starting to get pissed off!!

[ghamblin]

As posted by my brother bhamblin earlier yesterday, my problems with Cox have only gotten worse. I spent the better part of Saturday with a technician from Cox, who at times seemed to be untrained and totally deficiant in troubleshooting. Nontheless, I'm no technician so I listened eagerly and gave him plenty of space to work so as to not feel pressured by an angry customer.

I never had any problems with the service from the time I first got it in September 1999, until I cancelled my service for a couple of months the end of 2000. When I decided that the dial-up thing was never going to work again, I decided to turn it back on. When I did, Cox had some trouble getting the service to my apt up and running. I don't know why but it took them a week! Anyway, a few days later it went down and they dispatched a tech to 'Swap" the modem. Turns out that wasn't the problem and I lost my good ol' Motorola Cybrsurfer in the process. But they did get it up and running, much slower than before I might add.

So up until Friday it had steadily gotten slower and slower until my maximum speed tested was something like 28 KBytes/sec. I'd had enough and called a technician. Through my experience now they seem to think that the modem is always the problem no matter what the symptoms are, and from the shock the tech displayed at the sight that that wasn't the problem the fiasco got worse.

This guy immediately decided that the network card was bad. So he 'swapped' that aswell. Rebooted, got the 'BSOD'. His response was to stare at the screen in dismay, so I decided I would relieve him and fix it. After getting it back up and running he took it out for a spin and speed tested it. Check this awesome speed out! 16.1KBytes/sec!!!! Now this guy didn't stop and try to think about it all he sat there for 20 minutes refreshing the test, I guess in hopes that it fixed itself and would be fine? Enough!!!

I decided to try and help him a bit by suggesting that perhaps the problem wasn't with my computer or its hardware , but that it might be the cable itself or something on the headend. So he went to 'swapping' cable out. No change. He then, with my persuasion, hooked up a laptop just to be sure that it really wasn't my computer. Same problem. He then decided that the problem was most likely here in the area and that was out of his hands. Nope, I explained to him that my brother who lives directly above me was having no speed trouble and getting his typical 600KBps speeds. So maybe it was the cable actually feeding my apartment? He then strung a brand new cable from the box outside, directly to my modem. No change. So that was it. I will have to wait for a line tech to figure it out.

So in the meantime I thought that I would share this with you all and see if any number of you gurus's out there might, for my own self assurance, enlighten me with possible problems they might be experiencing with my line alone. Like I said previousely, my connection is the only one in the complex having problems.

Thanks to anyone who reads this long post and replies!

[Ashdaw]

This may sound silly.... but have you thought of changing your computers over with your Brother??? worth a try if it isnt too difficult to drag upstairs.. you MIGHT have a dadmged TCP stack?? thats my 5 cents worth anyway..

[blebs]

Originally posted by Ashdaw
This may sound silly.... but have you thought of changing your computers over with your Brother??? worth a try if it isnt too difficult to drag upstairs.. you MIGHT have a dadmged TCP stack?? thats my 5 cents worth anyway..

It could be tried, but if the techs laptop got the same result, I don't think its a TCP Stack Problem either.

[wee96]

If your brother lives upstairs he might be on a different tap than you (depending on the size of the apartment). Just a thought, maybe the taps going out and/or the hard line splice feeding the tap is crappy.

[InHere]

But...regardless of what the tech did what time is involved in just trying the suggestion mentioned above. Take your computer only, not all the attachments, up to your brothers place upstairs. Try it man. What are we talkin...5 ten minutes? You might be suprised. At least YOU will difinitively know. Hell the techs laptop might be a pile of sheat.