New Apartment - Internet Problems

Hey guys, so recently I moved and after finally getting internet set up this past tuesday it's been a pain in the ass to say the least. Some important things to note - this is the ONLY internet company available in this town so there is no option of changing it. The cable modem I have is provided by the company itself and from the looks of it is brand new. It also acts as a router so there's no need for anything else to be hooked up on my end.

Since it's been setup, however, it has disconnected and reconnected itself dozens of times. Literally probably over 50 resets in less than a week. This is obviously not normal. It does not take anything on my end to restore the service, it restores itself after 3-5 minutes. But it happens often and is incredibly problematic for a few reasons:

The most serious: I need to video chat a lot of my coworkers for an upcoming job I am training for. When I get disconnected I am wasting not only my time but their time and it reflects very poorly on me as a prospective employee if I can't even stay in a video call. Obviously it's to no fault of my own but the problem needs to be fixed nonetheless.

Other smaller issues include me being unable to play competitive games for fear of constant disconnects.

Now, judging by the error logs (which I can provide), the cable modem is consistently losing signal and timing out. Why this is I have no idea. I am mostly connected through a wired connection, but it doesn't really matter, they both drop because the modem resets constantly. This really has me believe it is not a an issue on my side, but is there anything I can "test" out to make sure that's the case? Technicians usually seem to be real hit or miss and I don't want to have to pay for one to come out if I can fix it.

At first I thought maybe I was straining it too much with bandwidth, but that cannot be the case as it's happened during incredibly light internet surfing as well as "heavy duty" type stuff like watching streams, Netflix, gaming, etc.

My only real conclusion (and I'm really not well versed in this stuff) is that something has to be wrong with the cable outside of my apartment. The guy who set it up was outside more than he was inside, so maybe he messed it up? I have no idea. But right now this is unsustainable and I am NOT getting the product I am supposed to be getting. It's quite expensive too so I cannot justify keeping a service this half-assed.

I'm at my wits end trying to figure it out and am wondering if any networking savvy people here can give me some troubleshooting tips. Researching my downstream/upstream levels I am apparently getting ranges that should be acceptable.

Cable Modem brand is Arris.

Today alone I've been booted offline almost a dozen times, and I don't think it's Talon.

 

From how you describe it it seems to be a problem with your ISP. I don't know exactly what it might be as sometimes theres no way to know. Your company could just be cutting nodes to save some budget. If i were you i would just call and complain.

 

Appreciate the reply man. Yeah I don't think it's anything on my end, especially since I'm paying EXTRA for their stupid cable modem...which I did to try and avoid this exact type problem because internet is going to be absolutely essential to my job parameters. The gaming bit/interruptions are annoying, but the job being impacted by it is literally life altering if I don't fix it. I cannot imagine they will want to keep me around too long if I cannot fulfill every single one of my duties.

At first they claimed it was an outage in my area, which I believed after a while because from Weds-Saturday afternoon I only dced once. More than acceptable. I can deal with the intermittent drop in connection. But last night and today, I've disconnected quite literally 20+ times. Impossible to get anything done when it does that.

I'm going to call them tomorrow and see what they say. I just pray to god I get a competent technician here if it does come down to that.

 

It's disconnected two more times since writing this post lol. Absolutely maddening. Dial up internet was better than this current internet I have.

 

Well reading your post im sorry you have to put up with this. I can understand how frustrasting it is.

Some ideas with what I think it is.

The Box your internet comes from like the modem.

Then your outside wiring could also be bad. Have you tried looking up on youtube how to hook everything up.

Most definitely call the company. What service is it to start out with though?

 

Also maybe it has to do with your phone lines being filtered as well. Not sure if that is still a thing but not having them on your phone lines messes up.

 

Appreciate the reply man. Thanks. It is incredibly frustrating. If work wasn't so heavily dependent upon me having a very good internet connection it wouldn't be such a problem. It's a pretty modest company, tbh I had never heard of them and they don't have very favorable reviews on the places I did look. But unfortunately this is an older town and my internet options are limited to this company. So I'm stuck with them.

I had it installed by a technician from the company, so I'd assume from that standpoint it was all set up properly. I definitely agree with you on the wiring, I think that has to be the problem. My upstream channels keep fluctuating from 1-3 available. It definitely seems to be a signaling issue.

I'm going to give them a ring tomorrow. I'm just not sure there's anything I can do on my end to fix it.

The company is "Wide Open West"

 

@chr1$ Just another thing to note on why I totally think it could be wire related - the two days it happened the most came when it was very wet outside. I've heard that can have negative impact on faulty wiring.

Again, I am very novice when it comes to this stuff. I'll update this thread tomorrow when I actually talk to one of them. Thanks again.

 

I had something similar happen to me when I first got my cable internet installed by optimum online. It turned out to be a combination of a faulty/bad quality splitter and a faulty coax cable which a tech had to come out and fix.

Are you directly connected to the modem? Maybe its a router issue?

 

Some places just have bad internet connection. Try another provider if nothing works or buy a extra internet receiver to make the connection stronger.

 

Call a tech, and if they don't fix it, call another, rinse and repeat until they fix the issue.

I had a similar problem with comcast when I was in Washington. It took 4 months and a half dozen, if not more techs to figure out that the signal going to my room was too high and it was literally frying my modems.

Don't settle for anything other than the service you're paying for. Call your ISP and schedule the first available tech you can get.

 

Tech came today, there was a week after I made this thread where it only dropped once all week so the urgency level dropped a bit, but after it coming back with a vengeance the following week I finally got a tech out here today. After acting like he was legally impaired for the first half hour he finally goes outside. The first half hour of him basically treating me like I was making it all up or something lol. "Well it looks like it's working to me" his exact words. Comes back inside "It's not working is it" . Leaves again. Comes back "The wiring here is really bad dude" - So he ultimately looks all over the apartment, even goes up to the crawlspace above my apartment to investigate.

Whatever tweaks he was able to make markedly improved my signals, especially on my downstream channels. Looks like he added a splitter to the outside wiring and he also removed an interior splitter. He stated however that something was still amiss and he was still getting noise on the line somewhere. He actually believes the ENTIRE complexes wiring needs to be re-done, which I have to get my landlord to coordinate with them. Luckily, I have a really chill landlord and he's already responded to me that he will coordinate it with them.

Hopefully his tweaks in the short term bolster my internet. Really appreciate the help guys, I knew I'd get some great answers here. With the answers here coupled with my internet research, I was able to definitely intimate that it was faulty wiring. Turns out, it is. Sounds like it's going to be a bitch and a half to replace, but that's not really my problem or job.

 

That really sucks. Who knows how long that'd take to fix. Hopefully his fix last long enough that it's not a hindrance.

 

I know man! Perfect apartment all things considered save for the terrible wiring. The good news is, I haven't dropped offline since he did his fixes. I'm thinking the only outages I'll experience now is if that upstream line gets too loud. Otherwise I should be good.

Ultimately would be nice if they replaced it for the long term future, especially since I can imagine that extreme weather conditions hot or cold could probably further harass the archaic lines in there now.

It sounds like the problems lie within my wires the most though, because nobody else in the complex has complained and the age demographic is pretty conducive for heavy internet usage. He said that the wires he'd need to access would take some landlord guidance since he'd know better than him where everything is. He said "if I go up there I might as well replace every wire up there not just yours". So not really sure.

Thanks a ton though. He also changed my coaxial wall plate. So far, no errors in the log. Fingers crossed his other fixes is good enough to give me mostly stable internet. After these past three weeks of, quite literally, over 500 resets, I think I can handle a few resets a week if it comes to that.