I believe there’s a board meeting Monday at 7:00 in the lobby office. Residents welcome.
Also, is anyone having problems with Comcast? This from a resident:
Is anyone else in the building experiencing problems with Comcast? We’ve seen problems off and on starting on Friday 25 Sept. I know of at least one other person who has experienced a problem. Comcast insists that the network is okay. I suppose at some point one of us will have to either take off work or otherwise cancel a good portion of our daily activities to wait for a technician to come and verify that the problem is further upstream, because apparently Comcast doesn’t look upstream until that happens. Thanks, Randy.
As for us, we had to reboot our internet connection about a week ago but it’s been fine since then, and no problems with anything else.
I have internet problems. I must restart my router often, I’d say at least once a day. That usually solves the problem, so I haven’t been moved to do much about it. But, it can certainly be annoying.
Now that you mention it (and now that it just happened again), my computer’s recently been telling me fairly regularly that I’m not connected to the internet. I just click “network diagnostics” and it usually fixes itself in a few seconds so I haven’t been paying much attention. It was just once, several days ago, that I had to poke a pen into the back of my modem to reboot it (we have a backup battery, so unplugging it and replugging it won’t reboot it) because network diagnostics couldn’t fix the problem.
Personally, I don’t have anything against Comcast. I’ve had the same cable provider for almost 30 years (my previous one was bought up by Comcast many years ago) and haven’t found them particularly annoying. I’ve had one or two techs who were slackers but other techs have gone above and beyond.
Relaying a response sent to me (Thank you, Curtis!):
“I work at Comcast in Video Technical Repair. There have been no known problems other than a outage on Friday night. It affected about 10,000 customers. Was fixed when I got up on Sat. If you continue to have problem, either call 1 800 COMAST or download the Xfinity My Account App where there are many helpful functions if you are having problems with your service. Plus any more detail about the problem and I may be able to fix it.”
I will be at the meeting.
There are definite issues with download speeds. Last weekend and this weekend as well. Speeds as I write this are ok but still not where they should be. I was seeing download speeds less than 0.5 Mbps which at this level effects streaming, the stream will cut out or the quality of the picture suffers. Upload speeds have remained fine. This is definitely Comcast. Comcast always blames the customer. I am calling today to see if we can get Verizon to the building. I understand Lowell just doesn’t have the cable runs in place. We could petition the city to get this done. There should be at least some of the city which can get Verizon.
Reboots or turning off your equipment doesn’t help. Using speedtest.net, you can see what your download speeds are. You are supposed to be getting 25 down and 5 up.
Nothing more annoying than a Comcast guy saying they have no known problems, when network speeds are so easily documented, and so atrociously slow. I’m paying extra for a faster connection speed, but my speedtest just now shows a download speed of 1.48Mbps. The fact that the upload speed is over 5Mbps is clear proof that there’s a network problem involved, but getting Comcast to admit to their failures is next to impossible. Their customer service is, if at all possible, worse. We need to find who in the city is being paid off to inhibit competition here, and fix the problem by inviting Verizon to sell services here. Until then, I am not optimistic.
Regarding internet service: I often work from home and am always connected to other servers. I’ve had no unusual problems w/Comcast. Running speedtest just now, from a laptop upstairs, connecting to my router wirelessly, I get:
download 50.2 mbps, upload 6.05 mbps. Upload could be faster, but it’s good enough.
Note: I’m using an 802.11ac router at 5G. Check your router settings, as having the wrong settings can cause interference with your neighbors. Further, make sure you are actually connected to your router and are not “jumping” off to the unsecured but available-anywhere xfinitywifi signal, which is reasonably strong in this building.
–Jeff
I’m using their hardware and I’m directly connected to their modem via Ethernet cable. I had one of their senior tech guys on the phone today (the process took 2hours) and he reset the thing and tweaked settings half a dozen times before giving up. My speeds ranged from 0.49 to 1.93. (I’m paying for 50).
I’m glad you’re getting decent speed and hopefully when they debug this we all can, too. Please let me know your unit numbers (both the fast and the slow folks) so I can share that with the tech guy who is coming Tuesday morning.
For the record, I’m well-experienced with networking (both wired and wireless) and work from home as well. (I’ve been in software for over 3 decades).
Oh–I’m in 617
My download speeds are slow – I am in 502. Here is some more info which I sent via email to their “contact us” thing. My modem provides the following concerning the line: 28 db Signal to Noise (42-50 considered good). Downstream Power 9 dBmV (+- 8 considered good). Upstream Power 32 DbmV (low 40s considered good). So as you can see the line is not good. I have been in software for over 2 decades so you have me beat with the software experience. Comcast never wants to admit anything is wrong. The last guy I was on the phone with told me the first thing they would do is get my modem out of the picture and only then would they do anything; he had a real attitude. My modem is new and can push through 150 Mbps bidirectionally but Comcast can not deliver that. I’m getting less than 1 Mbps.
My internet is fully down this evening. (Thankfully there is Verizon 4G LTE on my phone). I had a brief burst of 30Mbps downloads this afternoon but it went back to molasses soon after, and died completely 2hours ago.
The resolution for me required new hardware from Comcast. Last night’s complete outage was “planned” so they could fix stuff in their infrastructure. I’m now getting up to 90Mbps and am (finally) very happy. For others who need help, keep pestering for a service call and have them swap to the latest modem hardware if you can. For others with your own modems who are having problems, I’ll be happy to share whatever specs, model and firmware information I can find off the box.
