Timeouts on my internet connection

[GamerHD]

Hello, this is my first time posting on this forum.

 

(Some pictures are included)

 

I live in an area where there is only 1 cable isp (that company got all other isp's united into one, can't even change isp now) and for the past couple years I have been having random internet disconnects while gaming etc but it was not so bad. Lately it started getting worse, half a year ago I kept getting timeouts by doing "ping google.com -t" in cmd every few seconds few timeouts. I have tested it with few wired and wireless connections on different devices and another router to make sure it is not an issue after the modem at least, same thing. Important maybe to mention it is not happening always, sometimes I am good for 3 days without a single timeout, but then the 4th day in the evening it starts happening and it lasts for couple hours, making the use of the internet and phone (since its hooked up to the cable modem too) impossible.

 

Cable modem signals are always ideal, all Downstream channels are QAM256 Power level of around 0 dBmV with a 40 dB SNR. Upstream are ATDMA with a 40 dBmV power level.

Even when I put a splitter in between to change signals, internet works fine and after time starts doing the same timeouts as when it was with ideal signals.

 

Figured it was an issue on the upstream of either the cable modem or ISP network itself since when I have a shorter timeout I hear my friends on a voice chat app but they can not hear me during that timeout. So I checked the modem logs and discovered a lot of T3 timeouts. In case I have a lot of timeouts the modem reboots itself also.

I did call my ISP support, they were sending out technicians out at least 6 times in 1 month back in January when it was the worst. Some of them arrived when there were no issues so they just returned, some of them saw it happen live and decided to tweak the SNR by replacing cables and splitters etc (did not make a massive difference going up from 39 to 41 dB. Which made it better only so they can leave and started happening again after 2 hours.

 

Fun fact when I compared the issues with a friend that lives 3 streets away and is connected to the same cable, has same ISP and same package. As soon as one of us has timeouts, the other has also, so it turns out to be on the ISP end (signal levels are good in the modem interface).

One of the technicians was a little bit more talkative and they explained it is possibly a faulty optical converter for this part of the town, since the other part of my town does not have any issues and he can't do anything regarding that.

 

This was becoming more and more frustrating, in the end they ordered to install a new separate cable from their closest amplifier box, through the street to my house. Issue was gone for couple weeks after that.

But while they were doing all that and re-checking every time everything, they mentioned that I have some "stray voltage" coming out and backfeeding into their network from my coax cable. I do know some basics about electricity and my house electricity installation is really old without proper grounding too. Also the technician said that since I have that backfeeding voltage, it is accumulating in the splitter for the coax cable and at one point the modem upstream signal becomes too noisy for their end to decode especially when their network becomes shaky at times, proved to myself that that is true by unplugging all devices that are connected to coax cables and later on issues are gone until a longer time passes (until the splitter accumulates some unwanted charge).

 

I did some research and came to a conclusion that cable isp's are supposed to ground their cables at every pole almost or at least at every customer house, which in my case I never saw any of them do that.

Also that grounding the coaxial cable should remove uneven voltage between the cable and ground plus depending on the method, protect the installation during a lightning strike.

 

I don't think the isp will do something about it if a more expensive group of equipment isn't keeping up with all of their customers in this area, not to mention that most are older people who don't even notice this because they just read news on websites.

 

I went through few modem changes, right now I have an Ubee EVW32C-0N Gateway and router all in one (which does not have access to logs).

 

My internet speed is 40/6 even if it is irrelevant at this moment.

 

My setup is simple. Coax cable comes in, goes through a 3 way splitter, 1 end goes to my cable modem, other end goes into a Cable TV receiver. During internet issues I do not have cable tv issues.

Tired of calling the support of my ISP, explaining the whole story over and over every time to a different person just to get "We will send out a technician to check things out" and when he comes he doesn't do anything useful.

 

My initial question is, will separately grounding a coax cable change anything for me... like freeing me from that backfeeding voltage and cleaning out the upstream signal from my modem at times when it is really needed leaving me with better chances of getting my upstream signal through to my ISP and minimizing the risk of timeouts that way, or it will mess up the voltage of the actual coax cable and cause worse things?

