1GB Internet frustration

[AhmedIlyas]

So, my provider, xfinity comcast, has an offering for 1 GBPS which i upgraded to last year. Ever since, I am never really able to achieve anything more than 700MBps and thats on a good day.

The modem is on their compat list: Motorola MB8600

I also bought a new wireless router, the netgear nighthawk X10 R9000.

 

I am connecting WIRED.

 

Today, I seem to be getting 450MBPS download and been on the support for many hours and many times and had engineers come out and they cannot figure it out except saying that their infrastructure does not support upto 1GBPS, which is false marketing in the first instance.

 

In any event, I still don't get why i cannot even get around at least 750MBPS.

 

Connecting directly to the modem gives me 20-30MB more but thats all, and defeats the purpose of having a wireless network/router anyway.

 

Question: What can one do to get max downstream? I do get 40MB upload (their max on the profile).

 

I am probably talking nonsense but will link aggregation help? And if so, how will this work since there is only 1 WAN port on the nighthawk router that connects to Port 1 on the modem.

The Modem supports LAG as does the wireless router.

 

Thoughts? Ideas? Do I need any other type of RJ45 cables? (I am using CAT 6 btw).

 

I am convinced that there has to be something in my chain causing this issue. I tried a laptop running Win10, wired, and around the same speed. I have a desktop computer running Windows Server 2008R2, same speed also. I am confused. I hear people on forums say they are getting 850MBPS+!

 

Do I need SPF+ or something? Again, probably talking crud here.

[emosun]

8 minutes ago, AhmedIlyas said:

had engineers come out and they cannot figure it out except saying that their infrastructure does not support upto 1GBPS

so the engineer said the line doesn't support 1gbps

So yeah , that would be a problem

[SupaKomputa]

"UP TO" is always their excuses. Cable network are old sometime the infrastructure cannot handle 1gbps, the problem is the coax cable which is slow.

Unless you have fibre network, 1gbps won't be guaranteed.

[Donut417]

16 minutes ago, AhmedIlyas said:

So, my provider, xfinity comcast, has an offering for 1 GBPS which i upgraded to last year. Ever since, I am never really able to achieve anything more than 700MBps and thats on a good day.

The modem is on their compat list: Motorola MB8600

I also bought a new wireless router, the netgear nighthawk X10 R9000.

 

I am connecting WIRED.

 

Today, I seem to be getting 450MBPS download and been on the support for many hours and many times and had engineers come out and they cannot figure it out except saying that their infrastructure does not support upto 1GBPS, which is false marketing in the first instance.

 

In any event, I still don't get why i cannot even get around at least 750MBPS.

 

Connecting directly to the modem gives me 20-30MB more but thats all, and defeats the purpose of having a wireless network/router anyway.

 

Question: What can one do to get max downstream? I do get 40MB upload (their max on the profile).

 

I am probably talking nonsense but will link aggregation help? And if so, how will this work since there is only 1 WAN port on the nighthawk router that connects to Port 1 on the modem.

The Modem supports LAG as does the wireless router.

 

Thoughts? Ideas? Do I need any other type of RJ45 cables? (I am using CAT 6 btw).

 

I am convinced that there has to be something in my chain causing this issue. I tried a laptop running Win10, wired, and around the same speed. I have a desktop computer running Windows Server 2008R2, same speed also. I am confused. I hear people on forums say they are getting 850MBPS+!

 

Do I need SPF+ or something? Again, probably talking crud here.

My guess is a signal issue or a congested node. There is a possibility that your area has not been upgraded to node+0. 

[AhmedIlyas]

Thanks all.

 

Well I have had some "disgruntled" engineers who say their infra does not support it, and others tell me to move to centurylink!!

 

so this would be false advertising if they are selling 1GBPS... and not getting it. That is a lawsuit waiting to happen for sure.

 

This has been 8 months since i got the package... so that has been ample time for any upgrades and offerings. At least, IMHO.

 

I get I wont get 1GBPS but surely AT LEAST 700?

[Donut417]

42 minutes ago, AhmedIlyas said:

Thanks all.

 

Well I have had some "disgruntled" engineers who say their infra does not support it, and others tell me to move to centurylink!!

