Intermittent Loss of Connection (Multiple times per day)

sclowater
Grasshopper

I've been struggling with a previous issue of an intermittent loss of connection multiple times per day for the past 9 weeks or so.  It started with maybe once or twice an evening while online gaming and I initially attributed it to a temporary communication issue with the game servers but the problem has persisted and worsened.  This is entirely on a wired connection.


I'll start at the beginning of the current woes, strap in, because this is going to be a long one.  Approximately about a year ago I upgraded to the 300 mbit service and was told I needed a new XB6 modem and that I could swing on into the retail location and pick one up.  As the customer rep was going through the motions to provision the modem she stopped abrubtly and told me she couldn't actually give me the modem as it required a service call and that she had gone too far in the process and couldn't go back (I had a grandfathered package).  The issue was that I had the old gateway system and apparently that was a problem that required a tech (even though I had confirmed multiple times with the online support that I could self install, etc).  After a ton of wrangling she ended up returning my old modem to me with the assurance that everything was good to go.  Long story short, it wasn't and took about a week for me to get my services restored with at least 1 tech visit.


With that resolved I had my new service and things were ok, I was getting maybe 225-250mbit down which was more than before and depending on time of night I chalked it up to the time of day I was testing.  This is when the full outages started to happen.  Randomly, throughout the day I would lose both internet and phone service for anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes.  Upon contacting support they put a rush service call out as the loss of phone was considered a safety issue.  The tech immediately asked where I had the line booster as my signals were very high.  I assured him that there was no such thing on my line and through a variety of splitters and filters (including a 9db on my phone line) he brought the signals to what he considered within spec.  When I questioned him why some of my channels remained unlocked on my xb6 he responded that he didn't know much about it and that everything was within spec so it should all be fine.  Speeds again were alright (225ish) but I'm going through my own router, etc and was willing to accept that there might be something in the mix on my side.


Fast forward about a year.  Things had been ok, no real complaints and then the connection losses were occurring again.  I wasn't losing phone so while it was somewhat similar it wasn't quite the same.  At first it was a few times a night a few nights a week but it was getting to the point where it was getting extremely annoying to work remotely during the day or game at night.


The Saturday before Canada Day I lost both internet and phone a few times that morning/afternoon.  I contacted customer support and they scheduled a tech for the following Friday to check things out.  The tech arrived on the Friday and was convinced that there was definitely something wrong with the line since the signal was so strong and didn't feel like the previous tech should have needed all of the filters, etc (turns out it was actually the same tech from the year before). I mentioned the fact that I had the old gateway system and that it always seems to be some sort of red flag and questioned whether it could be an issue and he assured me it's no problem.  There was apparently 2 lines coming into the box at the house so he swapped lines and removed the additional filters and changed the splitter configuration and showed me that the signals were green.  He was convinced that was the cause of my problems and that I wouldn't have any further issues.


Friday night the connection was ok, 1 drop due to the tech support team processing his request to remote reset the modem after he left.  He called back to let me know that's what happened as I was about to contact support again.  All was well, until the next day.  The following Saturday I was getting disconnected about every 30 minutes with the same type of symptom.  My router would show initial 25% packet loss and then go all the way to 100% for a few minutes.  If I was in voice chat with someone at the time I could hear them but it was like my upstream was completely dead and they couldn't hear me.  After about a minute I'd lose my connection entirely and then the packet loss would stop and everything would come back up.  While the event was occurring if I did a ping test from the modem to shaw.ca it would show the same results, up to 100% packet loss (albeit for the simplistic 4 packet sample it allows you to do)


The problem persisted throughout the day so I bypassed my router and connected directly to the modem to see if the problem would occur and sure enough, at 3am full packet loss and loss of connection.  The next day I contacted online support to explain my problem and since the signals at the time looked good (never mind the fact that I had a full on disconnect when I was talking to the first person) all they would offer was to reboot the modem. (i.e. no help at all).  I asked if they had a replacement modem at the Sunridge location and they confirmed.  At this point, most of everything else was checked/replaced and I read that the Technicolor modems were giving better results with similar issues I was hoping that it might fix the issue.  Drove to the retail location and they were happy to swap out the modem (ended up with a Technicolor).  I explicitly asked if this will be an issue with activation since I had the old gateway and was told no, it's all good to go.  She was also proactive and booked a senior tech to come out by Friday to make sure things were good.

Got home, plugged the modem in, initially got an IP and then after I switched it to bridge mode it wouldn't sync and the light would stay red.  Multiple reboots, reset attempts I picked up the phone.  Initial rep couldn't even bring up my account and transferred me directly to support.  I gave the rep some background and he said he couldn't see my modem from his end and to give him a few minutes.  After a bit of time he came back asking for the serial number, I read him the serial number off the receipt and he said that wasn't right.  So I picked up the physical modem and double checked, still wasn't right not even the same format.  I asked him what piece of hardware he thought I had in my hand and he told me the old XB6 model.  I told him again that it was swapped out that afternoon.

