I am making some assumptions in this post, but I am fairly confident my assessment is accurate. Recently (4-6 months ago), Charter upgraded the my area (and likely the entire region) to support Ultramax 60 Mbps internet speed. Right around that time my home internet performance began to suffer. Not bandwidth loss (which was 30 Mbps down, 4 Mbps up) but packet loss -- Netflix errors, slow page loads, poor VOIP quality (Skype, Google+, T-Mobile WiFi). This is really hard to see, although you should be able to see it using www.pingtest.net (related to www.speedtest.net). I probably over-engineered my troubleshooting process, installing Wireshark, Snort, and Splunk, and then connecting directly to the cable modem. I saw a lot of interesting traffic, thankfully nothing malicious, but I also did see many dropped packets. When I contacted Charter they made me go through the standard reboot/troubleshooting protocol they use. After doing all of they they said, "Oh, your modem is not capable of supporting the current circuit speed. That's why the performance is bad. Would you like us to send you a new modem?" Me: "Yes," I said, "4 months ago. How is it that you upgrade your network and know that many of your customers are going to be impacted in this way and not notify them?" Charter: "I understand your frustration, sir. I will send you the modem so you can have it next week." Me: "No thank you. I'll go buy one tonight for $90 and avoid the $7/month fee you charge me to NOT maintain my modem." That is crazy. So, off to the store I went (Staples has it locally for only $10 more than Amazon). They had it in stock, I got home, plugged it in, hit "install.charter.com" and was up and running. Perfect. Not only did the packet drops cease, and I was able to have a VOIP call on my T-Mobile phone that was crystal clear (has never been like that), but my bandwidth went up to 45 Mbps, and my overall latency dropped (was consistently around 60-70ms, now 15-25ms). Well worth the upgrade, I just think Charter needs to work on their customer service. I hope this helps. |