In their latest salvo against net neutrality which, judging from the most recent pronouncements of the FCC, is what the Obama Administration favors, there are a few things that the editors of the Wall Street Journal don’t seem to understand. The first is that the Internet service providers didn’t gain their positions under competitive systems. They did so through government franchises and monopoly power. They didn’t even develop or promote their own technologies. That was done for them by the government, too. They’re just reaping the profits.
The second thing is that consumers deserve to get what they pay for. The editors write:
The Wheeler cover story is that such antiquated rules are necessary to provide “net neutrality,†the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally and not blocked from reaching consumers—in other words, to allow the Internet to function pretty much as it does now.
but that’s not true. Nobody knows how the Internet actually functions now. Sure, you may be paying for a 10Mbps pipe but you don’t know for certain that you’re not being throttled twenty times a day. The providers are free to advertise one thing and deliver something completely different. They can throttle certain sites and leave others alone. They can throttle at certain times. And never tell you about any of it.
As I’ve written before in the 30 years I’ve lived in this house, I’ve lost telephone service twice, lost power a dozen times, and I lose my Internet connection on average about once a week. One of these things is not like the others and it darned well should be.
Just out of curiosity, are your power/phone/cable lines buried?
The modem could be the problem. It could be failing, or it could be an older standard they are no longer fully supporting. It might also need to be rebooted. The cable companies push updates to the modems, but they need to be rebooted to take effect.
You may need to connect directly once. I had my modem’s MAC address assigned to two accounts, and it would drop because they were fighting over it. Support kept telling me this was impossible until I got the right guy, and he removed it from the old account.
If it is just really slow, it might be the DNS servers, and you could change those. If you have changed them, you might change them back because they may be caching some data on the network.
On WiFi, allowing Windows to manage the connection was a bad idea. It would try to find the best signal, and it would drop the existing connection to test others. Windows 7 or 8 may be better, but it is probably best to use the manufacturer’s utility.
I have been with Cox for over ten years, and other than issues related to Katrina, I have not had any problems. If I could get rid of all the iCrap in my house, I would never have a problem.
It’s not the modem. My cable modem is less than a year old and I’ve got a spare. I also always check Comcast’s status and it’s always them. Basically, I don’t think they really give a damn.
Nothing’s buried. All are above ground.
I did have an issue one time, and I called them out. The guy decided to change the location on the splitter. He said one of them was the best. He also decided to drop in another line and change all the splitters. He said we had too many for only one main feeder cable.
Once he got finished, everything started working steadily, and if I recall correctly, it did not cost anything. He was from the Internet side, and that may have been the reason.