This is when my blood pressure shot through the roof.  I was informed that because I have the old gateway system that it requires a tech to come install.  In addition, the first scheduled appointment was in 6 days, was that acceptable?  I quickly informed him that no, it was not acceptable and that I'd like to speak to a supervisor.  After about 90 minutes of us playing the "supervisor is busy it will be another 10 minutes" game he was finally able to switch the serial number instead of treating it as a new provision and the system allowed him to activate.

Initial performance was good, speeds were actually better.  On the 600 mbit service with the old modem I would maybe get 350-400 down and with the Technicolor I was sometimes hitting 500 so it was an improvement.  Since the problem packet loss problem isn't constant I wasn't sure if the problem was solved or not.

The problem continued throughout the week so I started doing some more reading and trying to track some diagnostics to see if I could determine any pattern.  I knew the senior tech was still coming on the Friday so I wanted to eliminate some variables and give him as much information as possible.  (I'll follow up with the data at the end).

The senior tech came and switched around some of the splitter config, came to the same conclusion as me that it made things worse and put it back.  At this point he states that he didn't think it was an issue at the house and felt that the problem might be at the node and that there wasn't anything I could do once it hit my house to have a positive effect.  He stated that he was going to check things in the neighborhood and talk to his specialists as a followup.  It was friday after 6 so he indicated that it wouldn't be until Monday where he'd hear anything back which is reasonable so I left it at that.  That was July 12th.  I haven't had any sort of followup since.  Friday the 19th I contacted support after yet another outage and asked if there was any further information that they could provide and was told that there was nothing on my file and they'd put a note for the tech to contact me.  It's now been a few days and nothing.

When things are good, the signals on my modem look like this.  However, note that I still have a high number of uncorrectable codewords (these spike when I hit the full connection loss)

The packet loss looks like this:

And displayed as a ping trace:

When I hit the full on packet loss the signals on my modem look like this:

Once the packet loss stops it will typically go back to the original signal levels but I had one occurrence over the weekend where they didn't come back up and was getting poor speed tests, especially on upload

I had this batch of loss on Saturday night and my uncorrectable codewords are again spiking

tl;dr
Intermittent full loss of internet multiple times a day (100% packet loss at the first node)

Entirely wired, no WIFI
Same sort of issue 1 year ago, tech visit somewhat corrected until about 2 months ago.
Ping test from modem shows packet loss when problem occurs
Directly connected to modem shows same issue
1 tech visit to redo splits, problem persists
Modem was swapped for new Technicolor
Yet another customer support fail around self install vs. needing tech visit
Problem still persists
Senior tech visit indicates that he thinks the problem is at the node
1.5 weeks later problem still persists and no followup.

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47 Replies

Re: Intermittent Loss of Connection (Multiple times per day)

shaw-tony
Moderator
Moderator

Hey sclowater,

Thank you for your detailed post. I am sorry for the frustrations you've been experiencing. At this point, a technician will need to investigate the node or connections from the street equipment to your home as the problems persist or there may be wiring that is submerged in water (underground) that is causing issues. Please shoot us a DM on Twitter or Facebook to get a service technician booked.

Cheers,

Tony | Community Mod.

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Re: Intermittent Loss of Connection (Multiple times per day)

sclowater
Grasshopper

shaw-tony‌ do I just reference this post for context?  This type of activity may already be underway I'd really just like some acknowledgement that it hasn't slipped through the cracks.  I've been with Shaw for almost 20 years now in Calgary and have generally been very happy with the service but the fiber optic cable from you know who dangling next to my panel is looking more attractive daily.

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Re: Intermittent Loss of Connection (Multiple times per day)

shaw-tony
Moderator
Moderator

 yes absolutely! We want to make sure the signal is solid to your home. I appreciate your long-standing business with us and the patience to get this fixed.

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Re: Intermittent Loss of Connection (Multiple times per day)

sclowater
Grasshopper

Ok, so interestingly enough I had the blip where my signals don't come back up again and noticed on my upstream that I have a number of channels that didn't actually lock.

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Re: Intermittent Loss of Connection (Multiple times per day)

shaw-tony
Moderator
Moderator

 hmm, if you reboot the modem does the channels lock up again?

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Re: Intermittent Loss of Connection (Multiple times per day)

sclowater
Grasshopper

shaw-tony‌ that's the fun part, if I just leave it running then it'll correct itself again, i.e. The next time my connection drops the signal is good again.

I heard back back from the Twitter dm this morning and apparently the tech didn't find anything wrong, signals were good, etc message this morning was questioning the router setup.

 they followed up almost immediately saying that there's a signal noise investigation planned for the node.  I'm curious on whether or not that stemmed from my report or if there was an independent complaint.

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Re: Intermittent Loss of Connection (Multiple times per day)

shaw-tony
Moderator
Moderator

 thanks for reaching out to our Twitter team. Our system flagged an area issue which they are currently still investigating. Hopefully, it will be fixed soon!!

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Re: Intermittent Loss of Connection (Multiple times per day)

sclowater
Grasshopper

Things were relatively stable last night, tonight not so much.

Actually, it's been pretty spotty all day today, I had maybe one full outage but I was dropping packets at the first hop and beyond enough that I could notice in my remote session.

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Re: Intermittent Loss of Connection (Multiple times per day)

shaw-tony
Moderator
Moderator

 I checked the area and everything should be good now. Our engineers have also cleared the original noise report.

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