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1gig Symmetrical Isn't

rradina
rradina Posts: 11 Participant
edited September 9 in Connectivity

A week ago I signed up for Spectrum 1 gig symmetrical service. Modem arrived Tuesday afternoon. Connected modem to my Wi-Fi router rebooted both units and I was pleasantly surprised with better than 1,000 Mbps up and down speeds. Speeds were a bit variable until Friday when The upload speed will barely break 100Mbps on a lucky speed test. Download speeds remain 1,000+ Mbps.

I contacted support. After an hour of trying new cables, restarting the modem, restarting the router and finally hooking a device directly to the modem, the speeds remained the same.

Customer service rolled a truck. Tech confirmed the speeds and looked at the signal levels. The levels were too high and he went to the pedestal to take measurements and call in a repair?

Service tech claimed only about half of the node had been upgraded (??? - not sure what this means). He said it would be another 2 to 3 weeks or maybe even 2 to 3 months before the work would be finished [assumption: and speeds would match the broadband "nutritional label"].

Assuming this information is accurate, why is Spectrum selling what they cannot deliver? I work from home and having fast upload speeds is the reason I switched back to Spectrum.

-Extremely Disappointed

Comments

  • James_M
    James_M Posts: 5,117 ✅ Verified Employee Moderator
    edited July 1

    Hi & welcome!

    Sorry for any issues. I was able to locate your account using your registration information and symmetrical 1Gig speeds are being delivered to the modem.

    How are you connecting? Are you using a wireless connection or a VPN? Which WiFi router are you using?

  • rradina
    rradina Posts: 11 Participant

    wired 2.5Gbe

  • RAIST515O
    RAIST515O Posts: 206 Contributor

    Does the clamping persist across all devices (phone, tablet, console, etc.)

    Just curious if it isn't a problem with the OS that warrants a reset of the TCP stack... Windoze is known for knackering flow control sometimes after a round of updates.

  • rradina
    rradina Posts: 11 Participant

    I have a Galaxy S23+ on WiFi ax w/160mhz 5ghz channel. Download is 1150-ish. Upload is maybe 100.

    I just wired the laptop to the modem again.

    image.png

    How do I reset the Windows TCP/IP stack?

  • rradina
    rradina Posts: 11 Participant

    Followed Google Gemini's advice to reset the TCP stack:

    1. Type ipconfig /release and press Enter
    2. Type ipconfig /flushdns and press Enter
    3. Type ipconfig /renew and press Enter
    4. Type netsh int ip reset and press Enter*
    5. Type netsh winsock reset and press Enter*
    6. Restarted to complete step 5

    * executed with sudo-like privilege escalation

    No difference in upload speed. Download seems the same

  • rradina
    rradina Posts: 11 Participant

    This morning things are improved but I don't have confidence that this is a new normal.

    image.png

    At least one thing seems clear. It's not on my end and there's definitely something wrong with the plant. Further, Spectrum sold me something that it cannot provide. The worst part of this is the lack of information. There are those that know what's going on and yet I endlessly have to prove it's not on my end. It's a huge time killer for me and extremely frustrating.

  • RAIST515O
    RAIST515O Posts: 206 Contributor

    OFDM and all the goodies for DOCSIS 3.1 and up may not be fully flushed out yet in your market, so it starts falling back to 3.0 standards if QOS/congestion crosses certain thresholds (kinda like how a phone may switch between 5g/4g configurations... or even fall back to 3g and EDGE).

    If you pull up the services/rates card for your market, may see things still fall under the good old 'up to' clauses in the terms and such.

  • rradina
    rradina Posts: 11 Participant
    edited July 3

    Well, they are clearly violating the 2011 transparency rule. The broadband facts advertise typical speeds as 1044Mbps download and 1000Mbps upload. They can call out "up to" all they want but delivering LESS THAN 10% of Broadband Facts typical speed is not being truthful and transparent.

  • HT_Greenfield
    HT_Greenfield Posts: 926 Contributor
    edited July 3

    Which modem are you using and what are you getting with the laptop (instead of the router) connected directly to the modem WAN Ethernet port?