 

so this would be false advertising if they are selling 1GBPS... and not getting it. That is a lawsuit waiting to happen for sure.

 

This has been 8 months since i got the package... so that has been ample time for any upgrades and offerings. At least, IMHO.

 

I get I wont get 1GBPS but surely AT LEAST 700?

Not false advertising. They market it “up to”. So no lawsuit.   

 

 

[emosun]

46 minutes ago, AhmedIlyas said:

but surely AT LEAST 700?

based on a cable network that hasn't been updated since the 1970's im not too sure about that

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, AhmedIlyas said:

Thanks all.

 

Well I have had some "disgruntled" engineers who say their infra does not support it, and others tell me to move to centurylink!!

 

so this would be false advertising if they are selling 1GBPS... and not getting it. That is a lawsuit waiting to happen for sure.

 

This has been 8 months since i got the package... so that has been ample time for any upgrades and offerings. At least, IMHO.

 

I get I wont get 1GBPS but surely AT LEAST 700?

Try contacting Comcast via https://www.dslreports.com/?r=906. The Comcast direct forum that is linked on the right side of the page a little ways down, is ran by guys working for the corporate office in Philly. They might be able to help, just be patient because they tend to be busy. 

 

What does your signal look like? 

[Shane86]

if you're using a cable modem, using copper, you're still on shared channels.

 

effectively, how DOCSIS3+ cable modem works is that it takes a bunch of cable channels, which are a certian freq wide (about 30mbps) and kinda sticks them all together (simplifying here, bear with me) and your modem talks to the node on these channels. a 32x modem means you support up to 32x channels simultaneously. 3.1 spec does some other cool stuff with how wide the channels are, etc. but in the end, the technology is physically capable of delivering 1.2GBps 

 

But.. you're sharing this copper with likely a few dozen people in your neighborhood. They all have modems that will talk on probably some of the same channels, because channel reservation is big $$$.  

  

So, at a good time there might be 48 channels in your neighborhood, but your neighbor's are all trying to use some of those too, and you're all sharing the same copper in your area. unlike Fiber, which is all the way back to a bigger fiber with those GBps..

  

So, only when the channels are low/non utilized would you likely have the availability to get closer to your full 1GBps. The flat answer is there's only so much bandwidth available on your node, you're sharing it with others, and you're only going to get what's available without impacting the neighbors.  

  

This all goes out the window if you actually have a fiber drop to your home, which would terminate in a QAM modulator to feed the modem directly. This is something that happens, because new auth systems are expensive.. but just running on copper and calling it "close enough" is more likely for comcast.  

You can try and help this by making sure your fittings and levels are optimized, to cut down on any error correcting the modem/node would need to do in talking to you.. but past that, you're probably getting what you're going to get.

[Donut417]

2 minutes ago, Shane86 said:

the technology is physically capable of delivering 1.2GBps 

 

3.1 is rated for 10 Gbps down, 2 Gpbs up. WIth FDX its a symmetrical 10 Gbps. 

 

3 minutes ago, Shane86 said:

So, at a good time there might be 48 channels in your neighborhood, but your neighbor's are all trying to use some of those too, and you're all sharing the same copper in your area. unlike Fiber, which is all the way back to a bigger fiber with those GBps..

Comcast is also upgrading to node+0, meaning more fiber to the neighborhoods, less people on nodes. Also, channel issues are more of an issue for lower channel modems like my SB6141 (8x4). 

[Shane86]

Ah, my bad on the 1.2GBps thing.. I haven't stayed up on DOCSIS tech since i moved out of that field.

good they're segmenting the nodes more, but that's a larger build out that may not be in OPs area, and regardless, you're still sharing copper with other people.. people who can impact the signal. I've definitely seen dense areas though have issues with channel saturation impacting stuff on up to 16x.  

  

Copper's a great transmission medium, but as a conductor, it's always vulnerable to interference too. Can't tell you how many times i heard stories of people getting tagged for signal ingress because they hooked up a VCR backwards. Less of a thing these days, but your neighbors can absolutely have an impact on you.

