Major packet loss again in North Vancouver

[bdobson]

Since Thursday my Internet connection in North Vancouver has been dreadful, again. The last time it just seemed to "go away" after a home visit that accomplished nothing and multiple chats with support who did nothing. I would love to be able to play Diablo 4 this weekend, or any online game it's not restricted to them, but that's impossible. The tech on the chat said my signal was fine, speed is fine, nothing they can do. I asked if I could could be put in but they were denied and not allowed to put it in. I have a tech coming on Tuesday, to do what I'm not sure as the modem reads as having no issues. 

I've reset the modem, they reset the modem with no changes. 

If you check the 4th hop, its ping gets as bad as 292ms. This packet loss will go sometimes as high as 50%. This happened suddenly, again, on Thursday of this week. What is a tech going to do about this?

[rstra]

@bdobson  A technician coming out is a waste of time for everyone. 

[bdobson]

True, but I have no other real option other than to move to Telus and I really don't want to do that as I'm hoping to bundle my phone+internet+tv when the Rogers thing is completed. However, if this keeps happening and nothing keeps getting done. I get that it's difficult, this isn't an easy thing sometimes to figure out at which point is happening. 

What's strange is the TV signal, hard line into the modem, is 99.9% okay, it's mostly my computer, game consoles and phone that are bad.

[appleMacTech]

Our Internet connection in North Vancouver has been dreadful, too, See my post at:

https://support.shaw.ca/t5/internet-discussions/internet-constantly-disconnecting/td-p/62620

I've talked to numerous "customer service" reps. The first one (let's call him "Moe") assured me that there was, in fact, a problem somewhere in North Vancouver and that a "truck was being dispatched". He was adamant. Moe said "many people are facing this issue". And someone from the truck was supposed to call me (this is funny -- seriously. it's like a 3 Stooges episode). No truck ever came out and nobody ever called me. I honestly thought I had dialed the wrong number when I called "tech support" that first time and got through to a McDonalds employee who decided to play a practical joke on me.

The next 3 or 4 "customer service" reps I dealt with by phone/chat knew nothing about a problem in North Vancouver. Each one of them said there was no such thing.

Then "Curley" (5th "customer service" rep) told me we had a signal strength issue and was dispatching a technician to our home. A technician came out a few days later and said we had no signal strength issues whatsoever. He replaced our XB7 gateway with a new (used) one and promised to call me the following Monday to follow up. He never did that. 

And guess what... nothing has changed to this moment. We still have dreadful Internet. My best guess at this point (I'm a computer tech with many years of experience) is that there IS a problem in North Vancouver. So what do you do? You **bleep** in the shoe and give it to the teacher at a half past two. That's all you can do when you deal with Shaw. And once the Rogers takeover is done, you switch to Telus, as painful as it will be changing all of your e-mail addresses and so on and so forth. It's inevitable. I am so fed up with Shaw that I'm surprised I'm sitting here typing this.

Good luck with these knuckleheads. I give up. Whoop, whoop, whoop. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

[bdobson]

I don't want to be too negative to the people I've chatted with, I believe they're doing everything they can do that they know how or have access to do. However, I get the impression that aside from going through a flow chart there's nothing else they can do. This is unfortunate, I remember the days (long ago now) when it seemed the people you were chatting with had far more access, were far more technical. It's not the fault of the front line support, but why is there not a tier 2 that you can be escalated to? 

Why is there no tier2, tier3? The person I chatted with outright told me there's "very little" they can do to troubleshoot an issue from their end.

Why is a message about a problem not escalated to become an issue. There very quick to say "there's no reported issue in your area" but what if I'm the one reporting the issue?

[mdk]

@bdobson -- a day later, I see nothing wrong with the path to Google in Seattle:

Tracing route to sea09s35-in-f14.1e100.net [142.251.215.238]

 7 12 ms 11 ms 11 ms    rc1wt-be40.wa.shawcable.net [66.163.68.18]
 8 15 ms 11 ms 12 ms    72.14.221.102
 9 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms    142.251.229.139
10 12 ms 10 ms 11 ms   142.251.241.137
11 18 ms 11 ms 10 ms   sea09s35-in-f14.1e100.net [142.251.215.238]

Trace complete.

For your output, how many of the 987 packets that you sent were measured at 292.4 milli-seconds? Just one?

There certainly is a large "standard deviation" in the distribution of the measured packets. That implies one "outlier" packet was encountered.

[mdk]

@bdobson -- What's strange is the TV signal, hard line into the modem, is 99.9% okay, it's mostly my computer, game consoles and phone that are bad.

The coaxial cable into your residence carries multiple "channels" -- TV, Internet, and Phone.

With Shaw TV, one channel connects from your home to the Shaw "Central Office" (with all the satellite dishes) in your city.

With Shaw Home Phone, one channel connects from your home to the same C.O.

With Shaw Internet, some of your Internet packets go across Canada, or cross the border into the USA (at Vancouver & Calgary & Winnipeg & Ontario) and maybe across the Atlantic to servers in Europe -- a much-longer "path" to their destination, with much more dependence all the segments along the route.

Example: 

Tracing route to www.lviv.ua / city.litech.lviv.ua [136.243.3.163]

  6 11 ms 10 ms 11 ms rc1bb-be20.vc.shawcable.net [66.163.75.245] 
  7 27 ms 27 ms 27 ms rc3so-be6-1.cg.shawcable.net [66.163.78.37]
  8 57 ms 58 ms 58 ms rc4ec-be13.il.shawcable.net [66.163.65.18]
  9 58 ms 58 ms 57 ms rc3ec-be6-1.il.shawcable.net [66.163.65.69]
10 73 ms 71 ms 71 ms rc1ny-be7.ny.shawcable.net [66.163.76.98]
11 75 ms 74 ms 75 ms ae4-1.nyk10.core-backbone.com [206.82.104.42]
12 156 ms 158 ms 157 ms ae6-2011.nbg40.core-backbone.com [80.255.14.246]

13 152 ms 150 ms 150 ms core-backbone.hetzner.com [5.56.20.254]

14 165 ms 165 ms 164 ms core24.fsn1.hetzner.com [213.239.252.234]
15 166 ms 166 ms 165 ms ex9k1.dc12.fsn1.hetzner.com [213.239.203.186]
16 165 ms 168 ms 166 ms srv4.sitegist.net [136.243.3.163]

Trace complete.

Vancouver -> Calgary -> Illinois -> New York -> Germany -> a co-located server outside of Ukraine.

Notice that packets leaving "nyk10" take a relatively-long time to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

[bdobson]

I don't want to get hung up on Diablo 4 and should have mentioned this happens now with it and every other online game I play, 4 tested. I also see my connections to ANY website have issues. I understand how this all works and it for what I can tell is a problem within the Shaw network itself which unless other people speak up about it won't get looked at. 

[Rod161]

My internet is down.  No tv.  This is BS. Calling Telus in am.  Vote with your feet, switch.  If they try and charge a dime for BS service.  Call me free legal work. 

[mdk]

@Rod161 -- posted 7 hours ago.   That would make it about 2 AM in Calgary (Shaw's headquarters).

Shaw does schedule, and announce, "overnight" outages:

           https://support.shaw.ca/t5/service-updates-outages/tkb-p/service-updates

Pick your region, to see if there was an announcement for your region.

P.S. In the past, Telus has offered me "buyout" money ($20/month for each remaining month on my two-year Value Plan) if I were to switch everything to Telus. I do not know if that offer is still active.