Hi,
Hoping someone can help me navigate RCN's support. I've had their Gig service for approximately 4 years now. I live on the Upper West Side, Manhattan. For the past 4 years, I may not have been getting the full Gig speed at times, but never had connectivity issues. The past 3 weeks, connectivity drops many times per day/evening. When it drops, cable modem lights don't change....but I noticed on the Merlin site, some of the downstream power values go from green to red.
I'm not a network guy, but I've been in Finance/IT Engineering for almost 20 years, so I know plenty and I know the issue is not on my LAN. Had a tech appointment yesterday, 3/14. Tech was super nice....and he laughed a little and told me something is going on in the area. He said in the past 4 weeks, everyone within a 20 block radius of 96th ST and Broadway has been having this same issue. He said it's impacting buildings he NEVER has issues with, and specifically said it's worse the closer you get to Riverside....(I live on Amsterdam, about 5 blocks north of 96th)
He swapped out my CM8200A, even though he didn't see any issues with it. He said that's how he's been handling these issues.....and he said eventually the issue will work its way up so that a senior tech starts to investigate the node/regional equipment outside of the customer premises.
I can't believe his manager has been wasting resources for a month...sending techs on calls and swapping out cable modems, when the issue appears to be outside of the home/apartment. I asked a million questions and had to bite my tongue...he was agreeing but said that's just the way things work.....
I called RCN back last night, when the issue occurred again. The support person on the phone told me they can schedule another appointment, BUT, if the tech doesn't find anything wrong, I have to pay for the service call. I'm not cheap, but nothing has changed and everything checks out/appears fine inside my apartment. No splitter, etc....I'm not okay with paying for a service call that won't yield any results/improved service/issue resolution.
Anyway, if it's related to utilization/capacity, I can only imagine things will get much worse now that schools are shutdown and everyone is working from home. Normally, I'd assume that capacity/utilization issues would cause slower speeds/latency, and not dropped connectivity....however, I'm guessing somewhere along the network there's a faulty piece of equipment that can't handle the recent additional utilization...anyone have any suggestions on how I can properly escalate this? Again, not necessarily just my problem, but the overall network/node issue to get the proper people to investigate?
No idea if the changing values on the Merlin page are even related. I'm attaching the Normal output, when there are no issues...and the dropped values, that I managed to access when my connection dropped a few nights ago. I'll try to get more recent ones, when the connectivity drops....in case it's needed.
Thanks, and sorry for the long post.
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