I have also been having horrible problems with my internet speed. Just got off the phone with Comcast they are setting me up with a new modem – wireless gateway 3 to hopefully solve my problem. I will let you know if it does.
No luck, technical service person coming by tomorrow afternoon. I am on the 5th floor.
So the outage – how do they notify their customers? This morning I had the same problem. I see now things are where they should be. The Comcast guy that’s coming out today is going to want to know what was changed. In my case I don’t need a new modem. Is Comcast reimbursing you for the down time? By my estimation this has been 2 weeks.
I have a technical coming on Friday Morning. Definitively something wrong. I do have the latest and greatest ipv6 router. Everything was working fine for month… now things degrading sometime I can’t finish to load a page as things gets too slow. Very annoying!!!
Well, now we’re getting 29.55/6.31, which is what we were getting before the problems started. Mysteriously, after Craig (next door to us) was fixed, we are fixed. We have a service call scheduled for Friday, which we are absolutely not canceling. We’ll see how it goes.
Randy in 618
BTW, I haven’t checked this in a week or two, but just checked it today:
http://fios.verizon.com/fios-plans.html?zip=01852#availability-msg
However, when I chatted with a sales rep, I found out that it is not available at our address. That’s basically bait-and-switch. So, basically, a pox on all their houses.
Comcast technical people came by on Friday afternoon. They checked both the cable closet at the end of the 5th floor hall and my modem. My modem was new and they decided to check the cable in my unit. They opened the cable wall plate (where the cable can be hooked in) behind my tv downstairs and upstairs in my study. The tech told me that the transponder that was in my wall was very old and could not handle the frequencies now being used by Comcast. He replaced the transponder (splitter) and then went upstairs. There was another splitter upstairs that sent cable into my bedroom and then into the study (second bedroom). Since the transponder that was in the wall was already having problems – splitting it again was creating even more problems.
It is possible that other people in the building would have the same issue if they have never had their transponders changed – and that it would occur suddenly as Comcast keeps expanding frequencies to meet data needs. If you are having problems have them check to make sure you don’t have old hardware which may not have the capacity to deal with these new requirements.
Before Comcast came over, I was getting download speeds of 1-5 mbps. Now I am getting 80 mbps.
I asked the techs to be sure that I was not going to be charged for this “service visit” and was told no I would not be that they do not charge to update this kind of thing in a condo building.
We are in 602.
We were having some trouble with our internet being in and out for a while, but that seems to have stabilized.
However, starting last night, we are having some new, different issues.
We came home and tried to watch the Bruins game via the TiVo mini in our bedroom, which is connected to the main TiVo Roamio in the living room via a Coax / MoCA connection.
All of a sudden, the TiVo mini claims it can not see the main TiVo.
The last time we know it worked was Monday or Tuesday night.
Somehow Comcast has screwed something up such that our TivOs can not see each other…
Furthermore, I was playing with a Raspberry Pi (small Linux based computer), and trying to connect it to our WiFi network (we own our cable modem as well as the linksys router plugged into it.) I can see our Wireless network, but when I connect to it, the connection is spotty, and I get an IP address I shouldn’t be…. (it is landing me in the 10.0.0.0/24 subnet as opposed to the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet).
I don’t know whose network this is (I suspect it might be Craig H.’s), but when I go to http://10.0.0.1 I see a log-in page for an xfinity gateway that shows an SSID of “Craig” and a bunch of devices (many of which it says are connected via MoCA).
I have no idea how my Raspberry Pi is getting this information, as it really shouldn’t be…
I need to call Comcast, but I am willing to bet large sums of money that the person I talk to won’t understand what the hell I am talking about.
Gotta love Comcast!
I just tried setting a static IP address on the Raspberry Pi… That allowed it to communicate with the other devices on my network.
I have no idea why / how DHCP offers from another LAN are crossing into my network. I suspect it has something to do with the MoCA network the TiVos are utilizing, but I don’t know enough about that technology.
I apologize for spamming the board…
I was just doing some reading.
I just purchased one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Filter-MoCA-Cable-Coaxial-Networking/dp/B00DC8IEE6/
Anyone else using any MoCA networking will probably want to consider picking one up as well to keep their information from filtering out of their walls.
I will install it on Monday night and see what that does for our situation.
I will report back here.
Thanks!
-w
Wayne, we should talk. I’m in 617 and also have a TiVo Mini and just fought through the MoCA issues to get it to work again. Without the filter I went into the router setup to block all unknown devices in order to achieve a stable network. I’m sending away for the filter as well and appreciate that such devices exist. (Thanks for the heads up!)
I’m getting 80 download and 6 upload MbPS with the new Arris all-in-one box from Comcast. I’m getting close to that via my WiFi devices, too.
By the way–anyone getting a router from Comcast or elsewhere that runs a MoCA signal that can’t be turned off, you should absolutely get a filter as well. You may not have conflict problems like we did because you aren’t running MoCA devices in your unit, but you will have unknown devices running on your network that you can’t see that can be using your bandwidth (at best) and potentially eavesdropping on your usage (at worst). It’s astounding Comcast doesn’t install the filters themselves.
Update on the MoCA filter:
It worked!!!
I installed it, and then rebooted all my devices, just to be sure… And everything seems happy. Devices that were pulling the wrong IP are now pulling the correct IP, and all my TiVos are happy.
I am very happy that I was able to resolve this without calling our friends at Comcast.
-w