Cable modem packet loss

[Jon]

I have road runner cable and have been having a problem lately. The last 14 days I start to drop packets and be unable to browse the web. I have been on the phone with level 1,2 and 3 tech. support. They have changed modems numerous time. I have changed my nic and cat 5. They installed a new drop from the pole to the house. The line from the house to the computer is only 1 year old. The rr cable is on its own drop. Prior to the new drop, I was at time having 50 to 80 and sometimes 100% packet loss, I know still have packet loss, say ever third time I run a ping -n 20 I get 3 or 4 packets lost. The next step rr tech. support wants to take is to swap out the brand new Toshiba dociss compliant modem with a non docsiss legacy Motorola modem.

Any opinions in regard to there trouble shooting steps/solutions?

Any suggestions as to what might me causing the problem.

My system specs.
ASUS P3BF rev. 1006 motherboard
P3 800 Slot 1
640 mb sdram
3comm soho100Tx nic
windows 2000 pro fully patched.

What is a little upsetting to me is this. When the first tech. came out. He saw my netgear router which at the time was not hooked up because they will not trouble shoot with the router hooked up. Now when ever I call with a problem they are pointing to the router and I even heard 3 nights ago that my router was causing their modems to go bad.

The original Toshiba I had for almost a year with the router hooked up and I never had a problem.

I feel that they are trying to cover up a bigger problem by installing the legacy modem. I understand they are not affected as much by high signal/noise ratios, but if there is alot of signal/noise fix what ever is causing it, don't throw a rug over it and hope it goes away.

Your thoughts.

Thanks
Jon

[Kip Patterson]

Well, in Columbus all you get these days is a legacy modem. It appears that the reality of wide-spread distributionof the DOCSIS modems is not working out as well as it should.

I have the legacy, in no hurry to change it.

Kip

[Jon]

I was really hoping you were going to answer my post.

I want to have the rr tech's replace the line from the side of my house to the back of the modem before I switch anything else.

The thing is, I have had the Toshiba DOCISS modem for quite a few months and have had no problems with it. It just seems like they are trying to throw a band-aid fix on a larger problem.

The tech. did tell me that almost all of the modems in use around me are non-DOCISS modems. He did say this in known to cause problems when mixing the two on the same node. Sounds fishy, but ok.

Only time will tell I guess, I am going to call the supervisor tomorrow and see if we can come to some sort of resolution that suits us both.

Something I just noticed, I do not know if it will make a bit of difference. The line that runs from the drop to the modem is stamped CAT V, I thought they told me it should be stamped CAT VI (rg 6)???

[Kip Patterson]

Well, it sounds fishy to me also.

Neither CAT 5 nor 6 have anything to do with coax. Did somebody really mark the cable that way?? Yes, it should be RG-6, although in some circumstances where the drop is very long, I understand that some cable companies use RG-11, which is even bigger in diameter and thus has even less loss.

The real enemy of the upstream is noise, and the addition of more modems should mean a reduction in noise, in that when a system is placed in service, several nodes and their noise are combined on one card in the CMTS. As the system grows, more cards are usually added until there is only one node per card, reducing the noise.

Kip

[Jon]

The marking on the cable are as follows.

E83032A
F677TSVV
CATV
(UL) 18 AWG

I saw the CATV marking and jumped to the wrong conclusion, as it meant CAT5. I was thinking it quite possibley meant it was made for indoor use only or something similar.

[Kip Patterson]

E83032A is a UL style number, a kind of file number documenting its testing and approval. CATV is CAble TElevison, F677TSVV looks like a vendow number, 18AWG is the gauge of the inner conductor, and UL is Underwriter's Laboratories.

Kip