the net is down due to the upstream transmit power level... Last week I changed out my cable modem for a brand new one and tried a different Linksys router with no luck...

Someone told me that some cable companies are over selling the cable/internet packages in certain areas and that my local coverage area may have too many users to support them all and that is why people are getting dropped...

Does any of this make sense to anyone?

[sbohdan]

yep, cable companies were allways known for being greedy. they aren't to fast broadening their connection, because it involves spending money and they like to earn money instead. of course there is a limit to how many users can be supported at certain levels and they like to push as far as they can without upgrade. they only tend to upgrade their lines (spending money) when they have too many complaints and can't push their luck any further without loosing fedup consumers.

[killswitch83]

it does to me.....it means pretty much they don't have the signal amplifying/regenerating devices necessary to feed large neighborhoods (each with a number of hosts more than likely). The splitter causes signal attenuation from hell, that's all I have to say. Charter out here in SC sent a couple of techs out to install it in my parents' house, and put two splitters on the same frickin line the data signal for the modem is on!! Talk about someone being pissed when he found that!! I removed it and everything is fine since then (been 5 years now). the dB rating btw is actually an indication of how much signal attenuation there is on the network medium (usually the more noise, the more attenuation). I would say lay off the splitter and see if you can't just split your video signal in your house, and leave a dedicated coax cable for your cable modem. Those frickin techs are idiots man, comparable to people who work at the Big Blue Whore (Best Buy). What is your network layout in your home btw?

[kenc51]

It shouldn't matter how many people in your area use DSL....this WILL NOT effect connectivity! The DSL signal should be the same on all lines, except for when the actual copper cable has poor insulation etc.
Ifg there are alot of people in the area with dsl too, this only effects your "contention ratio" -> ISP's have a single hi-speed connection from their local broadband servers back to their NOC/Headoffice...This single connection is shared between customers....can be anywhere from 24:1 to 40:1 on average...So if you ISP has a 20mbit connection for backhauling data and your sharing with 40 people, then your speeds suffer....

If are alot of users, then speed suffers, connectivity should never suffer

[T-Shirt]

[quote="Apoptosis"]Charter came out to my house to service my connection two times last month and gave me a new two way spliter and then gave me new coaxial patch cables to use from the wall to the cable modem. The tech said it was a signal issue inside the home. Nothing has been changed for a signal issue to take place though.

My upstream transmit power level was at 63.8 dBmV! I then removed my spliter and the Linksys router and the upstream transmit power level decreased to 45.0 and I was back on the internet.



Does any of this make sense to anyone?[/quote]
Yes and no.
signal level is not a matter of being "oversold" but the fact that the onsite tech did not fix it is bad.
you didn't say what your downstream level and the Signal to noise ratio (SNR) is or if that has changed.
Lots of things can cause it to change (weather particularly tempature, water intrusion in to the cable, fiber , connectors, or amps, equipment failure, etc)
Most of this is outside the house, and SHOULD be taken care of during their normal maintainance and repair.
When they add customers they can and SHOULD rebalance the "plant" (their physical network) splitting nodes if needed. because the engineering and equipment install is VERY expensive, (And that is a big problem for some companies ) sometimes they need a push.
If you still have problems, and can't get a higher level tech out to solve them, find out who /what agency is the franchise authority (should be on your bill, or tech support MUST tell you) and file a complaint. In most areas the company has a very limited time to take action to resolve the problem expect a call from their resolution team (may be from some other area/national office) within 24 hours. They will push the right buttons to get it properly diagonsed and fixed ASAP.
Unfortunately, with the current push towards statewide franchises/deregulation we will eventually lose this sort of feedback/power/weapon, and they will return to ignoring individual customers, only fixing things if and when real competition cuts in to profits

[bubba]

a guy at my work just had the pipline installed, well he had signal issues. but it was due to the way the house was wired coming into the house from the pole.

he went through 5 techs, the 5th one was the only one that was worth coming out, he looked in the box outside as well as looking at the pc.
the guy ended up rewiring it for him and told him that the more spliters you have to go thru for the internet kills your signal doesnt affect the tv as easy. so the tech rewired the box and strung an new line straight to the modem from the outside box.

this fixed his pipline and he said that the tv picture in the upstairs rooms are brighter.

