Some highlights of my conversation with Comcast

[The Baron]

I called about why I was getting horrible lag spikes at night (you know it's bad when you have a 100ms ping to your FIRST HOP)...

Guy: "What seems to be the problem?"
Me: "I've been getting lag spikes at night. I did a traceroute to the server, and the first hop, which I assume is the Comcast gateway, had a ping of 100ms."
Guy: *pause* "Uhhh... well, anything less than 500 is okay."
Me: "Yeah, well, this is not the server's ping, it's traceroute. It's not a problem with the server."
Guy: "Maybe the server doesn't have enough bandwidth--"
Me: "It's on a private T3." (true)
Guy: "It might have lots of downstream bandwidth but no upstream bandwidth like a cable modem--"
Me: "It's on a private T3."

later on...

Guy: "Do you have a router?"
Me: "Yes, but up until about 2 weeks ago it worked fine with the router. I ping about 2 or 3 ms to the router. I think the router is A-OK."
Guy: "It's the router's fault."

Yeah. Tech support MUST DIE. ;)

[Smokey]

LMAO

A private T3, and under 500ms is fine :wtf:

[The Baron]

He also told me that when I said I was getting pings of 650 to most servers, his words:

"Well, 650 is average."

By this time, I had given up hope from Comcast.

Anybody know how good Speakeasy is? Apparently BellSouth is TERRIBLE here (you're routed through New Orleans, which is a great many hops away and kills ping).

[styles-T]

Yeah...

I remember when I called my cable co. to see if they can fix the same problem..

I was getting horrible lag spikes ever 15 seconds..

He was monitoring my IP and saw every hit..He said he couldnt do anything to help..:mad:

My Question :
What the hell is the purpose of tech support if you cant help?

His answer :
I honestly dont know?

I was shocked by his answer..

Amazing..

[Pafet]

I konw a lot of the "tech support" on my service are poor college students who had to take a 2-day course learning what a computer is and get minimum wage for telling customers the probmlem is their hardware :mad: I hate them!!! DIE!!!!

[The Baron]

Actually... their online support ain't too shabby. They knew what tracert was... ;)

[Phyre]

I've gotten the same type of responses from Comcast's tech support. Even on the same issue.

First Call:
I called about high pings to my first hop. The tech person on the other end tried to ping my modem. They couldn't and didn't know what to do. So, I asked them to try again after I had disabled "Block WAN Request" for my router. I was then put on hold. Got disconnected.

Second Call:
I was asked to include my trace routes in an e-mail to the feedback link on the Comcast website. Well, I go to the link in question and realize that the link I was told to click on was the one for reporting problems with the website.

Needless to say, I have given up using Comcast's tech support. I know that some tech support people are better than others, but my odds in getting a knowledgeable person are too great.

Phyre

[Kruno]

Originally posted by The Baron
He also told me that when I said I was getting pings of 650 to most servers, his words:

"Well, 650 is average."

By this time, I had given up hope from Comcast.

Anybody know how good Speakeasy is? Apparently BellSouth is TERRIBLE here (you're routed through New Orleans, which is a great many hops away and kills ping).

You f'king serious?
I get far less than 100ms with cable. :|

[The Baron]

Got off the phone with them an hour ago... they did SOMETHING, not sure what exactly, but as far as I can tell it's helped. Person I talked to was friendly and was NOT an idiot about ping (I said that while I usually could ping a specific server at 50ms, when the spike happened I was lucky to get 350, and she knew what I was talking about)... so maybe it's not a lost cause.

Then again, I got disconnected 3 times before talking to her.... Oh well. Just so long as it works now... (still have to see on that one)

[Kruno]

Originally posted by The Baron
Got off the phone with them an hour ago... they did SOMETHING, not sure what exactly, but as far as I can tell it's helped. Person I talked to was friendly and was NOT an idiot about ping (I said that while I usually could ping a specific server at 50ms, when the spike happened I was lucky to get 350, and she knew what I was talking about)... so maybe it's not a lost cause.

Then again, I got disconnected 3 times before talking to her.... Oh well. Just so long as it works now... (still have to see on that one)

The people are usually ignorant. ;)
Stupidity and ignorance are 2 different things, even though they take you to the same place. :)

[Son Goku]

Still they might have known what traceroute is (I actually ran into a tech at Qwest that didn't one night...and is that a tale), but still 100 ms normal to the first hop on a private T3? Please!!! Unless there is a serious problem...

