@Jawed wrote:
1. However, I'm still confused as to what the difference really is between legacy and ignite Internet. On the website, it mentions something about ignite being fiber.
2. I thought only Bell had fiber.
3. I had to get the upgrade because my Internet has been poor recently. There's three situations that have been happeing - download speed slow/upload speed only .05 Mbps when I was paying for 300/20. 4. If any of you have ever noticed your Internet cutting out intermittently or giving slower speeds and the technician said nothing is wrong from the outside, what could it be?
1. Ignite is simply the new name for Rogers Internet service. There is no real difference.
2. Bell has Fibe, which is not the same as Fibre to the Home. FTTH is only available in certain locations and most Bell locations are still twisted pair to the home with downloads of typically 50-100 Mbps max.
3. You should have had your existing location troubleshot properly because Ignite is not magic - it's just a new name If your previous connection was not performing, your new service will not perform either. IgniteTV is IPTV, but that includes TV and Home Phone and I don't believe that's what you're talking about.
4. Poor connection in the home. Poor WiFi if using WiFi. Were you testing using a wired connection and Rogers test site?
5. Check out all the other threads on this forum regarding slow speeds. The resident internet expert @Datalink should be along shortly to help out.
One thing you can do remotely, or via PM on this forum is to contact Rogers to see if your new modem has been properly provisioned. Sometimes they don't put the appropriate settings for speed into the modem and it needs to be properly provisioned once on site.
@Jawed wrote:
I used to do speed tests on my iPhone when I had the 300/20 plan and in the early morning I’d get 500/20 speeds. Which I was very grateful for. Now I’ve switched to the gigabit plan and haven’t been getting those speeds. It’s actually a constant problem now. My upload speeds are super low. And I can’t do anything about it because no one will come to work on it before the virus ends.
Have you performed a speed test using a computer with a wired Ethernet connection to the modem? Even if you have not made made any changes, it's entirely possible that your neighbour(s) could have made changes to their Wi-Fi configurations, started using the same channels/frequencies that you are using, and if their Wi-Fi is unhealthy, it can then destroy the Wi-Fi performance in your home.
If you are seeing poor speed tests with both wired and wireless connections, then it's most likely either a problem with the link to the Rogers network, a hardware problem with your current modem, or possibly a problem in your neighbourhood. Regardless, I would wait for your new XB6 gateway to arrive and see how things go with that unit. The XB6 also provides stats on correctable and uncorrectable codeword errors, in additional to the stats that you already have access to, so this will allow you to better assess the health of the downstream channels. If you are still having performance issues with your new modem, call Rogers and have them re-test the signal to your modem and check the error stats on your CMTS.
@57 , lol, you called ……
@Jawed , let me expand slightly on @57’s explanation. All ISPs play rather loosely with the term “fibre” these days, which does nothing but intentionally confuse the customers. Marketing to the max I would say.
Bell uses the term “Fibe Tv” to describe IPTV that is delivered by telephone cable (twisted pair wire) or by Fibre to the Home (FTTH). The same modem is used, in this case the Home Hub 3000 which has ports for DSL service over telephone cable or via fibre optic cable. But, the consumer or customer has to do his or her homework to understand what’s available in their neighbourhood or more specifically, what available in terms of telephone or Fibre cable to the home.
Rogers, and probably most of the cable based ISP’s across North America use a Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) system. The Rogers system basically looks like this:
Substitute Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) for the Hub and you would have a pretty good picture of what the network looks like. The CMTS connects to the neighbourhood node via fibre cable. From the neighbourhood node to the local tap, that is connected via hardline cable. The local tap to the modem is connected via RG-6 Drop Cable. So the end configuration is a Hybrid Fibre Coax ( coax cable) system.
Rogers does run fibre to the home in some selected new subdivisions. The difference here is that the entire run from the neighbourhood node to the home is via fibre instead of cable. There is a fibre terminal installed in the home that feeds a modem via short run copper cable (RG-6). At the end of the day, there is no difference in the modems that are used in the customer’s home and essentially no difference in the transmit/receive technology that is used between the neighbourhood node and the modem.
Hope that clears the air somewhat.
Ok, to the problem at hand. You really need to use an Ethernet connected desktop or possibly laptop to determine if you’re receiving the data rates that you’re paying for.
- What were your instructions for installing the XB6 modem? Hook it up and then call in? Typically this requires the staff at the nearest Rogers store to register the modem to the account so that it’s ready to go when you get home with the modem. I’m wondering if the tech or customer service rep didn’t already go ahead and swap modems on the account, so that there is very little upload capability at the present time until the modems are swapped? A call to tech support might be necessary to determine what modem is currently registered on the account.
- Can you log into the modem, navigate to the STATUS …. DOCSIS WAN tab and copy the Downstream Overview table, all the way down to the bottom right hand corner of the OFDM/OFDMA section at the bottom of the table. Select or highlight that entire area, right click …. Copy. Then paste that into a post, right click …. Paste. That should paste in the whole table as it appears in the modem.
- Personal opinion, at the present time, disable Wifi Band Steering, which is located in WIRELESS …. ADVANCED. Then rename either the 2.4 or 5 Ghz wifi so that you can separate the two bands. That’s to allow you to connect to the faster 5 Ghz wifi and not have the modem force the device in question over to the slower 2.4 Ghz band. Reboot the modem which is located in DEVICE …. RESET and reconnect to the 5 Ghz network if necessary.
