Charter High Speed Internet --- Problems or Praise...all are welcome!!!

[Cascus]

As the title says. ... Any issues or praises please post here.

I am a tech support agent in the NW area and will try and help as best I can answer any questions that you may have pertaining to Charter HSI services.

Please keep in mind that not all information is shareable, but I will be as candid and honest as possible. If you are experiencing problems please try and contact your Contact Center first as you may be in a known outage area or situation that we are aware of.

Good Day!

Cascus

[Simulate030]

Just generally, is the Charter network handling the 3mb increase well? Lately my connection goes down often or slows down, so I was thinking that either they're having trouble with the traffic or it's a problem with my comp.

Thanks!

[Cascus]

Generally speaking "yes". There are of course the exceptions such as, hadware fails, software errors, power outages, etc, but all in all a stable network.

Look for Spyware/adware problems (adaware 6.0 / spybot), inet settings (reset everything to default), or PTP can slow things down. I have seen routers slow down a connection but not dramatically.

HTH

[komseh]

I'm a contract installer for charter in Ft. Worth, TX.
I can confirm that every speed test I have done on internet installs since the introduction of the 3mbps down package have been between 3mbps/3.3mbps down w/ 240-270kbps up. So, my answer to that would be yes, the network can definitely handle the speed. The only reason that you should have a speed decrease, besides line problems, is if your node is overloaded with hsd customers.

I will try to pitch in on any questions since i'm basically the other end of the operation for charter hsd.

Tech support guy, can you slap the **** out of charter customer service for me?

[Cascus]

I guess I would have to slap myself lol. I am Tier 2 in the Contact Center here in Vancouver Washington.

[acurban]

I am on the Charter 3MBPS service and am only getting 300kps today. i have tested every 30minutes so far today and service is very slow!
why cant it be more solid service, i feel cheated. its like ordering a hamburger and only getting a 1/4 hamburger on the plate.

[pmasley]

I am on Charter in Beckley WV. On my test last night I was showing 3.07M down and 278K up. I have the old "Sharkfin" modem with the "HMTL" upgrade bin file installed. It keeps asking me for a password when I want to check the voltages. I have a tech coming by on Tuesday. Before the update I could see a -13 line problem. I wanted to be able to show him that. Will he be able to logon to the modem and see this info?

[Cascus]

ACurban - Sorry to hear about that. Sorry this is the soonest I could respond. I am no longer in that position with Charter. I would recommend calling the Contact Center for your area to trouble shoot and possibly get someone out to check the levels outside/inside. This could also be the result of many other factors that are in play. For example - Car wreck, line amplified was ran over, power outage down the street from you, etc.

PMasley - He probably will not be able to log into the modem. But he does have a tool (signal meter) to check this out in most cases. The signal meter reads the same thing the modem does.

[pmasley]

Cascus: Thanks for your answer. Well I got the time. Somewhere between 8 am and 12 noon tomorrow. Hopefully he makes it earlier thatn noon. I havea docs appointment at 12:45.

[lowspark]

I have had Charter HSI 3meg service now for about three months. I can get 2 megs at 5:00 am. Most of the time it is about 1 meg. Between the hours of 4:00 pm and 10:00 pm I get less thsm .5 meg.I have called and called about the problem. at first I was told the problem was spyware. I use Spysweeper and Adaware Plus and I run scans from many of the freeware programs. Cookies are all that are found. I have very few of them at any given time because I use CCcleaner. After explanining this to a tech I was told I had an open port draining my bandwidth so I went to Shields Up, all ports were stealth. Finally I had a tech come to my house. He got honest with me and told me that charter was renting lines from Sprint and there were only a few lines running to my location and one of them was in reserve. also there was a bottle neck up the beach from me that was causing slow speed for everyone on the line in my area. They fixed the bottle neck but my speed is still slow. I had Sprint DSL before charter, it was only 1.5 megs but it was consistant.I believe I am going back to Sprint I am using ther lines anyway. It is really frustrating to get the run around from Charter to the point of blaming my computer. if I was less computer savvy I could have spent a lot of money fixing a problem that did not exist. My thanks to the honest tech. Anyway thats my experience with charter so far.