Let me put it this was. I used to live in the UNM dorms, and then the SRCs (student residence centers, or basically on-campus appartments). We had T3 connections (going out to the Internet, though ethernet internal), and all the ping times around the entire university campus were 10 ms or less (mostly less). This was also a rather largish switched network, using more then a small portion of a class B network (aka the whole 129.24.0.0 network is allocated to them). The first hop out, of which there were several, neither 2 of the 3 I noticed I went out on at times didn't tend to even reach 50 ms to the first hop (it was more like 20-40 ms...)

[Son Goku]

Incidently, I have Speakeasy.net. I was a former Qwest DSL customer with qwest.net. This was until I came home from watching the first LOTR movie (aka Fellowship of the Ring) to be greated by a nasty Christmas presant sitting in my inbox. It was a "forced" migration notice, issued by Qwest, announcing the merger with M$N and how our Internet connection was going away on January 21st. We were told we had to migrate our DSL to M$N by then for "Best of breed Internet. M$N powered by Qwest".

I have seldom had any down time (maybe 2 times in the last year and it didn't last long). At least one was a scheduled maitenance and I received notice of it prior. The other I think a router went bad or something like that and needed replacing...

The only 2 things I do have:

- Lots and lots of spam. I hate getting spam in my inbox, and I seem to get a lot of it. It has gotten progressively worse over the last year. Are spammers targeting these accounts? Perhaps, though my UNM account also got slammed to the point I ended up changing my login ID so as to scrap the old email address with the university. Let the spammers target a dead email address with their lists. I now tend to only give one out publically...

- My first hop does have a rather high ping, as my POP isn't local. It seems that after they migrated me from the Seattle POP to the Chicago POP (I live in New Mexico), the ping time to the first hop went up...yes from about 85 to 115. This is high, though if one has a local POP that is in state, instead of 500-1,000 miles away, one might get better pings to this. Depends where one would live and where they need to connect to the network through. Trace router gives

\Documents and Settings\Son_Goku>tracert uswest.battle.net

Tracing route to uswest.battle.net [63.241.83.9]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 114 ms 113 ms 115 ms dsl093-220-001.abq1.dsl.speakeasy.net [66.93.220.1]
2 114 ms 116 ms 115 ms border5.ge3-2.speakeasy-28.chg.pnap.net [64.94.3
5.212]
3 118 ms 114 ms 115 ms core3.ge3-0-bbnet2.chg.pnap.net [64.94.32.67]
4 119 ms 115 ms 116 ms 128.242.186.165
5 119 ms 122 ms 119 ms ge-7-0-0.r00.chcgil06.us.bb.verio.net [129.250.25.158]
6 119 ms 118 ms 120 ms p16-3-0-0.r02.chcgil01.us.bb.verio.net [129.250.5.115]
7 117 ms 121 ms 116 ms verio-gw.cgcil.ip.att.net [192.205.32.69]
8 123 ms 121 ms 122 ms ggr1-p360.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.123.5.145]
9 163 ms 162 ms 163 ms tbr1-cl1.sffca.ip.att.net [12.122.10.6]
10 157 ms 157 ms 159 ms gar4-p300.sffca.ip.att.net [12.123.13.174]
11 159 ms 159 ms 158 ms idf26-gsr12-1-pos-6-0.rwc1.attens.net [12.122.255.222]
12 161 ms 162 ms 161 ms mdf2-bi8k-2-eth-1-1.rwc1.attens.net [216.148.209.18]
13 161 ms 158 ms 159 ms 63.241.68.178
14 157 ms 159 ms 157 ms 63.241.83.9

Trace complete.

- Oh, I also initially got a dead DSL bridge that wouldn't synch with the network and all. The power light just went on and turned red, with the ethernet light turning yellow, and the rest, nothing.

It did take a little while for things to get coordinated between them and Covad, and the order for a new bridge had to be sent out again, as a new bridge wasn't sent on the first request put through. Time from order, till the circuit was installed was about 10 days to 2 weeks, however it was another 1-1.5 weeks before I got a new bridge and the RMA slip to return the defective one due to this. After I got the new bridge, it was good to go.

