Quote:
Originally Posted by Sun Tzu
Alan, maybe you could shed some light on a problem i've been having with the local ISP. Oceanic Time Warner Cable is, at best, terrible. They have sent a technician to my house a half dozen times, and had someone "watch" my connection 24/7 to see if they can isolate the issue.
Like I mentioned before, my speeds vary pretty wildly. However 90% of the time they're at least at 6MB downstream or better which really is plenty for what I do. Here's the problem. A couple times a day, always around the same time, the speed dips down to about 1MB and stays that way for about 45 mins or so. Since I'm forced to watch baseball games on MLB.tv, it makes viewing impossible. It happens at the following times like clockwork.
7:45 - 8:30p, M-F
4:45 - 5:30p, Weekends
I think it happens at other points during the day too, but I can't be 100% sure and my usage during the day (at least for streaming multimedia) is non-existent. Oceanic told me that it doesn't make any sense that it would happen like that, because they supposedly "open everything up" in the afternoon/evenings so the usage wouldn't get bogged down. The fact that it happens at almost the exact same time, every single day, leads me to believe that it's something f'ed up on their end. They keep harping on the fact that I use a router, which only pisses me off because it's like them insulting my intelligence. I then asked the lead technician if they knew what was wrong, and told him in very plain english to tell me if didn't have any idea, and he said "you're right, I don't know what's wrong".
So...ideas?
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I wish I had a better magic bullet answer here for you like the PS3. Unfortunately troubleshooting home connections is sometimes challenging. There are so many variables that could play a part. If you see the problem occurring around the same times every day, it likely isn't a failure issue but could possibly be a capacity issue. Really no way to say for sure what the issue is without more troubleshooting.
The one comment I would make is don't just assume your router is not the problem. Sometimes those things do go bad, or start flaking out in ways you might not notice. You can remove that doubt from your mind however by simply one day removing the router from the picture. Directly connect up your pc to the cable and see if the problem does still occur or not.
I've had my share of cable connectivity issues over the years, and sometimes it can be rather frustrating to work with people that are trying to troubleshoot the issue when I feel like I am having to speak down to their level for them to understand what I am saying. I just made it a rule that any time I do experience ISP problems, before I call them disconnect my home network. Leave it as a simple computer connected to the ISP and then they never can point fingers at my equipment. (Plus it could possibly be your router!)
Otherwise, intermittent issues with an ISP are perhaps my least favorite thing in the world. (ok second least favorite, with my least favorite being sna routing).