@Markham1 Your signal levels are not great. The good news is that your downstream (DOCSIS 3.1) OFDM channel is fine. The power level is (by Rogers' standards) within norms and the SNR is good. However, the power levels on your (DOCSIS 3.0) QAM channels are all over the place (the power levels on all channels should be as close to 0 dBmV as possible) and the SNR really should be 38 dB or better. The D3.0 channels shouldn't be carrying any traffic but are still indicative of the health of the cable plant.
Your upstream power levels are a bit high but not at the failure point.
Normally, you should be able to assess the health of your connection by looking at your error stats but yours are all displaying 0, for both the correctable and uncorrectable codewords error stats, and your unerrored codewords stats are WAY too low. It's also normal (and expected) to have a high number of correctable codewords errors on the downstream OFDM channel. (This also isn't necessarily indicative of any problem with your modem. From the format of your tables, it looks like you have an Ignite Gateway that was made by Arris. When I had an Arris XB6, it also displayed "all zeros" in the error stats.)
From the stats, it also looks like you are connected to the Rogers network through an old fibre node. My area also used to have signal levels that were a total train-wreck (that went unfixed by maintenance for months) until they upgraded the fibre node to newer technology.
@Markham1 wrote:
Thanks for the reply! So in this case, do I just have to wait till Rogers is able to update the node(?) in my neighbourhood? If that is so, then.. that is really unfortunate as I feel like I'm basically walking in the dark and waiting for it to get fixed.
I don't know what to say but two months ago, things were getting really, REALLY bad in my area of the neighbourhood. My modem was barely able to stay connected and others were in even worse shape than I was. I don't know dire the situation is for you but I was pretty much in the same boat, and totally in the dark as to when things might improve.
Some background: In the fall before the COVID lockdowns, Link-On fibre crews (Rogers contractors) STARTED to do some fibre work in one corner of my neighbourhood, then suddenly stopped. Apparently, my entire neighbourhood was slated to be upgraded to FTTH by the end of 2021. Since then, I have been looking for any signs that work may resume. 2022 came and went, but things started to look promising again when I saw another splice crew bringing more fibre down from a pole at the edge of my neighbourhood, and pink (F/O) survey markings indicating a future fibre route. However, my contacts in Rogers could not see any upcoming work on their construction schedules.
Then, in January, I saw a NuBuild crew (under contract to Rogers) installing an underground vault and cabinet right next to the old Rogers fibre node in my area. I asked again but my contacts still saw NOTHING in their schedules, even though there was crew with a water excavator digging away. The next day, after the first crew completed the rough-in work, another crew installed active equipment in that cabinet. The disappointing news was that I could see that they were installing a new DAA fibre node, not an OLT for FTTH, so it's highly unlikely that I will see FTTH anytime soon, at least not from Rogers... but at least there was a good chance that my service issues might get resolved soon. The next week, at 2 AM, another crew performed the cut-over to the new node.
I'm telling you all of this because if problems with your Internet service persist, keep reporting it. Ask Rogers tech support to also check the signal levels of your immediate neighbours to confirm whether there is a problem in your area or if the problem just affects you. If your signal levels are bad, get a tech dispatched and have them escalate to maintenance if they cannot fix the problem. Get your neighbours to call tech support if they are also experiencing service issues. If there are neighbourhood problems, and they go unfixed for quite some time, there a good chance that an infrastructure upgrade in your area is imminent. The frustrating thing, however, is that Rogers (almost certainly) won't confirm any serious problems in your neighbourhood. Also, the construction schedules for infrastructure upgrades require special access, so very few people within Rogers can even find out whether any infrastructure upgrades in your area are imminent.
@Markham1 wrote:
Oh man.. I really hope this is not the case. I guess I will keep having to look out for any positive changes.
I am still open to more insight if others have some!
From your username, I presume that you are in Markham, ON. The good news is that Rogers has awesome maintenance techs covering that area, that take a lot of pride in their work. If they are aware of ongoing issues, they will do everything that they can to get them resolved.
@Markham1 Just out of curiosity, what problems are you currently experiencing with your service? Frequent disconnects? Slow Internet? Packet loss? Ignite TV audio/video drop-outs?
You may have better luck (and a lot less frustration) sending a private message to @CommunityHelps and asking them for assistance. They have access to the same tools that the telephone tech support teams have, and more, and they can also dispatch field techs and escalate tickets to other support teams for investigation. They may also be able to tell you if there are any open maintenance tickets in your area. Best of all, you won't need to wait on the phone for an available agent, or work with agents who are under time pressure to resolve issues and move on the next call.
@Markham1 wrote:
From what I could tell, I have been having a mix of packet loss and ping spikes ranging from 30ms to 500ms+. Others in my household have also been experiencing similar issues as well.
