Just before we left for France, I noticed that our Internet speed had gotten awfully slow, and rebooting everything didn’t make a difference. I planned to call Comcast when we got home, but I didn’t have to – they sent me a message saying that they’d noticed a problem and helped me set up a tech visit.
The tech arrived today; we did a speed test on my office computer, which got 30Mbps downstream and about 40 upstream – I’m supposed to get nearly 1Gbps down and 40 up. The tech tried plugging the cable directly into his “meter” and got proper speeds – but he also found a lot of errors and variation in signal strength level, so he wanted to investigate more.
He had me plug my computer directly into the modem, and I got the speeds I’m supposed to get; then I plugged the computer into a switch plugged into the modem and got the same fast performance. It sure looked like my router was the problem.
The tech surprised me by not closing the ticket and blaming my router; instead, he went out and looked at the drop and the wire. A few minutes later, I noticed him stringing a new piece of cable outside.
He came back and had me re-run the test with the modem in circuit – and all was well.
He told me that squirrels had chewed on the cable, so he replaced it; he also told me to keep an eye on the speed and if it starts to drop, let Comcast know.
I’m impressed.
Things are still working fine this evening; I have lots of offsite backups happening, so I’m not surprised that the available upstream speed is lower than before.