[SOLVED] disconnections issues for 8+ months

[Tychee]

hello all

so this is a long story.. ive been dealing with disconnections (wired and wireless both at the same time) for close to 8 months now. the lights in router and modem stay on and say its connected and all my devices say they have internet but they cant load a webpage or a app etc.. its happens at anytime doing anything but it peaks at night (6pm to 2am) when it is basically unusable, cant even stream a show.
I've tried everything I can think of or find on google on my end from simple things like changing the ethernet cords to plugging into my modem directly with my pc and then bring my pc and phone/tablet to a friend's house to make sure it wasn't an issue with my devices (even though i knew it wasn't). I've had over a dozen diff routers and modems and ive had a solid 20+ techs come out and tell me completely different things like "u need to up ur internet because u have to many devices running and its drawing to much bandwidth" or some have told me they dont know whats wrong/what the issue is or how to fix it so just deal with it. last tech guys that came which was a week and a half ago said he was gonna have someone watch my modem/router with a program he called scope ( which i dont know what that is ) for 1 week and called 1 week later got got told that the program saw nothing no drop outs no errors perfect the whole week.

im assuming it has something to do with to much noise ingress or feedback but i have no way to prove it or if that is even right.

i have a tech coming again today at 9am to 10 am est..
i was hoping i might be able to give him some info or things i can make him check.
or something i can check that will give them info they need..

im am not stupid when it comes to computers but im also not a network specialist or anything close..

im sadly having no luck with this getting resolved and im not sure what to do. im disable and my internet is my only form of entertainment and relaxation specially with the pandemic right now. just feel like im doing the definition of insanity right now. if there is any info i missed or anything u guys need cleared up please let me know and ill do my best to answer. this has been going for 8 months now and i know im no where near explaining everything thats been done or tried.

any help u guys can give would be very much appreciated.

specs -

ISP - Spectrum
modem - Hitron - M# - E31N2V1
router - Sagemcon - M# - RAC2V1S
speed - 400down/20up
both provided by spectrum

pc - custom built
cpu - AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
gpu - EVGA RTX 2070
ram - Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB)
Mobo - MSI Motherboard X470 GAMING PLUS
psu - EVGA 600 B1

i have in total 7 things hooked to the internet ( 2 wired/5 wireless)
pc and hue bridge are wired
iphone and nintendo switch are on the 5ghz
ipad/chromecast/alexa are on the 2.4ghz

 

[SamirD]

Well, the first thing to do is to see if you can prove it is their service that is the problem. I would boot a linux live cd/usb on your system, wire it directly to the modem and run packetlosstest.com and the dslreports speedtest. If either or both of these fail, it's your service 100% and they need to fix it. I'll be able to also give you some tips on getting them to resolve it too based on the test results.

 

[Tychee]

SamirD

do u have a guide or a semi easy was to do this? i dont know a lot about linux

 

[SamirD]

Sure. Download this:
https://www.spi.dod.mil/docs/TENS-3.0.2_public.iso

Write it to a CD if you have a CD drive. If you need to write it to a usb, use rufus: https://rufus.ie/ (this will wipe the usb drive so make sure you don't need anything on it if it is not empty)

Once you have your cd/usb, find out how to access your one time boot menu when your system is starting up (usually something like f2, f8, f9, f12, etc), and then you will be able to choose to boot from the cd/usb. Once you select it, it will boot from the cd/usb and load a live linux straight to ram. Then you can use the browser there to check your internet and see if it's working okay.

Since your problem is intermittent, you can do this a few different times, especially when you're having issues. But if it doesn't work when connected straight to the modem off the live cd/usb, then it's almost 100% an isp problem since you've eliminated routers, wiring, and your current windows install.

 

[Tychee]

so packetlosstest it didn’t give any packet loss until I increased it beyond its default of 10seconds.. started with putting it at 1 min and let it run came back with 0.1% upload packets loss and download didn’t loss any.. I put it up to 2 mins and it went to 0.3% packet loss on upload and 0.1 download and the longer I make it go the bigger the packet loss gets..
also said
Jitter avg - 1.27ms
Latency avg - 50.61ms
I didn’t change anything other then it’s duration



The dslreport score
Overall - b
Bufferbloat - d
Quality- a+
Speed - -

480 down
22.55 up
40

 

[SamirD]

Gotcha, so we're getting some packet loss for sure. Run the same test except change the packet size to the largest and the frequency to the highest and let's see what happens.

 

[Tychee]

So I just did it and it actually won’t do anything above 200 or so and it just errors.. doesn’t give me a reason..

I tried changing enternet cords and plugging into the modem directly and rebooted the system and still won’t go

 

[SamirD]

So what are the results for the largest you can run?

 

[Tychee]

its the same as before since the default size is is the biggest i can go before it just errors

 

[SamirD]

Got it. So run the test and when you see packet loss, call Spectrum and tell the agent to ping the modem as you're actively getting packet loss. Be sure to check your test again while on the phone if they need you to tell them again.

If they say they're not getting packet loss, then tell them that it's not at the modem and that they have a problem in the network that someone needs to fix. This will stump most agents because now you're above their level, but keep pressing and if you can't win with a particular agent, call back and do the whole thing again. After about 3 agents, you should have them sniffing on the right track.

This is a real pita and makes me so mad that companies take advantage of people who don't have the same resources as others, but hopefully this will help you get a resolution.