Would I be better off trying to speaking with @CommunityHelps ?
The @CommunityHelps team may be a better bet. The problem with packet loss and latency spikes is that they could be caused by so many different things.
If the problems are in your neighbourhood, and you are getting a huge number of uncorrectable codewords error, or if there is excessive noise in the cable plant, or the power levels are out of spec, the issue will need to get escalated to a maintenance team for investigation and resolution.
If the problem is at the edge of the network, say due to an overloaded fibre node or at the CMTS, the support teams will be able to see this as well.
If the problem is in Rogers' core network, due to ongoing work that they are doing to improve resiliency, or to integrate new routing platforms to support their DAA and FTTH rollouts, the customer-facing tech support teams may not have any visibility into any issues that the network team is working to resolve.
In my case, when first I had issues with my service, I finally got an in-house Rogers tech dispatched back in late January/early February. (I picked a day when I knew that the outside temperature would make the line conditions and signal levels at their worst.) The field tech confirmed that there were no issues whatsoever between my modem and the pedestal on the street and confirmed the signal problems that I (and the entire neighbourhood) was seeing. That got escalated to maintenance, and the tech also gave me the opportunity to double-check the wording in the escalation ticket to ensure that the technical issues were described succinctly but accurately.
After I got migrated to the new node, my signal levels were perfect and I established a new baseline for my network performance.
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 9ms, Maximum = 28ms, Average = 17ms
No packet loss on a multi-hour ping test.
I knew that the new DAA/vCCAP gear that they were deploying was still buggy, but my node had been provisioned with a channel configuration that was relatively stable. However, a few days later, the network team made a provisioning change (and probably some software upgrades), switched to a new channel configuration, and all he11 broke loose. I was getting significant latency spikes, no traffic was being carried on any of my OFDM channels, and every few minutes, the network would dump ALL network traffic for 30-40 seconds at a time. I have never seen packet loss like that. Ignite TV was totally unwatchable.
If I called tech support with this problem, they would have told me that the signal levels to my modem are perfect and probably would have tried attributing it to problems with my Wi-Fi.
I reported this to @CommunityHelps and told them what the problems were, and where they were happening. It then took the maintenance and network teams DAYS to resolve. Maintenance techs (in three Rogers trucks) got dispatched and were working together on the new node for at least 4 hours..
After that, from time to time, I still see evidence that the network team is trying new stuff again, where latency and packet loss get worse and performance deviates from my original baseline. (At its worse, I saw average ping RTTs of 50 ms and occasional latency spikes in excess of 1000 ms.) I report also these issues to @CommunityHelps and ask them to pass that feedback to the appropriate teams.
@Markham1 Before contacting Rogers to report network issues, it's helpful to know what good/normal/typical behaviour is.
For example, I know that with my 1.5 Gigabit service, I can attain more than 1800 Mb/s on speed tests, and I can also perform a ping test to a well-connected Internet host (e.g. 8.8.8.8) and usually attain round trip times of between 9 and 30 ms, averaging 17 ms, with 0% packet loss, even on a ping test lasting several hours. That's not bad.
When your performance deviates from whatever your norm is, try to determine whether this is just an intermittent issue, whether it happens throughout the day, or only during peak hours.
Pass all of the above information on to Rogers, including any applications that are problematic. (e.g. getting audio/video dropouts with Ignite TV or Zoom calls dropping.)
When performing ping tests, it's really helpful to only ping well-connected Internet hosts. Even though your game may report high ping times, the problem may be due to load on the game server itself or some other problem that is well outside the Rogers network.
On Windows, use the following command: ping -n 1000 -w 20000 8.8.8.8
That will perform a quick test of only 1000 pings and it also increases the timeout before Windows ping declares the ICMP Reply lost.
On macOS or Linux, the command to use is: ping -c 1000 8.8.8.8
If your Mac keeps going to sleep in the middle of the ping test, use: caffeinate -diu ping -c 1000 8.8.8.8
For the most accurate results, perform network tests with an Ethernet-connected computer.
You may also find the following support articles helpful:
https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/Internet/Troubleshooting-Latency-Wired-Devices/ta-p/462951
When contacting any tech support team, if they confirm a signal problem to your modem, ask them to also test the quality of your neighbours' connections. Also ask them to check the stats on the fibre node and CMTS.
If you are seeing persistently high latency and persistently high packet loss but tech support cannot identify any issues, it may be due to an upstream issue. The support agents should be able to perform a ping test to your modem and see the same issues that you do.
As I said, the @CommunityHelps team is a great group of people. Hopefully they can help you to resolve any performance issues that you are seeing, whether it is a problem with your Rogers service or an in-home issue.
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