[pmasley]

Cascus: Well, he came by, wanted to know who had been screwing around with the cables on the outside of the house. I told him that that was Charter's Mess. I watched him for twenty minutes trying to open the modem. I had figured out how to get past the password earlier. When he turned his back, I logged on to it.

He wanted to know the secret. When I would not tell him, he attempted to confiscate the modem. I then told him that it was mine and not Charter's. Charter had given it to me when I was a beta tester for them. Upon doing his check, he blamed it on the modem, then the router. After checking the lead line (showing -17), he replaced it. I now have the setting showing -7.

Wonder what they will attempt next?

[Lurch]

Hi,

A few days ago my Charter broadband got slow as molasses for no apparent reason (I mean slower than dialup on a bad day). I called their tech on my Vonage VoIP phone (which people could not hear me talking on hardly at all) and he was not any help. So, he sent three techs over yesterday. They set up their laptop on my cable modem and said there is 3 MB incoming signal. They advised me that Vonage could be the reason for the problem and thought I should consider another type of phone, but didn't come right out and blame it on Vonage. They also thought I should rebuild my HD, that it might be an idea for me, which I did, with reformatting, and to no avail.

I finally got some improvement from this site when I downloaded and installed TCP Optimizer and changed the values of my settings and rebooted.

I'm not sure what my speed is now but it's not bad at all and way better than it was.

I was kind of surprized that Charter could not do anything to help me with the problem. I figured they would resolve the issue for me. They more or less left me on my own to deal with it. I pay $30/mo for their service, it seems they should know how to troubleshoot.

How do you all think of VoIP phone service? Does it really screw up broadband connections and slow it down a lot?

I'm open to any suggestions.
Thank you very much.

L

[ericlw]

Getting cable internet from Charter, modem should come today and having no experience I have some questions. Sorry if these questions have already been answered. What type of coaxial cable can I use? If I split the cable before it goes to the tv with a good splitter, will it hurt the signal strength much? What is the best splitter I can get from RadioShack? Is Monster Cable any good? There is only one split in the cable from the box it is split by cable splitter made by Antronix model #CMC3003H with the line on a -7db output. If I swith the line over to the -3.5db will that help? Is there such a thing (cant seem to find one online) as a device to extend coaxial cable without hurting signal strength too much?

[acurban]

I am also using VONAGE with a WRTP54G router 2.4 Ghz router.
nothing else on network except my PC. I also am using a AT&T 2.4ghz phone
Is it possible that my 2.4Ghz phone is slowing my connection down?
I am STILL getting upload and download speeds about 250kbps speeds even though i am on 3mbps service. Charter tech was unable to help me at all.

[MrTudo]

Sorry for the duplicate posting. I saw this thread after I started this one.

We are trying to get Charter high speed internet installed in a house located in zip code 28722. We are trying to buy this house and relocate from SW Fla. We have a contract on this house and one of the contingencies is that HS Cable internet be installed at our cost and be acceptable in terms of quality.

The real estate agent is supposed to be taking care of this and was supposed to have an appointment to meet the installer at the house yesterday. She called Charter to confirm the appointment and was told that the installer had already been there and that it was determined the "signal" was too weak to bring HSI to that house but that it was available elsewhere in the neighborhood ( !! ) She then called the main number again and was told a different story, that there is most certainly HSI available at that address and that whoever told her the story that it was not was not telling her the truth ( !! )

She called me and asked me if we wanted OUT of the contract to purchase if we could not get cable internet and I told her that we have zero interest in moving to the dark ages of non cable high speed internet. She called us back about 2 hours later and told me she placed the order for the initernet to be installed and that that would happen on Saturday, between 3 and 5 PM. She said she spoke to a supervisor. I called Charter and they simply told me that high speed internet was definitely available at this house.

Arghhhh!

Anyone have an opinion on this one? Does anyone have any experience with Charter cable HSI in the Columbus NC area??

