Cox internet evening slowdown - new behavior - Centreville/Fair Oaks/other local areas (Franklin: house, movies)

[sullyguy]

Within the last few weeks a number of customers have noticed a dramatic decrease in Cox Internet speeds starting in the early evening hours. It is apparent that Cox changed something with their network since the decrease is noticed by many customers, all of whom are saying it is a RECENT behavior (that is, it isn't anything specific to a single customer or customer's computers); see the fairfaxunderground site for examples of these complaints.

If YOU have noticed a dramatic speed decrease starting in the early evening hours that didn't happen, say, a couple weeks ago PLEASE contact Cox support at:

CoxHSI.Services@cox.com

Just send them a quick (polite!) note pointing out the problem, where you are (e.g. "Fair Oaks, VA") and noting that the problem just started recently.

I've been very happy with Cox for years and years but sometimes multiple people have to give them a Heads Up before problems get escalated away from the standard "Have you cleared your browser cache" to "Oh, maybe the problem IS internal to Cox".

So send that email if you're noticing the problem - we can get this fixed.

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My early morning download speed is much better than my contracted 15Mbps. However, starting in the early evening - and this is NEW behavior no more than a couple weeks old - the speed drops to an average 1.5 Mbps or so. You can check YOUR speed (at various times of day) by going to

Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test

For the most accurate speed check you should make sure the least number of applications are running on your PC and, if you have multiple devices that can connect via your internet connection, that all the others are NOT turned on or, minimally, not doing anything on the internet.

[sullyguy]

Cox says "many have to complain for us to believe you".

So, please, if YOU see a large decrease in bandwidth starting int he early evening hours, send Cox Support a quick email saying so.

No Cox customers are contracted to receive 1-2Mbps, yet that is what many are seeing as evening begins (sometimes earlier) AND this is a NEW behavior - Cox was fine a couple weeks ago suggesting they reconfigured something and got it wrong.

[ReblTeen84]

A little education on cable internet. Cable is a shared pipe, meaning everyone on your street/apt complex is sharing the same bandwidth and the same cable - it's not a singular connection from the node to your house like fiber would be. The slowdown in the evening is coming from everyone coming home from work and starting to use the internet - games, streaming movies, music, etc. Unfortunetly, Cox (Comcast too), can only do so much to fix this. If it's recent, it may very well be a few people on your street, apt complex, etc have started using high bandwidth applications - streaming HD movies, etc, or started using torrents, etc. This is the main reason why I prefer FiOS (or any other fiber provider) - when they tell me i'm going to get 25Mb to the house, I get the full 25. I haven't dropped below 30 in recent memory.

[sullyguy]

> ...The slowdown in the evening is coming from everyone coming home from
> work and starting to use the internet - games, streaming movies, music, etc...

Ahem...reading comprehension entails understanding the ENTIRE post. The dramatic slowdown starting in the early evening is a NEW behavior from Cox (for the local area), suggesting they reconfigured something.

But even if this was just a continuing problem from years ago (and it is NOT) then we are all contracted with Cox to receive better than 1-2 Mbps anyway, thus people would still be right to make Cox know about it.

[ReblTeen84]

A quick perusal of Cox's own website says speeds "up to". Very specific wording saying while you CAN get the speeds, it's not guaranteed. Check your own paperwork. And if they reconfigured something and broke it, the slowdown would affect you all day...not just at night when every tom, dick and harry is also sucking up bandwidth. They may very well look at it and say the exact same thing.

[sullyguy]

Originally Posted by ReblTeen84

And if they reconfigured something and broke it, the slowdown would affect you all day...not just at night when every tom, dick and harry is also sucking up bandwidth. They may very well look at it and say the exact same thing.

Nah, that's incorrect - there are lots of "load balancing" algorithms that easily could go south under certain load conditions. It's obvious that Cox did SOMETHING recently - this was not a problem a couple weeks ago. that's a key point in this entire fiasco - Cox did SOMETHING that destroyed nightime use of their network by a bunch of customers on this particular part of their network.