[The Baron]

Somehow, you think that's bad.

Here's a traceroute from my buddy a mile away. This is what I USED to be getting. This was at peak times, too.

Tracing route to client.antec.com [63.86.74.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 10.174.200.1
2 11 ms 9 ms 9 ms 172.30.180.81
3 14 ms 14 ms 13 ms 12.124.59.137
4 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms gbr2-p70.attga.ip.att.net [12.123.21.6]
5 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms ar1-p3110.atnga.ip.att.net [12.123.197.133]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 37 ms 29 ms 30 ms border3.ge2-0-bbnet1.acs.pnap.net [64.94.0.7]
8 31 ms 31 ms 31 ms arris-2.border3.acs.pnap.net [64.94.3.90]
9 33 ms 31 ms 31 ms client.antec.com [63.86.74.11]

That server is where I usually play UT2k3--it's on a T3, has plenty of bandwidth, and it's 9 hops away to boot.

Now here's mine--NOT at peak times.

Tracing route to client.antec.com [63.86.74.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 213 ms 250 ms 236 ms 10.174.128.1
2 211 ms 245 ms 183 ms 172.30.180.81
3 97 ms 100 ms 106 ms 12.124.59.137
4 205 ms 321 ms 330 ms gbr1-p70.attga.ip.att.net [12.123.21.2]
5 297 ms 273 ms 335 ms ar1-p310.atnga.ip.att.net [12.123.197.129]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 125 ms 173 ms 134 ms border3.ge2-0-bbnet1.acs.pnap.net [64.94.0.7]
8 159 ms 190 ms 131 ms arris-2.border3.acs.pnap.net [64.94.3.90]
9 173 ms 231 ms 188 ms client.antec.com [63.86.74.11]

Go ahead, Argentina, cry for me.

I'm going to call Thursday (busy tomorrow) and get really, really, REALLY pissed if they don't do something about it... Gonna try my friend's cable modem first, maybe that's the problem, but I doubt it...

[ALobpreis]

Originally posted by The Baron
Go ahead, Argentina, cry for me.

Ok.
http://www.gamextar.com/foro/images/smilies/cry.gif :cry:

You should know what my pings are... I'm on a nice 56k connection. :cool:

[|JuiceZ|]

Originally posted by The Baron
Somehow, you think that's bad.

Here's a traceroute from my buddy a mile away. This is what I USED to be getting. This was at peak times, too.

Tracing route to client.antec.com [63.86.74.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 10.174.200.1
2 11 ms 9 ms 9 ms 172.30.180.81
3 14 ms 14 ms 13 ms 12.124.59.137
4 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms gbr2-p70.attga.ip.att.net [12.123.21.6]
5 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms ar1-p3110.atnga.ip.att.net [12.123.197.133]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 37 ms 29 ms 30 ms border3.ge2-0-bbnet1.acs.pnap.net [64.94.0.7]
8 31 ms 31 ms 31 ms arris-2.border3.acs.pnap.net [64.94.3.90]
9 33 ms 31 ms 31 ms client.antec.com [63.86.74.11]

That server is where I usually play UT2k3--it's on a T3, has plenty of bandwidth, and it's 9 hops away to boot.

Now here's mine--NOT at peak times.

Tracing route to client.antec.com [63.86.74.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 213 ms 250 ms 236 ms 10.174.128.1
2 211 ms 245 ms 183 ms 172.30.180.81
3 97 ms 100 ms 106 ms 12.124.59.137
4 205 ms 321 ms 330 ms gbr1-p70.attga.ip.att.net [12.123.21.2]
5 297 ms 273 ms 335 ms ar1-p310.atnga.ip.att.net [12.123.197.129]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 125 ms 173 ms 134 ms border3.ge2-0-bbnet1.acs.pnap.net [64.94.0.7]
8 159 ms 190 ms 131 ms arris-2.border3.acs.pnap.net [64.94.3.90]
9 173 ms 231 ms 188 ms client.antec.com [63.86.74.11]

Go ahead, Argentina, cry for me.

I'm going to call Thursday (busy tomorrow) and get really, really, REALLY pissed if they don't do something about it... Gonna try my friend's cable modem first, maybe that's the problem, but I doubt it...