Thank you in advance for any replies

[BrandonB]

I had charter, connection would drop constantly. Worst service I have ever had, was always slow and we had ALL the best packages charter had to offer. Customer support was an absolute joke (no offence), its like they were givin a 3 page training "manual" and a handful of scripted answers. Maybe its just my area, but it was just horrible and when we called to get a tech out here they wanted us to be home ALL day for a tech guy to come out when he might not have even showed up. Sorry but its true. Now I have Bellsouth DSL and DirecTV, the DSL is twice as fast and 10 times more reliable then charter. The DirecTV rocks. AND its about 80 bucks cheaper then charter.

[Gravy]

Hey ya'll Tuscaloosa Alabama here

I've been using the 3 meg service for a couple of years now. Generally works great although its had a hicup a couple of times.

Every once in a while at around 10 pm to around 2 am my pings to a game server I play on go to chit. the server is located in Chicago. This will go on for several nights for 2 to 5 days then everything will clear up and my pings will drop back to normal and then maybe 2 ot 3 months later it happens again. It's not really a problem but annoying when it does occur. It seems random but except for the time frame it happens in. I assume that somewhere on one of the hops someone is updating or using a lot of bandwidth.

I recently traded my old ambit modem that I rent from charter for one of the newer smaller ones they now have and I noticed on download tests that it seems to averidge 50-100 kps less than the older big one. I guess its being smaller makes it choke a little LOL. That little bit of loss is negligable but it is a curiousity.

I'm sure its been mentioned here somewhere but I discovered a long time ago that zone alarm firewall chokes your connection and slows your downloads. If you don't believe me test it yourself download something with it on then turn it off and download the same thing again there is a big difference. I now use (sigh) windows firewall. They actually have it working pretty decently now.

Also Norton is not only a resource hog but it also chokes your bandwidth. I use the free one from avg its small and works like a champ.

Thanks to the charter techs who are making themselves available for all of us Joe Blows out here. I know this is voluntary and comes from having pride in your work and the will to help others. My hat is off to you.

I wish they would hurry up with the 5 meg service I have been hearing rumors about. I hear it is being test marketed in certain areas.

Have a great day all.

Roll Tide

[Gravy]

Umm

PS I do enjoy my HSI but if there is a problem dealing with the telephone menus to get help is a pain in the rear. The support peeps with the funny accents are the worst I agree with the fellow above on this account. They read from a script and if you break them by asking a knowledgable question it screws their whole spiel up.

If and when you finally get a real tech on the line they are usually knowledgible but I have ran into a couple of them also who don't really seem to know what they are doing. But in fairness they are a small percentage compared to the real techs who do and go out of their way to help you.

cable service I give an A
majority of the techs I give an A
admin type support "specialists" a complete failure

[JerryC]

Hi Cascus,
I got Charter Cable and High-speed internet about two months ago. It was a new installation from the street, not just a re-connect. Onte TV and One modem. At first, things worked fine and the internet part was fast. About three weeks ago, the web connection would just freeze up. I had a Motorola SurfBoard modem and we went through all the troubleshooting steps to figure out why the 'activity' light (I can't remember exactly what it was called) was staying solid instead of rapidly flashing like it is supposed to. They scheduled a technician and told me I could take the modem by my local Charter place for bench testing. Instead of bench testing the modem, they replaced it with a different brand (might be Alcatel, but there is no brand identifier on it).
I got it home and had the same problem. Called tech support and we tried some things to no avail. About 10 minutes after the call was over, the internet connection came back alive, so the night before the technician was supposed to come out, I cancelled the service call, becuase I did not want to miss work if the problem had been solved.
A week later and the problem is back. Out of nowhere, when you try to navigate from one page or site to another, it just times out while loading. On this new modem, the ENET light is the one that's staying solid. It should be rapidly flashing during normal operation.
So after that long story, what do you think is causing this problem, and what do you think they will need to do to resolve it? Thanks! -JerryC

[Shagster]

I had it up in Atlanta and had constant disconnects. They said it was probably old wiring. I found that interesting since I was living in a brand new building.