[PLUG] Limited Internet connectivity on Comcast

Keith Lofstrom keithl at gate.kl-ic.com
Tue Aug 26 04:50:06 UTC 2014


On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 04:04:33PM -0600, dick at dicksteffens.com wrote:
> For the past few weeks we've been experiencing our Internet connection 
> (Comcast) going away and returning. I got worse so I called their tech 
> support. The first tier decided that they could see the modem sometimes 
> but would lose it, too, and concluded that I needed a new modem. So this 
> morning I drove over to the Comcast store in Milwaukie and got a new 
> one. I plugged it in but the router would not see it.

I haven't used ComCan't for years, but recall occasionally having
problems like you describe.  That was back in the bad old days when
the bandwidth was delivered by end-to-end by coax, with little
filters pulling my signal off the common sewer of signals that was
the main feed.  The principal problem was that coax cable systems
are designed to distribute TV channels, not bidirectional bits,
and that the limited bandwidth coax is way oversubscribed.  

Perhaps by now they are using fiber distribution, converting to
coax for block-level or house-level local distribution.  If not,
you can expect hot weather to affect the electronics on the pole,
and high usage by neighbors to strain the oversubscription to
the breaking point.

When Verizon offered FIOS, I was outa there.  So far, besides
the escalating prices, I have been happy with the 15M/5M they
offer, and 500 microsecond ping times to friends on the other
side of Beaverton is kinda cool.  Not sure what I would do with
gigabit fiber from Google, besides using a lot more encryption
and route masking to bypass their spying. 

That, BTW, is another reason I use an offsite server in Dallas,
Texas for my websites and mail exchange.  My traffic is merged
with tens of thousands of other servers before it leaves that
data center.  Not impossible to untangle, but the snoops must
do so for the whole feed, not nearly as easy as adding a tap
at the ComCan't or Frontier switch.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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