  • rradina
    rradina Posts: 11 Participant
    edited July 3

    This thread contains laptop direct to modem speed test screen shot. It was 1144 down and 48 up. It's the first speed test screenshot in this thread. Regarding modem, it's a Spectrum-supplied modem.

    This morning's behind-the-router test:

    image.png

  • rradina
    rradina Posts: 11 Participant
    edited July 3

    Moderator deleted the modem picture from my last post. I blanked out the MAC addresses but serial number was visible. Apparently serial# represents sensitive information. Apologies to Spectrum.

    The router model is ES2251 DOCSIS 3.1 eMTA; HW VER 1.2

  • RAIST515O
    RAIST515O Posts: 206 Contributor
    edited July 3

    "Feels" like it is falling back to ATDMA channels for upstream (3.0 failover baked into the 3.1/4.x specs). Don't recall if the status light stays blue so long as downstream stays on 3.1 connection or not (white represents a 3.0 level link).

    Could be too much noise on the line somewhere. May not even be at your location. Could be a neighbor... or anywhere connecting to the same node.

    Just spitballing... but that's a pretty common culprit in our market with all the older lines/homes out here. A bunch of people still trying to send signal through their homes across RG59 FFS. I ran my own dedicated QS RG6 drop (no splits at all) to avoid sooo many potential headaches.

  • rradina
    rradina Posts: 11 Participant
    edited July 4

    I don't know if it's relevant but when the upstream test starts it usually immediately bangs the needle to a three or four o'clock position and then rapidly falls back. Right at this moment it's performing almost like gigabit should perform.r

    Screenshot_20240703_195011_Speedtest.jpg

  • RAIST515O
    RAIST515O Posts: 206 Contributor
    edited July 5

    Yeah... the hybrid cable systems have always been a bit screwy like that. Can transfer full throttle in bursts with funky idle states in between. So you can actually see the line periodically punch a good bit above the assigned rate limit.

    Fast.com results (Netflix test) will jump all over the map during testing because of it. Can see it graphed out for the downstream over at testmy.net. You can technically be hitting or even exceeding your rate cap, though over time you may end up falling short with a bigger tansfer if there's too much idle time during congested time frames.

    Most times, people won't really notice it unless things start getting really congested... and then it can get pretty annoying.

  • rradina
    rradina Posts: 11 Participant

    Well it's been 2 weeks since I started service with the 1000/1000 plan. No complaints about the download speed, latency or reliability. Service Is great. Upload speed? MIA. For a couple days right after service began, sometimes it would match the advertised speeds. After they rolled a truck and the service tech put new coax ends on my line and theoretically improved it, it's hard to remember the last time it matched the advertised speed.

    The tech mentioned it might be 2 to 3 weeks or 2 to 3 months before something would be completed or fixed or at least in some way better.

    Unfortunately I don't believe those statements. I certainly don't believe it's going to be fixed by next week and I have doubts that it will ever be fixed.

    The most disappointing aspect of this situation is support doesn't know what's going on. The repair tech at least knew what had happened in the past and applied that to the present situation but I'm not sure that's what's happening here. He mentioned that they lost a lot of customers because the system was going up and down a lot. The system seems fine here except my upload stinks. It's certainly better than the 35Mbps of the former gigabit plan and the 12-month pricing is decent compared to what it was. So there are positive things to say about the service but it's not a keeper when the price goes back to normal. Does anyone at Spectrum care?

  • rradina
    rradina Posts: 11 Participant

    Update: I signed up for service on June 25th. Since then wired downloads peg the needle at 1150-ish Mbps but upload has been miserably slow and laden with packet loss. Google Drive/One Drive/S3 bucket uploads are clocking in at a positively blistering 2, 3, 10 and perhaps sometimes 20Mbps.

    I scheduled vacation yesterday to contact support. I was tired of waiting for high-split "upgrades" to be finished. I was ready to complain and cancel if something didn't change. I positively dreaded the thought of wasting most of a day in chat, waiting for a truck roll and nothing being done. Instead I tended to delinquent yardwork, showered and took a late afternoon nap.

    Imagine my surprise when this morning my connection problems seem to have vanished!

    image.png

    I uploaded a large file to Google drive and at times it almost hit 1Gbps. This is the best performance I've experienced since installation.

    If it stays this way, I'll be very satisfied with the product.

This discussion has been closed.

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