[bigblockmatt]

I work for a real-estate developer and we are building a house in the country somewhat. We were working on getting bids and when it came to getting all the services to the house, there was more to it than just putting the wires. They had to calculate every turn in the wire, every bend, every junction, every splitter. So, every time the line didnt go straight it would loose signal. So, in your house, the more you turn and split the line, the less signal you will receive.

[killswitch83]

hmmm, I've heard of optical media losing signal when bent too much, but not so much with copper media. the only instance I've really heard of that is when the coax is bent too much and there's a fracture/break in the cable. Then the signal absorbs into the cladding of the coax, just like optical. As for contention ratio, that's what I was actually trying to get out last night, lol

[Apoptosis]

I traced my coaxial cable back to the box and found another splitter, so my home does have two splitters on it. One was a 4-way and the other was a 2-way.

Testing Results:

2-way only was 42.3 dBmV
4-way only was 45.0 dBmV

2-way to 4-way splitter was 48.0 dBmV
4-way to 2-way splitter was 63.0 dBmV

I'm going to Radio Shack to eliminate one splitter and then I can just run the single 2-way splitter....

Think I got it figured out without any help from Charter.

[kenc51]

Someone told me that some cable companies are over selling the cable/internet packages in certain areas and that my local coverage area may have too many users to support them all and that is why people are getting dropped...

An ISP will send a standard signal down the copper cable... this signal is the same for all!! The quality of the cable is a BIG factor...even rain can cause bad singnal!
For my company, Threshold:More than 32dB can impact on performance for the upstream
&
Threshold: 48dB-56dB. More than this on the current package can impact on performance for downstream
If your signal is poor, it will start to effect your "poss attainable rates" --> ie. our standard package is 1mb but Attainable (possible) speeds reach 8-10mb -> so if you signal; is bad, then it just means you can't get a 8mb line (who cares if your package needs 1mb) -> I hope this is clears some things up
Nate, you ISP should be giving you a good enough signal for @ least ~10% more that needed speeds incase things like poor cabling etc.

I think you need an Irish ISP Nate ;)

[killswitch83]

yeah no joke, lol

Personally I think we pay wayyyy too much for Charter and what they provide.....I pay bare minimum $100 USD a month for TV and Internet....I've not had an outage yet, but I've had a few problems where I had to release and renew my IP myself (guess their DHCP server was having a brain fart)....All the tech support does down here anyways is read out of a frickin book and click a couple things on their support computer to try and help things along, with no real network support.....we need to see more network support from cable companies IMO.

[kenc51]

It's not even network support....Just a good infrastructure to build a product on!
Most cable lines are ONLY for TV....or @ least it was....Cable which is good for TV is NOT good enough for DATA in most cases....the cable decays etc.
Also B4 DSL took off, the cable was for TV only so when a tech called out he was able to splice and join etc. the cable all he wanted and still get good picture with CNN.......Now the prob is that they have all that bad cable and shody work to contend with......

[killswitch83]

yep, you got that one right! We found bad cable under our house some years later after it was initially installed back in '99. The cable sleeving was all molded and pitting, which told me they didn't use quality components in the first place (or didn't have access to such). I hate to see what happens when (and if) 1 and 10 GbE comes into the home.....now that's going to be a disaster, initially, unless of course they keep up with technology and use quality cabling and networking devices.

[kenc51]

yep, you got that one right! We found bad cable under our house some years later after it was initially installed back in '99. The cable sleeving was all molded and pitting, which told me they didn't use quality components in the first place (or didn't have access to such). I hate to see what happens when (and if) 1 and 10 GbE comes into the home.....now that's going to be a disaster, initially, unless of course they keep up with technology and use quality cabling and networking devices.