Yea somethings definitely not quite right. I don't think its yer box but I would definitely check out yer buddys cable modem just in case. What kind of ping times to do get hitting websrv's? Also what does a tracert look like hitting the comcast gateway from yer lan?

[MUYA]

man u get 100ms ping and u guys complain!!! Have pity for them folks like me in parts of the world where we get 2000ms ping on a dial up and using an ISP that uses VSATs!!! sheesh 100ms???
:P
VSATs suck....
man i wish for a private t3 connection.....**pooff**....uh ok I woke up...back to dial up surfing.......



:)

MUYA

[The Baron]

I complain because I'm not getting what I paid for, so Comcast needs to fix it.. heh.

I can see it now...

"Sir, you should try clearing the IE cache."
"Could you tell me what address the tech support headquarters is located?"
"Uh, sure, it's..."

*3 minutes later*

Tech Support Guy 1: "Hey Jim, you hear that? Sounds like whistling."
Tech Support Guy 2: "Well yeah. sounds like..."

*nukular armageddon*

and you know what? I'd rejoice and be glad.

[joltcola]

When it comes to customer service .... its comes down to call time, and quality ... and usually quality take a major backseat to call time. Most call centers that I've worked at , or seen, you have a certain amount of time that your expected to deal with the customer. So , alot of times, the customer service rep is doing what he/she can to get you off the phone, if you get a real answer or help or not. That is their goal, not so much to help you!
:(
Also... alot of customer service reps either lie or don't know exactly what they are talking about, which is just as bad as a lie. So, if you get a BS answer from a customer service, just hang up and call again ( in hopes of getting a different rep), or esculate the call. Just keep getting pissed, and keep asking for a manager. They'll probalby tell you that they are qualified to answer any questions that you have. Just keep asking. Not every call center follows the same rules, but most times, they have to pass the call along to a manager if you ask enough times, but not the first time you ask. Refrain from cussing or screaming, because that gives them a way out, because they'll just release the call ( hang up ).


This isn't in defence of bad customer service, or bad reps ... just a few obvious tips that helps when dealing with them. Try to not to get angry at the customer service rep themselves. Getting angry at them (while your on the line with them) isn't going to help anything. Try not to start out the conversation yelling. Most customer service reps are only human** and can't function with the high stress of someone yelling. Give them time to work it out, but don't put up with BS answers. They are trying to get rid of you in the shortest time possible.


-- jolt

** A note on inhuman customer service rep. These type of reps will usualy be reading a book while they take your call. They wake up at the sound of the beep, warning them of an incomming call. They will also say their " Customer Service, [Enter name here] , how may help you" in their sleep. They also have the "customer service" voice. Happy, excited, and thrilled to help you. Most of the time, they sound like a goat. ( Cause most customer service smokes a carton a day ). These people are not human , and at one point, I was one of them. Then again, I didn't care about call time, I cared about not screwing the caller over, like I've been screwed over in the past.

[The Baron]

Well, they were OK this time. They didn't even try to help. I said my account info, and they said, "Yeah, okay, we'll send a tech out as soon as possible."

So a guy's coming Saturday.... :p

Better work or I'm gonna get out my Beating Stick. ;)

[netviper13]

Ah good ole' tech support. Whever my cable internet goes down, they blame my router for being the problem. Yeah, I'm sure that since I can still browse local computers while the light on the cable modem indicating synch is off the router must be the problem. :D

[The Baron]

Things I've figured out.

1. It's not the cable modem.
2. It's not the outlet.
3. I'm not being DDoS'd.
4. It's entirely Comcast's fault.

That works. ;)

[netviper13]

Of course it's not Comcast silly, it's your NIC! :p

[outriding9800]

did you reboot you pc ???


:)

[The Baron]

Weird thing I forgot to mention.

I tried 2 modems, the Com21 DX111 and the Motorola Surfboard SB4200. DX111 is what I've been using and works fine. I took it in my room (was in the middle of the house near the wireless router), plugged it to the cable line and my box, it works. OK. Same lag. I take my friend's modem, different Ether cable, same cable line (comes in from below the house), plug it all in, no dice. I go to the diagnostic page on the modem, it says it cannot synch upstream. So, I take it in the other room, hook it up to the other outlet and the wireless router. Bam, it works.

Very odd.