drinkingbird
Part of the Furniture
D3.1 is already alive and well here, has been for a long time. In fact they're telling people with D3.0 that they need to swap their equipment now. D4/Full duplex is going to be a big challenge. Every node has to be replaced, some of the fiber will too, head end stuff, amplifiers, etc.
At the time of my issue, I had Cacti (SNMP monitoring based on RRDtool) running which was always watching for packet loss anyway along with dozens of other things on my network and servers. When I began noticing the issue, I started overlaying graphs of outdoor temperature, humidity, ping times, signal levels from the modem, anything I could think of that would potentially correlate. In reality it was just during times of high usage in the neighborhood (which I obviously don't have access to monitor but it was pretty obvious that it was every day in the morning and after work). But it did end up that my providing the packet loss graphs to them allowed them to make that correlation and finally admit there was an issue on their end (after coming out and replacing literally everything at my house). They then drove the entire segment and found a power line laying on their coax a few streets away. The ETA for a fix was "none at this time, we are at the mercy of the electric company". Luckily FIOS had just moved in, I switched, made CC refund me for the 3 months of unreliable connectivity, and have never looked back.
Their first few tiers of tech support had no idea what to do with me. I guess they aren't used to dealing with engineers. Finally got through to the manager of the local techs/linesman and he knew what to do and where to look.
One good side effect was they ran RG11 drops from the pole to my house and left me the rest of the 1000' spool. Since they only use that for aerial runs I had to peel off the steel messenger wire but no big deal. So both my units now have that running from the FIOS ONTs to the coax splitters then RG6 from there to the rooms (for TV service). Thanks for that comcast
I will say I do like all the Comcast and FIOS techs that I've encountered. Around here, they do seem to know pretty well what they're doing, and will even listen to input if you know about something they don't. Always friendly too. I grew up blue collar so I guess I'm just used to that rapport (and the BS they have to deal with from people who look down on them). When they find out I typically run wires for people or troubleshoot their stuff they'll "accidentally" forget some spools of wire, nice splitters, etc.