And of course leaving any other suggestions is very very welcome. Thanks in advance!

 

[kirashi]

21 minutes ago, GamerHD said:

One of the technicians was a little bit more talkative and they explained it is possibly a faulty optical converter for this part of the town, since the other part of my town does not have any issues and he can't do anything regarding that.

 

This was becoming more and more frustrating, in the end they ordered to install a new separate cable from their closest amplifier box, through the street to my house. Issue was gone for couple weeks after that.

But while they were doing all that and re-checking every time everything, they mentioned that I have some "stray voltage" coming out and backfeeding into their network from my coax cable. I do know some basics about electricity and my house electricity installation is really old without proper grounding too. Also the technician said that since I have that backfeeding voltage, it is accumulating in the splitter for the coax cable and at one point the modem upstream signal becomes too noisy for their end to decode especially when their network becomes shaky at times, proved to myself that that is true by unplugging all devices that are connected to coax cables and later on issues are gone until a longer time passes (until the splitter accumulates some unwanted charge).

 

Wow, between yourself and the technicians, you've really narrowed down the problem, since this all makes sense to me. (I work for a local cable ISP.) It does sound like there's something causing buildups of static / feedback on your coax cabling somewhere, especially if the tech was nice enough to look into the ingress the cable network is seeing coming from the TAP your drop cable is connected to.

 

Normally, homes should have a ground block installed in at the demarcation point (where the drop enters your home) or you'll need to ground each splitter individually. Keep in mind this will only ground things between your house and the outside lines - if a single cable box is generating noise inside your home, it won't make it to the outside if you have a ground block, but could still cause enough problems that your internet modem or other cable hardware acts up intermittently. Below is a picture of a ground block, often found where the drop enters your home.

 

 

The next steps would be to either locate the source of the feedback, or ground all of your coax wiring at each of the splitters in the home, as well as where the drop enters your home. If you're on friendly terms with any of the techs who have visited, see if there's a way to get in touch with them and explain that you'd like to try this, even if it costs a few bucks to have them help you ground things on their own time.

 

I'm not saying spend hundreds of dollars here see footnote*, but if your home is older like mine, it's very possible that your coax wiring is using ancient RG58 (50 ohm) coax or slightly newer but still old RG59 (75 ohm) instead of the better quality RG6 (shielded 75 ohm) coax cabling. The 2 techs that installed our newer whole-home PVR cable box system ended up turning a 2 hour job into a 5 hour job after spending 5 minutes in our crawlspace because replacement of all our coax was required to bring signal levels up for newer equipment. Our ISP doesn't charge for this since replacement of existing wiring is not considered a new wiring job, unlike an outlet install.

 

* Apparently grounding coax cabling is legally required by law, at least in the USA from the Grounding FAQ on http://www.dslreports.com/faq/3876 so this should be done by the cable company at no cost to you because safety. I'm in Canada, so I can't speak to this, but it makes sense, since if AC mains power were ever to find its' way into a coax cable it could destroy the entire neighborhood & node serving the surrounding areas, and possibly even the E6000 Chassis (these cost upwards of $60,000) that most cable providers use at the head-end, say by way of a disgruntled customer who decides they'd like to die (literally, they could die) by connecting their coax to an AC outlet by way of paperclips. (Ideally the cable company would ground at every point along the lines, but better safe than sorry.)

[GamerHD]

5 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Normally, homes should have a ground block installed in at the demarcation point (where the drop enters your home) or you'll need to ground each splitter individually. Keep in mind this will only ground things between your house and the outside lines - if a single cable box is generating noise inside your home, it won't make it to the outside if you have a ground block, but could still cause enough problems that your internet modem or other cable hardware acts up intermittently. Below is a picture of a ground block, often found where the drop enters your home.

 

 

 

Thank you for your reply, I am really happy someone who works for a cable ISP replied here.

 

My whole house coax was replaced 2 months ago, I don't know what coax cable they used but I doubt they would put something old. I managed to catch a label "2017" on it assuming it was produced last year.

