I will say that I've been a Mediacom customer for over 20 years. Sure, I've had issues here and there but they've always (and I mean always) been able to take care of them. Until recently.
I've been working from home, like everyone else, using a virtual machine and a Jabber softphone (for VDI). Everything has been running great until about 6-8 weeks ago. I started to noticed that my VM would "freeze" and I started having severe call degradation. Now this didn't happen all the time, but several times during the work day, the rest of the time, everything was fine. My 15 year old son also mentioned that he started getting kicked out of online games at all times of the night. Not always, but often. Now, I've been working from home at least one day a week for the past 5 years and this hasn't happened before.
I have a Meraki setup for my home (firewall, a couple switches, and two access points), so it's easy enough to see if I have any packet loss. My firewall has a constant ping to Google (8.8.8.8) and sure enough there was packet loss. My graph went from flat a few weeks before to looking like the Rocky Mountains. And again, not all the time. Sometimes it could go almost 8 hours with no packet loss and then it would return with a vengeance. I plugged my PC directly into the modem and setup a constant ping to Google from command line. Still, packet packet loss. I plugged my firewall back into the modem and my PC back into the switch.
I rebooted all my network equipment. Still more packet loss. I called into Mediacom. "Can you reboot everything? Can we reset your modem?" Fine. No change. The problem is, that unless I'm experiencing packet loss at the very exact time that they are looking at the signal on my modem, they don't see anything wrong. One tech happened to see it while it was happening, other techs have not...I've called in a couple of times.
So I went down to the Mediacom office with my formerly awesome modem and got a replacement. I hooked it into my network, and you guessed it, packet loss, intermittent connectivity, no change. So I called Mediacom to setup an appointment. The tech was a contractor named Chris. Nice guy. He definitely saw noise on the line and added a moca filter to the outside of the house. He went in the basement and took some readings at the splitter (the connection comes in and splits off to two TVs and the modem). He thought it looked fine and to call back if I had any issues. Let me tell you, I had more issues. So I called back. The supervisor took a look and said that Chris was a good tech and he had done all he could and he thought that the problem was somewhere in the neighborhood and I would need an actual Mediacom tech. Fine. So I called back to Mediacom. I set up another appointment.
This time I did get an actual Mediacom tech by the name of Austin. Also nice guy. He took some readings and he saw noise coming from inside the house. Remember, Chris saw them from the outside. Weird, but ok. So he came in and replaced the fittings on the coaxial, removed the moca filter (he said it wasn't needed) and added a ground wire. He did notice that there was some noise on the the coaxial cable running to the upstairs bedroom. He took some readings. He thought everything looked fine, but he did mention that if the packet loss came back, I was to disconnect the upstairs bedroom from the splitter and that he could come back and replace that cable. He left. Issues resumed a few hours later. I disconnected the upstairs bedroom from the splitter. Issues remained.
So I ordered a UPS (uninterrupted power supply), sometimes these can remove any fluctuations in voltage as the power passes through a battery. I thought maybe it's the power supply. I put the modem, the firewall, and the switch on it. No change. Packet loss city. I changed outlets. No change.
I opened a ticket with Meraki to check my WAN port. They didn't see anything but they had me configure a new one. I did. No change. I forgot to mention that I had replaced the Ethernet cables between the modem and my firewall and between my switch and my PC. Do I need to type "no change" again? Fine. No change.
The only thing, I can think of that hadn't been replaced in my network was the three way splitter. I ordered one. It came today. I replaced it. No change. Take me down to Packet Loss City.
I have called back to Mediacom. The tech spoke to Austin's supervisor and he said (I'm paraphrasing) that my area was just kind of bad and packet loss was to be expected. I told the tech on the phone that that answer didn't sit well with me. He said it didn't sit very well with him either. This wasn't an issue 9 weeks ago. Something has changed. My formerly awesome internet is awesome no more. So now I'm awaiting a call from a supervisor. I was told someone would call me within 24 hours. After 26 hours I called back in. I was told a supervisor would call me within 48 hours. Not sure what else to do. A coworker told me to start a post here. That "Mediacom Chad" was awesome and he could help as he's helped others with hard to diagnose issues before. So here's my post. Are you out there Mediacom Chad? Do you exist? You're my only hope.
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