- For now set the 2.4 Ghz wifi parameters as follows
- Wireless Mode: 802.11 n
- Channel Bandwidth: 20/40 Mhz, although, for test puposes you could set this to 20 Mhz. In a crowded wifi environment, I would set this for 20 Mhz. It will default to 20 Mhz in a crowded environment.
- Wireless channel: set this to a channel that offers the least interference from neighboring routers and modems as seen with a wifi monitoring application.
- WPS Enabled: OFF
- Security Mode: WPA-Personal
- Auth Mode: WPA2-PSK
- Encrypt Mode: AES only
- Check/set the following 5 Ghz wifi parameters:
- Wireless Mode: 802.11 a/n/ac mixed
- Channel Bandwidth: 80 Mhz,
- Wireless channel: 149 to 165 Use this higher channel range as it runs higher transmit power levels.
- WPS Enabled: OFF
- Security Mode: WPA-Personal
- Auth Mode: WPA2-PSK
- Encrypt Mode: AES only
- If you had to change any parameters, reboot your router after the changes have been saved.
- Download Winfi Lite and install that onto a Windows laptop. That can be found here:
- Start Winfi Lite, select All in the top row, and then select the wrench symbol in the second row. That brings up the lower display area. Select Spectrum to see the graphical representation of the neighbouring modem and router wifi networks. See who you’re competing with and where they’re located in the channel spectrum. The worst thing that you can see is that your neighbours are running repeaters around their house on different channels, possibly taking up a good chunk of bandwidth if they’re heavy wifi users. Sort the top data by RSSI to see who’s on top. If you’re next the modem, you’re network should show up at the top, if not, there’s a problem.
- One last check, on a windows laptop, right click on the network symbol in the lower right hand corner task bar. Select Open Network & Internet Settings. Select View Hardware and Connection Settings. Have a look at the connect rate. On an Ethernet connected pc or laptop that Link Speed (Receive / Transmit) should indicate 1000/1000 Mb/s. On a wifi desktop or laptop that will show the raw link speed that the wifi adapter is running on the wifi network. Those numbers are dynamic. As you walk around your home with a wifi connected laptop, stop in place at a location of interest and wait for two to three minutes for those numbers to settle out. That raw connect rate should match up with the numbers in the following table (somewhere): https://www.wlanpros.com/mcs-index-charts/
- Note that 1 spatial stream on the chart infers 1 antenna, 2 spatial stream infers 2 antenna, etc, etc. So you really need to know how many antenna is built into a particular device in order to determine if the wifi performance makes any sense.
- To determine the expected data rate, in the appropriate area of the chart, 1 Spatial Stream, 2 Spatial streams etc, locate the matching raw data rate and multiply that data rate by the Coding number located in the Coding column. Winfi Lite will tell you if the network is using 400 or 800 nano second Guard Bands (transmit gaps) between transmissions. That will help to select the correct transmission rate from the chart.
- So, where is this going. By using the Connect Rate as indicated in the Windows Hardware and Connection page, you can tell if the connect rates with the modem/router make any sense. Are you getting 500 Mb/s or greater both ways, transmit and receive. If that was the case, there shouldn’t be any issue with the wifi portion of the problem. That should point to a problem with the external cable and its connectors. If you’re only running wifi, then both wifi and cable portions of the path have to be examined, hopefully to rule out one of them.
- A phone usually isn’t a great test device unless you know its wifi capabilities are better than the wifi transmitter / receiver (modem or router) that you are attempting to test. To really test out a modem or router’s wifi capability you need a desktop with an adequate wifi antenna system and wifi adapter, or a gaming laptop or a workstation laptop of some type. The larger the number of antenna on any of those, the higher the data rate you will see. That’s a pretty straightforward way of understanding it. With the right environment you could see multipath propagation between the modem/router and device which would result in higher data rates, for now, we’ll keep this simple, one data stream per antenna.
Ok, that should do it for now. I’ll be interested in your signal levels from the modem. Hopefully that will indicate what the problem might be.
1. Are you on a gigabit plan?
2. Do you happen to have a desktop or gaming laptop or workstation type of laptop that you can connect via ethernet to check the wired data rates?
3. I'm assuming that you now have a dark grey or black XB6 modem. Can you have a look at the bottom of the modem to determine which model you now have. It will be an Arris TG-3482ER or a Technicolor CGM-4140 modem. The Arris modem is an Intel Puma 7 modem, the Technicolor modem is a Broadcom BCM-3390 modem. I'm running a Hitron CODA-4582 (Intel Puma 7) but if I was running an XB6 modem, my choice would be the Technicolor modem (BCM-3390).
4. The XB6 modem is a little more difficult to copy and paste the signal table but it can be done. That table is displayed horizontally instead of vertically with the Hitron modems. So, to copy and paste the signal tables you need to select the top left corner of the table and go right and down to the bottom of the table. Then scroll right to the end of the table and complete the selection of the data, all the way to the bottom right hand corner of the table, right click .... copy. Then paste that into a new post, right click .... paste. That should paste in the entire table. From what I remember seeing I think there are two tables, one for the download stats and one for the upload stats. Please post both tables, download and upload. In the absence of wired speedtests, that should provide some explanation of your data rates.