I was looking into something like that but wasn't sure. Things are more clear to me now. It would make sense if grounding my coax cable on my end would also ground the majority of the coax network that I am attached to, since it is all connected, right? So I wouldn't need to ground all splitters in my house but maybe just one of them, likely the one closest to the ISP side?

 

And also, do you know any suggestions how to increase a modems tolerance on these kind of issues, such as a different (specific) modem that you know can handle it better?

[kirashi]

22 minutes ago, GamerHD said:

--SNIP--

Things are more clear to me now. It would make sense if grounding my coax cable on my end would also ground the majority of the coax network that I am attached to, since it is all connected, right? So I wouldn't need to ground all splitters in my house but maybe just one of them, likely the one closest to the ISP side?

 

And also, do you know any suggestions how to increase a modems tolerance on these kind of issues, such as a different (specific) modem that you know can handle it better?

Awesome to hear that.  If you can check for a ground block where the drop cable enters your home from the outside, that would negate the need to ground each of your splitters in most cases. However, even things like bad electrical wiring can cause static to build up in AV equipment, which eventually will look for the fastest path to ground. Even though cable signals are [mostly] digital now, the signal is still analogue until it's decoded by the modem, so if your AC wiring in the home has a poor ground, the electricity may use the coax cabling to discharge instead, which you may need an electrician to look at if you're unable to ground each splitter individually.

 

Another way you can test your wiring is by connecting your modem directly to the drop cable - not literally, but get it as close to that point as you can. You might have to go without TV (or other hardware / services) as you'd want to disconnect all other hardware, but this will let you test the modem directly to the drop cable, bypassing all other household wiring and any static / noise that your AV equipment or cable boxes may be introducing to the coax cabling by way of bad household AC power.

 

If the issues continue, this points to an issue between the modem out through your drop to the outside network, which could still be grounding related of course. The point is to rule out variables until you get a stable connection - once you have that, you'll know where the culprit lies.

 

As for modem options I don't know of specific modem models that are better than others, since [most] ISPs in Canada require customers to use a rental modem (provided free of charge) to maintain their network security and make troubleshooting easy. I do know that the DOCSIS 3.1 signal spec should have your modem between -10/+10db on the receive side, and between +35/+50db on the transmit side. (give or take a couple db - different ISPs use slightly different specs for this.) Your signal looks fine based on the stats you posted, but you can always get your ISP to double check this as well as check your DSNR and USNR too.

[Belgiangurista]

6 techs and there's no escalation to a higher level?

They've sent an in-home tech, what about the network? The US also has an SNR, it's not relevant for an in-home technician as it should be monitored by the Network, but if your friend, 3 roads away is having the same issues? I don't know how populated the area is? If he's on the same Node?

 

How well do you know any of your neighbours to do a google ping when the hickups happen?

 

btw, those T3 timeouts are: Modems and nodes are keeping up communications via some sort of a ping every 30seconds. If a modem is not heard of for 2 minutes, a T4 Timeout occurs and the modem reboots. a T3 can easily happen, there's no modem without T3's. If all the RF signals have been looked at properly by the techs, then this also indicates a Network problem and I'd go look into the US SNR. (these are lower QAM, your US speed of 4 indicates maybe an old infrastructure with lots of ingress happening.)

[GamerHD]

56 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Awesome to hear that.  If you can check for a ground block where the drop cable enters your home from the outside, that would negate the need to ground each of your splitters in most cases. However, even things like bad electrical wiring can cause static to build up in AV equipment, which eventually will look for the fastest path to ground. Even though cable signals are [mostly] digital now, the signal is still analogue until it's decoded by the modem, so if your AC wiring in the home has a poor ground, the electricity may use the coax cabling to discharge instead, which you may need an electrician to look at if you're unable to ground each splitter individually.

 

Another way you can test your wiring is by connecting your modem directly to the drop cable - not literally, but get it as close to that point as you can. You might have to go without TV (or other hardware / services) as you'd want to disconnect all other hardware, but this will let you test the modem directly to the drop cable, bypassing all other household wiring and any static / noise that your AV equipment or cable boxes may be introducing to the coax cabling by way of bad household AC power.

