phoenixgarage.org

First off: I apologize, for both my attitude and demeanor during our email conversations. Yes, the issue was at my end, but one can easily see how I was mistaken - it wasn't so much that I was wrong (which I was), but that I didn't have all of the information, either. Read on...

I have Cox High Speed Internet here at the office (my residential abode, in other words) of phoenixgarage.org. My wife (Tanja) and I have enjoyed it for many years, initially getting it when it was still known as "Cox@Home". The original cable modem I used was a LanCity "foot warmer" model, which was a beast of a device:

LanCity Cable Modem Questions or Comments?

Yep - that sucker got so hot the case was designed as a heatsink! Seemed like it weighed half a ton...

Right after the Hollywood writer's strike was over, my wife and I found we weren't watching television as much as we used to. Part of it was due to the lack of good stuff on during the strike (we found a few new programs interesting, such as "Chuck"), but a larger part of it was seeing that was on wasn't really that intellectually stimulating, nor worth the amount of time it took to watch the programs. We figured, if anything, most of the good stuff would come out on DVD, and we could buy it or use Netflix to watch it, if we really wanted to.

So, we unplugged our Digital STB (set-top box), took it down to Cox, and turned it in. We disconnected the digital cable, and had our high speed internet service boosted to the "Premier" level (advertised as 15 Mbps down/1 Mbps up (new window) - which is the highest speed Cox offers residential users here in Arizona). We left our basic cable service intact, thinking we might want it to watch something (news or PBS).

After these changes were put into place, I browsed to SPEEDTEST.NET (new window) and tested my new connection. It tested out perfectly:

Speedtests 1 Questions or Comments?

Note the tests between March 16th, 2008 and May 8th, 2008 - with only a few outlier data points, most of the tests were consistent in showing level of service that indicated "Premier" level service, as requested; 9-13 Mbps download speeds, and 0.9-1 Mbps upload speeds.

Between March and May, we noticed that we had barely even turned the television on, let alone watched it. So, we decided to drop our basic cable service. We called it in, and Cox told us that the order was in place to disconnect the cable service. So, we waited...and waited. A few days went by, and on checking the television, we were still getting basic cable. Then, a couple more days went by, and basic cable was shut off completely. My guess is that Cox had to have a "truck roll" performed (where they send out one of their contractors or service trucks), to put in a frequency trap to disable my basic cable service.

Once that was completed, I decided to run some more speed tests, to make sure my high speed internet still functioned properly. It was then that I noticed problems:

Speedtests 2 Questions or Comments?

My download speed had dropped, in a major way. While my upload speeds seemed unaffected, my download speed was nearly halved, down to 6-7 Mbps. This was not the level of premier service I was paying for, and I was certain it was because of the truck roll (more specifically, the trap they had installed) to disable my basic cable service.

So, I emailed Cox technical support. I won't reproduce the entire conversation here, suffice to say that it has been a couple of weeks of back-n-forth emails, in many cases with me being very frustrated over why they didn't re-roll a truck to check the trap installed (or whatever they did to remove my basic cable service). They kept insisting it was on my end of the system. I kept insisting that it had to do with the truck roll, but obediently I tried everything they had me try (with the exception of hooking my workstation directly up to the cable modem, with no router/firewall between the two - I can imagine a Windows user becoming p0w3nd very quickly - did I mention, I also run Linux?). I must have rebooted my system more times in the past two weeks than I have in the past 6 months. I said some scathing things, and probably made an ass out of myself more than once. I did promise if I found it was on my end, I would issue this apology.

Cox HSI Support eventually noticed something: They told me my modem was performing properly, but that it was an unsupported model (new window). My modem was a Motorola SB4100, which I had purchased from Cox several years ago to replace my original "foot warmer" cable modem, when they upgraded to a new DOCSIS standard, if I remember right. They recommended that I update my cable modem to a supported model, before continuing with troubleshooting. So, yesterday, I went out, spent close to $80.00 at Fry's Electronics, and purchased a Linksys CM100, which was on their list of approved cable modems.

After an interesting setup sequence (my home phone is through Vonage, and I don't own a cell phone. I had to leave the old modem hooked up for phone service, call Cox, and have a service rep there put in the MAC address for the new modem - which reset the cable modem and disconnected the Vonage service, dumping me off the call - but I warned the guy this would happen), my new modem was connected, and I tested my service. Success! Plus a very big foot in my mouth:

Speedtests 3 Questions or Comments?

Wow - 18.5 Mbps down/3.6 Mbps up! This is only one data point (the old values no longer are available to me - likely because I either have a new IP address), so we'll have to see how everything works over the long term, but I my speed is now back up to where is should be. However, the question still lingers - what happenned?

This, I have no answer to yet, and hopefully Cox HSI Support can offer me one. I suspect that the old cable modem (the Motorola SB4100) worked on a different set of frequencies or something, and when Cox did the truck roll to disconnect my basic cable, the trap they installed just fubar'd the modem, and it dropped to a different set of frequencies or whatnot that only allowed the lower speeds that I was experiencing. I would be willing to bet that Cox, rather than alerting their customers that they would all need to upgrade, they just decided to deal with the issues as they cropped up (indeed, I am likely an outlier on their system - I mean, how many people have the highest level high speed internet service through thier cable company without having all the other digital packages - ie, digital cable w/HDTV and phone service?). Had I kept the basic cable, I probably wouldn't have ever known.

So - I think this issue was more of a lack of communication between Cox Communications and their high speed internet customers. Yes, it was on my end - but the real explanation had to do more with how their end is set up.

Oh, well - it is fixed now - my apologies, guys!