Extreme amounts of packet loss at all times.

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Zora-link

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Aug 27, 2010
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My hair has been ripped out of my head at this point. This has been going on for nearly a month now, with repeated pleas to Comcast essentially being ignored. I've done everything I know of to fix it on my end. Essentially what I've been seeing, mainly while gaming or in voice chat, is that my internet is doing what seems to be dropping everything at intermittent intervals. It results in most gaming being unusable, and moments in voice chat where I miss entire chunks of conversation or my own speech is completely butchered.

Info:
-We have Comcast. For what it's worth, I'm joyfully part of their 'trial program' in Charleston SC involving their beautiful download cap. However, these problems began even before the cap was put into place.

-Using a Surfboard SB6141 modem. The blue 'link' light on it is always flashing.

-Netgear WNDR3700v3 router

-Speed test results: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3106257905
By no means should I have problems with these speeds.


Some results from WinMTR and traceroutes:

WinMTR results in HTML format for easy reading.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oo9nyqf956gsqen/WinMTR-11-16-13.htm

WinMTR results in text format:
http://pastebin.com/aANgBWtS

Some trace routes:

http://pastebin.com/E04LBT5n

http://pastebin.com/mAs2RmtK

http://pastebin.com/FrNRE7k2

Things I've done:

-Plugged directly into our modem (Still had problems)

-Run god knows how many trace routes and left WinMTR running for long periods of time, seeing the results still being like this.

-Updated all firmware.

-Formatted my entire PC. Checked if there was still a problem before updating drivers (Yep.) and after updating all drivers. (Yep.)

-Got a new ethernet cable.

-Tried a wireless adapter (Via USB) to see if it was my network card. Still had issues. To be fair, that could have been the adapter.

-Had Comcast come out to check it. All they've done is check the modem signals and tell me it's fine. Gee, thanks. When I attempted to say I had a bunch of results from trace routes and whatnot they

A) Told me they couldn't help because we have our own router. (Technician 2)
B) Told me he would have to send out Technician 2 because he was more experienced than he was.

Needless to say, they weren't very helpful so far. I'm at a loss as to what else to do. I'm also not 100% certain on where exactly the WinMTR results are having the issues at, whether it's at my modem itself, or on the way/at the first hop. Not my forte. All I know is that 65%+ packet loss is not normal..........
 
Solution
K
I see it's been several days, but here's what I'm seeing right now.

Tracing route to 68.58.222.1 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.0.0.1
2 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms x.x.x.x
3 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms xxxx.xxx [xx.xx.xx.xx]
4 11 ms 12 ms 12 ms Chicago.Level3 [xxxxx]
5 33 ms 32 ms 32 ms ae-31-51.ebr1.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.69.138.30]
6 32 ms 32 ms 33 ms ae-2-2.ebr2.NewYork2.Level3.net [4.69.132.66]
7 32 ms 32 ms 33 ms ae-2-52.edge1.NewYork2.Level3.net [4.69.138.226]
8 63 ms 63 ms 63 ms comcast-level3.NewYork2.level3.net [4.68.127.2]
9 49 ms 51 ms 48 ms 68.86.86.233
10 74 ms 71 ms 71 ms...
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B

bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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Your modem likely show you the signal level and such on the cable interface.

The most telling thing you have posted is the mtr stuff. You clearly have no issue in your house to the router but you get 20+% lost to the ISP main router. This means either your modem has some issue or there is a problem on the line to the ISP. It could also be something like a splitter in the cable. To test you need to trace the cable back where it come into the house and place your modem in place of the very first splitter. Now since the ISP claims the line is good your only option is going to be to try another modem. Situations like this is why it is sometime better to rent the boxes because then THEY would be the ones seeing if swaping the modem makes a difference. If you were to buy or borrow a different modem and it still does this then they still have something wrong with the line to your house even if they can't see it. Although not the cheapest the way to get it fixed is to pay them to come out and install their modem, at least it would be on them to explain why when you plug a PC directly into the modem you get loss.
 
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Z

Zora-link

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Posted this above for my modem stats:

http://i.imgur.com/IEJo3K5.png

I would go buy another modem to troubleshoot with, but I'm hoping to avoid that, as it requires me changing the modem on our account with them, which is a royal PITA, solely to troubleshoot. The current modem is also my roommate's, and he's very... protective of it.
 
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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From the little I can tell it looks ok to me too but the ping test shows you are getting loss in the first hop.

make sure the db numbers for the down stream channels don't change much. The optimum number is 0 but I think they can go from +10 to -10.

I don't have a clue now but your ping test clearly show it is between your house and the first ISP router.
 