 

If the issues continue, this points to an issue between the modem out through your drop to the outside network, which could still be grounding related of course. The point is to rule out variables until you get a stable connection - once you have that, you'll know where the culprit lies.

 

As for modem options I don't know of specific modem models that are better than others, since [most] ISPs in Canada require customers to use a rental modem (provided free of charge) to maintain their network security and make troubleshooting easy. I do know that the DOCSIS 3.1 signal spec should have your modem between -10/+10db on the receive side, and between +35/+50db on the transmit side. (give or take a couple db - different ISPs use slightly different specs for this.) Your signal looks fine based on the stats you posted, but you can always get your ISP to double check this as well as check your DSNR and USNR too.

Thanks for the reply again. I will for sure do a coax ground asap after this topic and provide with results later.

[GamerHD]

39 minutes ago, Belgiangurista said:

6 techs and there's no escalation to a higher level?

 

How well do you know any of your neighbours to do a google ping when the hickups happen?

I know right... Only higher level they sent this one out to was when they reinstalled a new cable only for my house from the nearest amplifier.

I have access to my neighbors wifi next door. That makes it 3: My friend 3 streets away, my neighbor and me. Running pings in the same time and experiencing timeouts at the same time.

[GamerHD]

I am happy to report back here with good news.

After successfully grounding the splitter my isp provided me I didn't have a single timeout for 24 hours now. It is possible that its just a coincidence that there are no issues but since my upstream signal levels haven't moved the slightest while compared to some days ago they were ranging for a good +-6 dBmV, I believe the upstream is cleaner now resulting in lower chance for timeouts.

 

Thanks everyone who replied here and if the simple solution was attaching a proper ground cable to the coax splitter, then yeah.. isp in a nutshell (splitters even have it labeled to do grounding).

[Belgiangurista]

I hate to be the dealbreaker here, but grounding coax is going to do jack. The HFC (network on the road) is better grounded then a property, so it's just ISP's who want to have all coax grounded, the GFCI / Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter is gonna switch off. Grounding here is done with the first device: the NIU, or in your case the old system of running a ground wire to the 'thingy-connector' (translation error404)

 

If you have no fluctuations now, you'll get them back. But that could mean there's a faulty connector around the area you touched and wiggled just now.

 

Did you see those 6 techs wiggle and hammer every connection? Did you see those 6 techs pull out a second device called a TDR? Time domain reflectometer to find faulty connectors? 

As you can tell I do this job aswell ;-) We have two devices: one to measure signal levels and one to measure the state of the coax between two points. 

 

What can you do yourself: pingtest and start tapping connectors untill you find the faulty one.

 

But then all this does not sound logic as your neighbour and your friend experience the same problem...

[GamerHD]

3 hours ago, Belgiangurista said:

I hate to be the dealbreaker here, but grounding coax is going to do jack. The HFC (network on the road) is better grounded then a property, so it's just ISP's who want to have all coax grounded, the GFCI / Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter is gonna switch off. Grounding here is done with the first device: the NIU, or in your case the old system of running a ground wire to the 'thingy-connector' (translation error404)

 

If you have no fluctuations now, you'll get them back. But that could mean there's a faulty connector around the area you touched and wiggled just now.

 

Did you see those 6 techs wiggle and hammer every connection? Did you see those 6 techs pull out a second device called a TDR? Time domain reflectometer to find faulty connectors? 

As you can tell I do this job aswell ;-) We have two devices: one to measure signal levels and one to measure the state of the coax between two points. 

 

What can you do yourself: pingtest and start tapping connectors untill you find the faulty one.

 

But then all this does not sound logic as your neighbour and your friend experience the same problem...

We will see, if I get the same problem again I will report back. Also can you explain me why are those timeouts perfectly timed? As you saw on the picture every 15 seconds there is an equal amount of timeouts (I am actually curious to know how those things work whether it is that optical converter or something else, since you seem like you know your part)