[AhmedIlyas]

Thanks all. I totally get that. Just.. disappointed and still believe to some degree that comcast are misselling and misleading consumers. I am lucky to some degree that I understand most of this - I AM in the tech field.

 

Today's speed has been awful. I used to get around 550-600 and today I am getting 380/410.

 

Here are my signals:

 

Downstream:

 

Channel	Lock Status	Modulation	Channel ID	Freq. (MHz)	Pwr (dBmV)	SNR (dB)	Corrected	Uncorrected
1	Locked	QAM256	17	591.0	-1.6	38.1	0	0
2	Locked	QAM256	1	483.0	-0.1	39.1	0	0
3	Locked	QAM256	2	489.0	-0.4	39.1	0	0
4	Locked	QAM256	3	495.0	-0.3	38.8	0	0
5	Locked	QAM256	4	507.0	-1.4	38.6	0	0
6	Locked	QAM256	5	513.0	-1.7	38.7	0	0
7	Locked	QAM256	6	519.0	-2.1	38.4	0	0
8	Locked	QAM256	7	525.0	-2.3	38.3	0	0
9	Locked	QAM256	8	531.0	-2.4	38.3	0	0
10	Locked	QAM256	9	543.0	-2.8	38.2	0	0
11	Locked	QAM256	10	549.0	-2.9	38.0	0	0
12	Locked	QAM256	11	555.0	-2.9	38.0	0	0
13	Locked	QAM256	12	561.0	-2.6	38.1	0	0
14	Locked	QAM256	13	567.0	-2.2	38.2	0	0
15	Locked	QAM256	14	573.0	-2.0	38.3	0	0
16	Locked	QAM256	15	579.0	-1.9	38.0	0	0
17	Locked	QAM256	16	585.0	-1.8	38.1	0	0
18	Locked	QAM256	18	597.0	-1.6	38.2	1	0
19	Locked	QAM256	19	603.0	-1.5	38.1	2	0
20	Locked	QAM256	20	609.0	-1.6	38.1	4	0
21	Locked	QAM256	21	615.0	-1.5	38.1	3	0
22	Locked	QAM256	22	621.0	-1.7	38.1	3	0
23	Locked	QAM256	23	627.0	-2.0	37.8	4	0
24	Locked	QAM256	24	633.0	-2.0	37.9	0	0
25	Locked	QAM256	25	639.0	-1.9	37.2	9	0
26	Locked	QAM256	26	645.0	-2.2	37.9	2	0
27	Locked	QAM256	27	651.0	-2.2	37.8	3	0
28	Locked	QAM256	28	657.0	-2.4	37.7	4	0
29	Locked	QAM256	29	663.0	-2.5	37.7	5	0
30	Locked	QAM256	30	669.0	-2.6	37.7	4	0
31	Locked	QAM256	31	675.0	-2.6	37.3	2	0
32	Locked	QAM256	32	681.0	-2.6	37.8	2	0
33	Locked	OFDM PLC	159	722.0	-1.5	10.9	344280443

 

 

Upstream:

 

Channel	Lock Status	Channel Type	Channel ID	Symb. Rate (Ksym/sec)	Freq. (MHz)	Pwr (dBmV)
1	Locked	SC-QAM	1	5120	30.1	47.8
2	Locked	SC-QAM	2	5120	36.5	47.8
3	Locked	SC-QAM	3	5120	17.3	45.3
4	Locked	SC-QAM	4	5120	23.7	46.3

[Donut417]

Signals look within spec. Im going to guess you are on a congested node. Id still contact the Comcast direct guys at DSLreports.com. They might be able to push something thru. 

[Shane86]

All the QAM channels look great... i don't know enough about that OFDM though.. 

I don't know if that reads in tradition of SNR and and power.. but i would say that channel's SNR is well out of QAM spec and shows a high rate of corrected errors..

 

Like i said.. no idea the specs on it.. but could indicate an issue.

[AhmedIlyas]

So engineer came out today. 

Apparently the cable (coax) being used had ALOT of interference. He swapped them out and did a good job but still, getting around the same speeds.

His XMT device gives him 950MB/s! Thats connected through the router just like my other devices.

 

So makes no sense. Nothing wrong with the 1 desktop computer and 4 laptops I have.