As far as "guaranteed level of service" it is rather unlikely Cox could get away with saying "15 Mbps!" over and over again, then supply 1.5 Mbps.

In any case, the squeaky wheel does indeed get the grease - I received Yet Another Email from support saying they've bumped it up to an actual networking guy so I'll be contacting that person soon to try to to get this fixed. I went to the trouble of taking datapoints throughout yesterday showing the dramatic decline in download speed as evening approached so they gave up with "Check your browser settings" angle.

Here's some of that data (pardon lack of formatting - meant for Courier):

TIME DOWN UP LATENCY
=========================================
18:04 EDT 0.76 Mb/s 3.64 Mb/s 10 ms
16:47 EDT 3.59 Mb/s 3.48 Mb/s 10 ms
15:37 EDT 14.77 Mb/s 3.49 Mb/s 9 ms
14:51 EDT 26.53 Mb/s 3.62 Mb/s 7 ms
12:33 EDT 29.22 Mb/s 3.58 Mb/s 7 ms
11:22 EDT 20.13 Mb/s 3.58 Mb/s 9 ms
08:36 EDT 33.05 Mb/s 3.56 Mb/s 8 ms
07:36 EDT 33.84 Mb/s 3.61 Mb/s 7 ms
07:16 EDT 26.31 Mb/s 3.60 Mb/s 7 ms

Note - Cox has something they call "Powerboost" - from the graphs generated by the speedtesting site it appears to occur only during the first N packets of test after which the speed drops off considerably. However, those first N packets are averaged into the total, raising the apparent speed results. Actual steady-state speed is less than shown by these numbers (but that's okay, these numbers adequately represent decline).

[ReblTeen84]

Powerboost speeds up the beginning of a download. It assumes small files, so they download faster giving you the feel of a faster connection. I detest it. Speed fluctuations was one of the main reasons I dumped cable as soon as I could (plus I hated comcast in general). For the last few years, if VZ has told me i'm getting X Mb a sec, i'm usually getting 3-5 over that. The speed I pay for now should be 25 down, 15 up, it's closer to 30/22. I've seen it drop once or twice, but i've never gotten below my paid for speed. Comcast could absolutely never say that when I had them.

[sullyguy]

Originally Posted by ReblTeen84

The speed I pay for now should be 25 down, 15 up, it's closer to 30/22. I've seen it drop once or twice, but i've never gotten below my paid for speed.

Indeed - we are paying for 15down/2up or something like that and, as you can see from the datapoints above, we're getting much better than that both ways for much of the day. However, we've always had excellent download speeds at or above what we paid for at ALL times of the day. Only within the last few weeks has the download speed gone completely bad in the evening hours - THAT =is= the problem being discussed. And it is not JUST =my= house that is seeing this problem - I'm in north Centreville, someone out in Fair Oaks posted the same, someone in Franklin Glen, etc etc etc. It's apparent that something out of OUR hands changed w.r.t. the local Cox subnet.

This is the fairfaxunderground thread about this: Cox internet slows down at night

[sullyguy]

Quickie followup - contacted Cox Tier 2 support and caved into their demands that a techie visit my house even though I noted repeatedly that this was an area problem. So tomorrow in late afternoon they'll see the slowdown for themselves...I hope!

[sullyguy]

Originally Posted by sullyguy

Quickie followup - contacted Cox Tier 2 support and caved into their demands that a techie visit my house even though I noted repeatedly that this was an area problem. So tomorrow in late afternoon they'll see the slowdown for themselves...I hope!

Well, it's "tomorrow" right now, still have that scheduled visit later this afternoon, and of course last night the internet download rate remained satisfactorily high the entire evening.

I think it's written in stone somewhere that this MUST be the proper behavior.

[or maybe someone at Tier 2 support said "Oh! We DID do something wrong!" and fixed it]