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Z

Zora-link

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That's what I thought/feared.

Any ideas on what to do? Yell at Comcast until they fix it? At the moment, like I said, I just seem to get brushed off every time I attempt to speak with them about anything more complicated than "INTARNETZ BROKEN PLZ FIX" It's gotten to the point that I've memorized the entire script their support staff very obviously reads off of...
 
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Z

Zora-link

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So I'm screwed until further notice.


Woo, Comcast...
 
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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You have to find out what 68.58.222.1 is. From the winmtr you did it clearly shows this is the second node that causes the issues. Anything beyond this you can make no assumption good or bad about. The traceroute are pretty much useless because they do not send enough traffic and if the second hop drops the packet even when the time to live was set to say hop 5 the traceroute would interpret incorrectly as packet loss in hop 5. This is why tools like winmtr or multiple manual pings are so valuable.

All you can really say is you are losing 22% of the data in the second hop. Now if you lose 22% in the second hop you will also lose 22% in every hop past that. Why some lose more or less than this must just be random variations in the loss. BUT unless the loss would increase a lot in say hop 5 and then stay increased you can make no assumption about anything past hop 2.

So the problem is either some strange error with your equipment, the path to the telco including any equipment that does not show up on a trace, or their router. At least it is not outside of comcasts network.

 
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Zora-link

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Aug 27, 2010
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Anything I can do to figure out what exactly it is? A quick google of the IP pulls this up.
 
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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I am going to bet it is the default gateway your router uses. It would be a router in the ISP premise but no way to tell exactly which premise since the registration data is for the whole subnet and generally the address map to the corporate office or some region office not the actual location of equipment.

Hard to say exactly how it gets between your house and that router. You could try again to convince them there is a issue with the cable between your house and the router but they of course will insist it is your modem. You of course always tell them you have tested with 2 or more different PC plugged directly into the modem. This prevents them from blaming the router or your PC for the problem.

At some point I suspect you are going to have to buy a new modem to prove to them it is not your modem. Really sucks but when you deal with script reading droids not much else you can do.
 
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Zora-link

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Yes. One of the things I did under "What I've done so far"
 
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Zora-link

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So I'm out of luck, essentially?

Seems like my only course of action is to rent a modem from them and see if the problem persists, and only then will they take it seriously...

EDIT: I've also tested it with my roommate's PC (Running WinMTR), the results were essentially the same.
 
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K

Kewlx25

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Oct 23, 2009
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I see it's been several days, but here's what I'm seeing right now.

Tracing route to 68.58.222.1 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.0.0.1
2 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms x.x.x.x
3 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms xxxx.xxx [xx.xx.xx.xx]
4 11 ms 12 ms 12 ms Chicago.Level3 [xxxxx]
5 33 ms 32 ms 32 ms ae-31-51.ebr1.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.69.138.30]
6 32 ms 32 ms 33 ms ae-2-2.ebr2.NewYork2.Level3.net [4.69.132.66]
7 32 ms 32 ms 33 ms ae-2-52.edge1.NewYork2.Level3.net [4.69.138.226]
8 63 ms 63 ms 63 ms comcast-level3.NewYork2.level3.net [4.68.127.2]
9 49 ms 51 ms 48 ms 68.86.86.233
10 74 ms 71 ms 71 ms he-4-11-0-0-cr01.56marietta.ga.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.89.186]
11 83 ms 83 ms 83 ms 68.86.89.190
12 84 ms 116 ms 86 ms xe-7-0-2-0-ar06.savannah.ga.savannah.comcast.net [68.86.168.206]
13 88 ms 89 ms 89 ms 69.139.187.154
14 89 ms 89 ms 88 ms 68.86.144.122
15 78 ms 80 ms 81 ms 68.58.222.1


>ping 68.58.222.1 -t

Pinging 68.58.222.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 68.58.222.1: bytes=32 time=79ms TTL=242
...
Ping statistics for 68.58.222.1:
Packets: Sent = 162, Received = 162, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 75ms, Maximum = 85ms, Average = 78ms

If you're still having issues, it's between you and your ISP. It looks nice from my end.
 
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Solution
Z

Zora-link

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Aug 27, 2010
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Would using something such as Battleping help narrow it down? Could I try using that to change my routing, and then run WinMTR or some such to see?

I don't know if it would help narrow it down to being a modem issue or not...
 
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K

Kewlx25

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A lot of your trace routes show issues in Comcast's network or at the edge of their network. You could try BattlePing, they may have a better route.

Like you said, if it's an issue with your line, it won't make a difference, but why not try?
 
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