TWC Blues

So we have been having periodic problems with the home office high speed Internet connection.  Most times the connections are ok, but then we get annoying connection problems.  The speed tests look ok all except for the ping and upload speeds...  Here is one of my trace routes to Google.

The first TWC Business class technical support rep I talked to today at ~2pm (when we were not experiencing the problem) did some connection tests which had an unacceptable ping and packet loss, and then rebooted the modem and all looked ok.  She also had us disconnect our network from the modem and that looked better, so she suggested that the problem was on our end, but gave me a ticket number to pursue the problem if it came back.

I took a trip to Staples (since it was closest and I was time constrained) to purchase all new network equipment for the home office (and the rest of the home...).  I know that when network equipment starts to fail that the debugging process can be very long and frustrating to figure out which component has failed.  I also work with a company that as a best practice replace all of their networking gear every 2 years.  Since our routers switches, etc were older than this - in the 2-5 year range - I thought it best to replace all of it and take the opportunity to upgrade as we did this.

My preference is Netgear and so I purchased the Netgear N900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (WNDR4500) and several gigabit Netgear switches.  Once installed, everything looked good and I even got a thumbs up from the "game testers" ;) that the XBox connection had gone from 1 bar to 4 bars, which I took was a good thing...

Well tonight at ~9pm, the Internet connection problems again reared their ugly head.  I did get a very knowledgeable technical support rep this time and we spent time doing trace routes and other networky things.  That I had just replaced all of the networking gear with good equipment short circuited the 20 questions that are always asked about your own network (who really connects directly to the modem to do a speed test these days anyway...)  The one thing that stuck in my mind was that the Tech was having difficulty seeing that the bridge was working (we have a static IP address, so the modem is bridged to pass the public static IP address that is configured in our router).  End result is that it remains a puzzle and that it needs to be escalated to the next level of Tech support, so I will hopefully have more news tomorrow.

I'm thinking that our modem needs to be replaced or there is a problem with the node at the street.  Come to think of it, the neighbor across the street had TWC out a few days ago and they were checking the connections, decided the replace the modem, etc.  Maybe our street has a problem??

What has been your experience with TWC Business Class?