GbE will require Fiber...so "should" be ok....that can be burried deep underground ;)

[killswitch83]

not exactly, they have 1000BaseT now, it can operate over UTP by using all 8 wires to send and receive in full duplex (I know that sounds crazy, but I saw it in my Cisco course book, and that's what they said)......I'm willing to bet 1 GbE over UTP has a lot of hardware involvement to arbitrate the connection like that.

[kenc51]

BUT companies have to backhaul all that data back to base....If every customer has a 1Gbit connection...there is no way they would run copper cable for all that traffic...They would have to run fiber from their base to @ least the curb outside the customers house....(think about it....1GBit!)

[killswitch83]

not as the backbone, hell no!! I meant to the hosts alone. It's been made possible according to Cisco. It's an assload of data to send back to the servers, which is why server upgrades would be in order most definitely, not to mention routers and regenerating devices would have to upgraded as well. I wasn't talking about the backbone or the subscriber link, just so I could clear that one up, lol

[kenc51]

I know your not talking about backbone connection......say you have a cul-de-sac or long street with a dead end.....mayby 40 houses on this road....how can you run copper cable to all houses, provide TV/data/voice etc.? there would need to be one keck-ass cable coming out of each ouse...then they need to terminate in a box on the side of the road... then it gets VERY nasty....all data needs to be "multiplexed" and sent down a single cable or a bunch of cables (this is way b4 the local loop(backbone))....Copper is brittle when it oxidise's (goes green in color too...this reduces it conductivity too)...Copper cable is cheap to install but very expensive to maintain.....

My company uses copper cable (ATM) for most of our backbone....It's slowly being changed to fiber....Our local loop is still standard copper cable (we provide dsl over ph lines not cable)

You could provide 1Gbit over copper cable, fiber will allow less hastle and is future-proof, but this ain't gonna happen for long time ;)

(infact do a google search for "black fiber" -> there is loads of un-used fiber around the world doing nothing!)

[killswitch83]

meant to edit what I said earlier about that

That's actually what I meant....I know you can't run copper media outside like that due to the conditions you just mentioned, not to mention it wouldn't be stable enough to handle the signal, so yeah you would have to use fiber on the outside (from the home, to the terminating box on the side of the road)...as for "dark fiber", yeah I've been reading up on that, and it still eludes me as to why they don't just go out there and utilize that fiber! Well, besides the fact it's expensive as all hell, but even that I think will change fairly soon....consider this: in Europe they have managed to get 100 GbE stable and running just like any other network (had to read this for Cisco btw in case you didn't know), so that tells me as soon as it becomes mainstream, then you'll have at least 10 GbE as a backbone connection, and several 1 GbE coming off of that to customers...but, of course it's like a catch-22 in a way: the price of fiber will drop as soon as it's implemented throughout, but it costs an assload to implement it now, so it will take awhile. Also, keep in mind that 100 GbE was more of a testing by one entity, so it's still in the preliminary phases. I can't wait though, especially if the price of fiber and fiber NICs will drop, because I know I wouldn't mind having 1 or 10 GbE over fiber in my home!

[kenc51]

But what would you do with a Gbit line?

I read about that 100Gbit line in Europe, They made the fastest ever file transfare using it....Something like 2TB of data in mins, across most of the mainland Europe.....I think the Inquirer wrote something about it a few mths ago.....

My company supply ALL dsl in our country, all other ISP's buy dsl from us......except for 1 company, they provide "fiber to the curb"....They buy rack space in our POP's (point of presence - fancy way of saying remote servers)
ALL data from each local POP is backhauled accross our AMT/Fiber wan, to 1 of 5 MAJOR connections to either the US, UK of Europe....I can check the realtime stats of some of our main routers.....these routers route nearly all data outside Ireland!!! It NEVER spikes above 1Gbit speeds (~80MB/sec)(i don't sit a stare @ the stats so could be wrong)...granted thats prob the max these lines will take, but a 1Gbit line is wayy overkill for personal interweb access! --> sure your HDD can write that fast!!!!


(I'm talking about links from Ireland to companies like MCI Worldcom etc.!! -> Da big-boys!)

(I'm writing this on a 1Mbit line and happy with it )