Reliable ISP?

[Joe Neglia]

Wow, _thank you_ for that, Michael!
You are correct, it's cable.  Cox.  Modem is Arris SB6183.
I wrote a BASH script to log the outages by pinging 8.8.8.8 once per
minute.  That shows all the outages, but other than that doesn't seem to be
of any help with troubleshooting.  Your suggestion to look at the modem's
internal pages yielded tons of info, plus it turns out the modem logs all
the outages, too.  Here's what I found regarding signal strength for the
first few channels, upstream and downstream, when the network is up. (I'll
grab these again the next time it goes down -- that would provide more
useful information, I presume):

*Downstream Bonded Channels*
*Channel* *Lock Status* *Modulation* *Channel ID* *Frequency* *Power* *SNR*
*Corrected* *Uncorrectables*
1 Locked QAM256 45 429000000 Hz -0.4 dBmV 38.1 dB 38 0
2 Locked QAM256 33 357000000 Hz 0.5 dBmV 38.5 dB 2 0
3 Locked QAM256 34 363000000 Hz 0.3 dBmV 38.7 dB 0 0
4 Locked QAM256 35 369000000 Hz 0.3 dBmV 38.7 dB 1 0
... there are 12 more of these Downstream channels, with similar Power and
SNR numbers.
*Upstream Bonded Channels*
*Channel* *Lock Status* *US Channel Type* *Channel ID* *Symbol Rate*
*Frequency* *Power*
1 Locked ATDMA 1 5120 Ksym/sec 17700000 Hz 39.7 dBmV
2 Locked ATDMA 2 5120 Ksym/sec 24100000 Hz 39.7 dBmV
3 Locked ATDMA 3 5120 Ksym/sec 30500000 Hz 39.7 dBmV
4 Locked ATDMA 4 5120 Ksym/sec 36900000 Hz 39.7 dBmV

Seems like an SNR of 38 or 39 dB would be reasonable, but not sure what the
standard is for these systems.  Will definitely look into your mtr
suggestion next!  Always learning ... Joe



On Sun, Nov 14, 2021 at 1:10 PM Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss <
plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

> Well, not knowing what you have (ie. cable/dsl vs. like actual fiber,
> T1's, or what), I'm presuming probably cable or dsl.
>
> Tempe in that area was originally acquired by cox from some local podunk
> cable company that built it originally, and circa 2003 when I worked for
> cox, the cable was all craptastic in the asu/tempe area.  A buddy that
> works there told me they fixed most of tempe already, but one never
> knows...  DSL is highly variable on age as well, and that being an older
> hood, I can imagine it might be shaky.  Centurylink never really fixes
> those on old 2-wire infrastructure, they just guarantee less quality.
>
> If you have cox and a decent motorola/arris modem, you can probably
> monitor your own modem power levels off the modem's internal page if you
> look up how to, which will tell you if it's truly a service problem in your
> area or house and you can yell at them to (hopefully) fix.  Calling cox and
> drilling them some, they can see and record modem levels historically too,
> so they know if someone there cares to look.   DSL you're probably more
> stuck with Centurylink some asscrack tech looking at a point in time, which
> may or may not tell the whole story.  Monitoring externally with pings and
> recording latency is probably all you can do there.  Run an mtr (linux
> enhanced traceroute utility) to google over time and watch your per-hop
> latencies, see where it goes to hell.
>
> Short of getting cox or CL to build fiber to your crib, you're mostly
> stuck with cox cable or centurylink dsl for residential or *business*
> service (which is just residential with better maintenance response times
> to roll a tech there).  They'll make you pay the construction one form or
> another (higher monthly recurring cost over a long-term contract, or you
> pay construction up front of some tens of thousands of dollars), but then
> you can get 10mbps to 10gbps, again whatever you want to pay for.
>
> -mb
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 14, 2021 at 12:34 PM Joe Neglia via PLUG-discuss <
> plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>
>> Yes, it is an older neighborhood, but pretty much in the center of the
>> east valley: Tempe, about a half mile south of the ASU campus.
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 14, 2021 at 12:20 PM Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss <
>> plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>
>>> It would help to start with who and what service you have today, as well
>>> as where you are roughly currently.
>>>
>>> Some parts of town are ancient and just get the booty end of the stick,
>>> but mostly everywhere around phoenix is decently serviced.  Fringes, it's
>>> more selective and variable.
>>>
>>> -mb
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Nov 14, 2021 at 11:21 AM Joe Neglia via PLUG-discuss <
>>> plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Any recommendations for a reliable ISP?
>>>>  ...
>>>> Speed is not an issue.  But reliability is!  Any suggestions would be
>>>> greatly appreciated.
>>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------
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