[SOLVED] Getting the runaround from Cox. Is my rationale wrong with troubleshooting my own Wifi?

[UnoDosTrace]

About three months ago I started to run across slower download/upload speeds and ping issues. My service provider is cox and I rent a gateway from them. When I used to speed test on wifi on all devices I get 70-100mbps download and close to 20mbps upload and 9-15 ping which is all pretty solid on the 5g wireless. I usually only have about 2-3 devices on at a time.

Yet now when I do any gaming, streaming, or downloading, I have ping in the 120’s with spikes up to the 150s and 200s. Plus my download speed bottles down to about 10-15mbps. I’ve tried hardwiring my pc with the same results on the ping issue but with more stable download speeds. Speed test also shows jitter in the 300-400m/s range.

I had a tech come out and he didn’t say much; just that the box was missing a filter and wasn’t properly grounded. He said he put in a support ticket for the regional guy to look because he was getting some high ping and interference from outside to begin with.

I went to cox and got another gateway from them to see if that was the problem and it was the same issue. I then proceeded to purchase a Netgear gateway, same issue. I finally purchase a Netgear CM500 Modem and a Netgear AC1200 router. Surprise. Same issues. Even worse as the day’s go on. I would chock it up to a band with/usage from quarantine issue but it happened before all that and I shouldn’t see THAT drastic changes should I?

Online gaming is literally unplayable and streaming is very difficult. I’m having a tech come out tomorrow again to take a look. Am I crazy wrong in thinking this is Cox’s issue, or should I do more?

Whew. Thanks for reading.

 

[bill001g]

Your first test should always be on ethernet. If you see issues like this on ethernet then there could be a issue with your internet connection.

The reason all your testing likely accomplished nothing is you likely can not fix the actual problem. The key problem with wifi is all the interfering signals from your neighbors. These cause the random ping spikes and jitter. Pretty much any application other than online games tolerates that with no major issues.

This is why you see everyone say to not play online games on wifi. It is one of those fundamental things you can not actually fix.

If this does happen on ethernet you can run tracert and other similar tools to see where this is happening.

Although there is a lot more people at home the ISP say the network are still way below there maximum capacity in most locations. This is likely true since you do not see a lot more people complaining about this. Now more people at home using wifi likely does increase the amount of interference coming into your house but your only real option is to not use wifi.

 

[UnoDosTrace]

Your first test should always be on ethernet. If you see issues like this on ethernet then there could be a issue with your internet connection.

The reason all your testing likely accomplished nothing is you likely can not fix the actual problem. The key problem with wifi is all the interfering signals from your neighbors. These cause the random ping spikes and jitter. Pretty much any application other than online games tolerates that with no major issues.

This is why you see everyone say to not play online games on wifi. It is one of those fundamental things you can not actually fix.

If this does happen on ethernet you can run tracert and other similar tools to see where this is happening.

Although there is a lot more people at home the ISP say the network are still way below there maximum capacity in most locations. This is likely true since you do not see a lot more people complaining about this. Now more people at home using wifi likely does increase the amount of interference coming into your house but your only real option is to not use wifi.

Would running a power line adapter give me the same results as a Ethernet connection? Or will the power line suffer from the same problems as the wifi?

 

[bill001g]

You still need to test on ethernet to be sure the problem is the wifi before you spend money.

Powerline has a much more stable ping/latency than wifi because it is not subject to interference from outside your house. The newest version of powerline works well in most houses. These units say AV2 in the names. They tell lies about the speed just like wifi, the fastest unit generally get about 300mbps.