Need to cut back on the number of internet service interruptions

[rahlquist]

Hello,

I realize that no provider is 100% perfect but I have a long standing hate hate relationship with charter in my area. The problem is I work from home via vpn and my wife works from home with her own small business. If our connection is down, we arent working. We pay charter for business internet but we have to be approaching 20 days a year with limited or no work because of their inability to correct issues. The wife is unhappy so its time for an alternative or backup provisioning.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Here is the one set of issues, her machine and her local file server need to remain easily accessible so just buying a cell modem usb dongle doesnt quite cut it. Also I would like to keep the cost down some. Maybe another $150 on HW and less than $45/mo for services on top of the service we already pay for. Has anyone else had to do something similar??

 

[netwalker0099]

Get a router with WAN Failover and use a 4g/3g modem as a secondary route. I know pfSense supports this config. You can build a pfSense router from an old desktop or purchase one (https://store.pfsense.org/VK-T40E/) all devices purcahsed from pfSense come with a year of commercial support so if you can't get the failover configured they can do it for you.

Article about config'ing in pfSense.

https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Multi-WAN_2.0

Support 4G/3G devices

https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Known_Working_3G-4G_Modems

 

[thiggins]

+1 netwalker's suggested for router with WWAN failover. Look at Cradlepoint routers. Easier than DIY with pfSense.

 

[htismaqe]

I second Tim's suggestion to look at Cradlepoint. Very quick and easy to setup. Works very well for LTE failover.

 

[stevech]

Hello,

I realize that no provider is 100% perfect but I have a long standing hate hate relationship with charter in my area. The problem is I work from home via vpn and my wife works from home with her own small business. If our connection is down, we arent working. We pay charter for business internet but we have to be approaching 20 days a year with limited or no work because of their inability to correct issues. The wife is unhappy so its time for an alternative or backup provisioning.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Here is the one set of issues, her machine and her local file server need to remain easily accessible so just buying a cell modem usb dongle doesnt quite cut it. Also I would like to keep the cost down some. Maybe another $150 on HW and less than $45/mo for services on top of the service we already pay for. Has anyone else had to do something similar??

What is the diagnosis of the cause? Is the modem losing lock (lights are abnormal during an outage)? And we assume it's NOT your WiFi.

 

[rahlquist]

What is the diagnosis of the cause? Is the modem losing lock (lights are abnormal during an outage)? And we assume it's NOT your WiFi.

LOL Thank you for that assumption. I am running a Netgear R7000 with a Kong build of DD-wrt that is rock solid. In my wifes office I have an ASUS RT-N12B1 because due to the architecture of the house my signal that reaches that room stinks. As for the broadband side of the house...

I have been with Charter for BB service for several years now. My wife started a home business 2 years ago and I work from home as I mentioned so I had to upgrade my service from residential to business. We had virtually no problems on residential service but we were blowing through the unenforced caps so I figured the business upgrade was a good idea.

Their first step was to replace my owned Cisco modem with an SMC pile of crap that I was 100% locked out of, couldn't even see noise states or a status page. After that it was all downhill. ( a lot of this is documented on dslreports will include links at the end )

Earlier this year a lot of the issues were related to the spectrum upgrade Charter rolled out. It introduced a compatibility issue with the SMC modems on business accounts. They never announced this and then eventually they quietly started replacing them during service calls with a new Ubee model that handles the issues well. The issue caused brief disconnects in the 2 -6 minute range multiple times a day. Since then (mid August) my line has been solid, until last week. The weather changed and temps dropped from the 80's - 60's to the 60's-30's and then connection issues started appearing. The weather may not be related or it may just accentuate an existing issue. I have been told by someone in the loop (paraphrasing) "your upstream snr is below 25db. It has been above 30db. This is due to a noise issue. A bbt tech or a contractor is not going to fix this issue. Have them roll a system tech to track this noise.since you are a business customer keep on them until the noise is fixed.Your node's name is XXXXXX. It will take a system tech in the hub(otn) and a tech at the node to find this." The person who told me this has been an incredible help in getting issues fixed, unfortunately he cant officially help because Charter killed their online support a while back.

I have escalated to management levels several times. The management seems willing to help, the techs seem willing to help, its when I cross the boundary from the contracted techs (guys who sub for Charter) and the people who control the local line trucks, that I meet a butt-load of resistance.

I understand, it costs money for them to support their customers but at this point, with the number of service calls they have had to my residence over my business account I can all but guarantee that I am a huge cost for them, and all I am trying to do is keep a connection working. Heck the one time I had the opportunity to talk to a line truck guy he was awesome, explained to me they were replacing the entire amplifier with a new, not refurbished one after a line crew had replaced a dead amp with a refurbished board in the old housing earlier in the day that was malfunctioning. So the techs get it, the line people get it, its just somewhere in the office they don't. One of the reasons I haven't raised a bigger stink is the lack of alternatives and the fact that in the past Charter has a record of cancelling accounts when they cant make people quit complaining.


Links to issue posts in chronological order.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28510552-HSI-RANT-Charter-Business-Internet
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28687670-HSI-For-gods-sake-whats-it-take-to-get-good-service
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r29233286-HSI-Line-issue-packet-loss-here-we-go-again
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r29...ps-on-daily-basis-again-modem-wifi-led-blinks
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r29...form-70s-to-40-s-and-poof-here-goes-my-speeds.

