Internet Network Troubleshooting

[DaveLembke]

Well my ISP is Comcast broadband and I am getting kind of fed up with page time outs and random disconnects. The problem isn't with my home network and appears to be on the ISP side or ISP backbone provider. Persistant pings to comcast are flawless with 0 lost packets, yet to just about all other sites persistantly pinged there are lost packets.

Attached is screenshot showing lower left of persistant flawless to comcast, and google top left and yahoo top right with packet loss, and blizzard in lower right with 100+ms latency's.

Anyone know if this is the norm or should I collect data with batch loggers and try to convince comcast they have a problem or one of there backbone internet providers has packet loss.

How is everyone elses persistant pings to Google and Yahoo...do you also see packet loss, yet none with your ISP as well.

It could be argued that traffic to yahoo and google are causing the lost packets, but traffic I would assume would add latency in resolving and not time outs. With response times near 30-40ms and time outs, if traffic was the culprit I would expect larger latencies than 30ms between dropped packets.

*Update*- Traceroute also attached. Going to try all the hops to see where it gets bad... That might show where the issue is maybe.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Computer_Commando]

The use of "ping" and "tracert" are not reliable methods for determining latency or packet loss.  Try this:  http://www.speedtest.net/
Instead of tracert, use this:  http://www.r1ch.net/stuff/ftrace/
I would recommend posting your issues here:  http://www.dslreports.com/forum/comcast

You will first need to post your modem signals, which, if out of range, will cause page time outs and random disconnects.

[DaveLembke]

Hey Thanks... will check those out.

The problem starts at [ 72.14.236.200 ] and I tried a reverse DNS lookup to see who owns it, but its masked and only shows up as USA. Ran persistant pings to all hops  side by side logging them with %date% and %time% writing to logs and this IP is where it all starts to go bad. Everything there on to google shows bad as a result of this intermittently bad hop.

Comcast support was just about worthless trying to explain to them that there is no problem with my home or them, but that there was a problem further up their ISP backbone, their ISP provider.

Google also has no contacts for this type of reporting. Would be nice if there was a place to contact to tell them to add this IP to an exclusion hop list so that its not used and instead an alternate route hop. Or let alone be able to contact the owner of this IP to see if they can resolve the issues in some manner.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Computer_Commando]

Query the modem, usually:  http://192.168.100.1/
Report back signals.  SNR and power levels and the ones to concentrate on, but just post the whole page.
There may be no problem with your home, but Upstream and Downstream signals can indicate problems between your home and the CMTS (i.e., Head End or cable plant).

Comcast 1st line CSR's are worthless trying to explain any of this to, don't waste your time, however they can see your modem signals as well as you can.  Comcast techs monitor and contribute to Broadband Reports.