 

[stevech]

SMC is a company I know. They're old but always too small to do it right on anything. Not enough R&D $$$.

I work at home full time. Have TimeWarner's residential service. 35Mbps down and 5Mbps up. It's just fine. I have no need for a static public IP. Maybe some sort of VPN issue? I used to use VPN from home to my ex-employer for servers and their Avaya VoIP from the PBX. But all I ever did with the employer was their email server - and for that I didn't need VPN as MS Outlook supports SSL connections and the company accepts that. Maybe you have a web server at home? As do I, but I use a dynamic DNS service for my domain name. However, in 15 years, Time Warner has changed my public IP address maybe 3 times. So I can just update the domain registrar's database if I want an update faster than DDNS does. that's why I've never paid for a static IP. And you can usually get a static IP for $$$ without going business. Just have to be persistent with the sales dweebs.

From Time Warner I've had Motorola DOCSIS modems for years and with DOCSIS 3 now, I have Arris. And digital phone on a second Arris so I can dork with the modem / my router (Cradlepoint) and not affect the phone.

For years I had trouble with the DOCSIS cable modem losing upstream lock. Due to a too weak signal on the main drop from Time Warner. Unfixable for practical reasons - coax very old, goes 150' through neighboring attics in town houses. Finally, I ran a new coax from my house to a different place and I abandoned the old crappy coax. Now the signal (on modem at 192.168.100.1) never falters unlike using the old coax.
That's why I asked if your modem's US or DS lights are irregular when you have a service interruption.

Also, I rent not own the modem - so Time Warner can't play the blame game.

 

[rahlquist]

SMC is a company I know. They're old but always too small to do it right on anything. Not enough R&D $$$.

Yeah I cant really blame SMC, the changes Charter made obviously cause a problem that either SMC couldnt or wouldnt fix via firmware. They should have been up front and announced they were working on a fix instead of me having to get info from an insider.

I work at home full time. Have TimeWarner's residential service. 35Mbps down and 5Mbps up. It's just fine. I have no need for a static public IP. Maybe some sort of VPN issue? I used to use VPN from home to my ex-employer for servers and their Avaya VoIP from the PBX. But all I ever did with the employer was their email server - and for that I didn't need VPN as MS Outlook supports SSL connections and the company accepts that. Maybe you have a web server at home? As do I, but I use a dynamic DNS service for my domain name. However, in 15 years, Time Warner has changed my public IP address maybe 3 times. So I can just update the domain registrar's database if I want an update faster than DDNS does. that's why I've never paid for a static IP. And you can usually get a static IP for $$$ without going business. Just have to be persistent with the sales dweebs.

Yeah the vpn is not the issue. As for IP I do have a free dns provider pointing at my IP but thats never been an issue for me because its non critical use.

For the connection issue, in the past the case has been the connection goes south and no machine on our network works. The current issues I am having tend to be of the line noise variety, the harder I try to use the line the less it works. So doing things like running a speed test at speedtest.net the connection starts fine but eventually drops in speed and the upload test doesn't run at all. Connecting to things like Facebook (where my wife does most of her work) the page starts to come up and then stops never completing its load process.

From Time Warner I've had Motorola DOCSIS modems for years and with DOCSIS 3 now, I have Arris. And digital phone on a second Arris so I can dork with the modem / my router (Cradlepoint) and not affect the phone.

For years I had trouble with the DOCSIS cable modem losing upstream lock. Due to a too weak signal on the main drop from Time Warner. Unfixable for practical reasons - coax very old, goes 150' through neighboring attics in town houses. Finally, I ran a new coax from my house to a different place and I abandoned the old crappy coax. Now the signal (on modem at 192.168.100.1) never falters unlike using the old coax.
That's why I asked if your modem's US or DS lights are irregular when you have a service interruption.

Also, I rent not own the modem - so Time Warner can't play the blame game.

My first modem w/ charter was a Arris, then I bought the Cisco which had not one issue. Then when I upgraded to business I was forced onto the SMC and it was tons of issues after that. The current Ubee has been rock solid and my only complaint about it really is its huge. 9" x 9" x 1.75" approx. So its their modem. My line noise and loss between my modem and the lawn wart is minimal, some guys have referred to it as virtually perfect. I think the real issue is there is some intermittent noise in the area, from some sort of radio transmission, that under normal circumstances is fine, but when things get strained (like high humidity and temp changes) then the two items cause a failure. This is why I think they cant find the issue because it never fully presents itself between 10am and 5pm the times they work. In the past when speaking with Charter business escalations I have requested detailed line monitoring etc only to be told the only line monitoring they do is the 5 min check to see if a connection is up and whatever logs are produced by they equipment. He told me there is nothing they can do to "watch a line and monitor for extended error information".

As I tried to post this message I dropped for the second time today. Called and they said they do see the modem 'flapping' so they have started a new ticket. Since if the service truck they were supposed to have monitor the line issues does not report back to a specific ticket (WTF) they don't know if they have come out and done that work or not.