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RogersJermaine
I've been having an issue with my wired upload speed for a few months now.
Attached are speed tests from both wired and wireless connections, as you can see the top one (Wired) has great down but awful upload speeds. The bottom (Wireless) has as expected speeds, at least as far as I know they are expected.
Any ideas, should I try replacing the coax, or is this situation expected behavior?
Package/Device Details:
Ignite 500, XB7 Modem, 2500 Mbps LAN, Wi-Fi 6E.
Troubleshooting tried:
Reboot modem, Factory Reset modem, change network cabling, use different modem port, change computer.
***Edited Labels***
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Accepted Solutions
@57, ok, gotcha, Ignite 500, which shows Download speed up to 500 Mbps and upload speed up to 30 Mbps. So, 1418 Mb/s down and 178 Mb/s up is pretty good for a 500/30 plan. I'd stick a multi-gig ethernet controller in the pc, if there's an open slot, just to see what happens. That's probably the quickest way to see if there's some unknown issue with that killer controller.
A few comments/questions:
1. By wired, I assume you mean using an Ethernet cable?
2. Have you tried a different cable - looks like you have?
3. What device/computer(s) are you using? Make/Model/Ethernet adaptor?
4. Do you remember to turn off your WiFi in the computer when testing using Ethernet?
5. Are you using the Rogers default configuration with the Ethernet Cable connected directly to the XB7 and the XB7 not bridged.. If you have your own router involved, bypass it for testing.
6. The only number that looks weird in your testing is the wired upload speed, as you say. The 1.4 Gbps speed must be when you're connected to port 4 of the XB7.
7. You may have some oxidation or poor connection on the cable or port? Try disconnecting and reconnecting the Ethernet cable a few times to remove any oxidation...
You have some type of cable problem, most likely an external cable problem. From what you presented in terms of the downstream signal levels, your downstream levels don't look too bad but the upstream levels are high.
Traditionally, Rogers uses a low split configuration for the upstream channels. That is a 5 to 42 Mhz range. That is shown in the first four upstream levels. Those signal levels should normally be in the 36 to 40 dBmV range. As the external cable and its connectors age, you end up with signal losses through the external shell of the cable, or from the inner copper conductor to the shield which lies just under the cable cover. Either way, the signal losses drop the received signal level at the Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) which in turn causes the CMTS to command the modem to run higher signal levels to make up for the losses. The normal limit for upstream signal levels is 51 dBmV for three or four channel ops. Rogers uses 52 dBmV for the failure point for some unknown reason. So, the first four upstream levels are closer the failure point than they are to normal operating range.
Your upstream signal levels also show a second Othogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access channel running in the 45 to 85 Mhz range. That is a mid split configuration which increases the available bandwidth for upstream channels, so, your upstream performance should be very good. However, the power level, to me, looks far too high for normal operation. This mid split configuration is pretty rare these days, in terms of showing up in a customers upstream configuration, so, although I suspect that the upstream power in the OFDMA channel is far too high, that requires an opinion from a knowledgeable tech, and I'm not sure that you can find someone in tech support with enough knowledge who really understands what's going on in terms of OFDMA ops and what's normal and not normal. The front line techs will have an automatic read out of the data, with a simple pass / fail indication, but, to be honest, I'm not confident that a simple readout is sufficient to diagnose the issue. Fwiw, OFDM downstream and OFDMA upstream are the future. There are different schemes available in terms of their implementation and Rogers hasn't announced which scheme it intends to use or if a particular scheme has been chosen. Maybe Rogers will simply follow Comcasts path for OFDM / OFDMA ops, don't know.....
OFDM downstream and OFDMA upstream are vastly different from the normal QAM ops with the downstream channels 1 to 32 and upstream channels 1 to 4. OFDM and OFDMA use thousands of low power sub-carriers for data carriage purposes. In theory, more efficient than the QAM channels, in practice, very difficult to obtain very good performance on Rogers network. It appear that Rogers has been cranking up the output levels at the neighbourhood nodes to achieve reasonable downstream performance with the low powered sub-carriers. While that might work on the downstream side, and result in normal looking power levels on the downstream side due to the signal losses enroute to the modem, it doesn't work on the upstream side as the modem is limited in its power output. If there's an issue in the cabling or connectors anywhere between the modem and the neighbourhood node, the upstream power levels will show it thru the presence of high upstream power levels. Those high power levels can result in reduced head room, ie between the operating range and the failure point, and as a result, your upstream data rates can suffer.
With QAM ops, if the modem's upstream output levels reach its maximum level, the modem will drop one of the upstream channels, and drop other upstream channels as required to maintain contact with the CMTS. When you're at that point, you will experience reduced data rates in both directions.
What happens with OFDM and OFDMA in that same situation, don't know. I haven't come across any references to what the modem will do if the OFDMA channel reaches its maximum power output level. Does it chop the number of upstream sub-carriers which would result in slower data rates? Maybe, but that just speculation on my part. Thats a good question for the network engineers if they ever bothered to respond to my queries.
So, my guess / opinion is that you have an external cable and or connector issue which you can't fix. This requires a tech to look at the losses between the local tap (green pedestal for underground cable or pole mounted for overhead cable) and your modem. If the tech uses a Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR) on your inbound cable from the local tap, he or she should be able to detect if there is potential water ingress into the cable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-domain_reflectometer
That's a very simple test, beyond the testing the line for power losses, and it would show, in few seconds if there is an issue.
I suspect what will happen is that calling into tech support might not result in any action, nothing seen, sank same, if the tech can't recognize the issue. High power levels are not normal, something is wrong with the cable system, plain and simple. Or, potentially, you might see a tech show up who monitors your signal levels from his van, using the Rogers data systems and who offers to swap your modem. The chances of a modem failure are slim to none, however that is the go to solution. The shareholders should have a huge bone to pick with that practice due to the cost of turning around serviceable modems. A modem swap wont' solve this. You need a tech who will take the time to actually check the cable and swap the connectors which is a standard practice. You might need a replacement cable, but, no one will know that until a tech takes the time to analyze the situation and come to the right conclusion. There is also the chance that there is some issue further upstream towards the neighbourhood node.
So, depending on what happens with the first onsite tech, if you don't see any improvements, call in again. Put Rogers tech support on speed dial and don't be afraid to use it. After two contractor visits, you can request a Senior Tech (real Rogers tech) who should have the experience and equipment to determine what the issue is and either fix it or push the issue up to a maintenance crew.
Just for the heck of it, send a message to the moderators requesting them to look at your modem's signal levels, specifically the upstream OFDMA signal levels to determine if they are within specifications or not. The moderators have a better breakdown available for the downstream OFDM channel, so, maybe they have the same available for the upstream OFDMA levels. The first line techs do not have access to the internal OFDM channel data, don't know why.
@CommunityHelps is the group address for the moderators here on the Rogers Forum. When you're logged into the forum, follow this link to the @CommunityHelps. On that page will be a link on the right hand side to Send a Message. Follow that link to the message composition page. The address will fill in automatically. Fill in the subject and details, including your account number and when the message is complete, hit Send Message at the bottom.
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To send anyone else on the forum a message, including @CommunityHelps, hover your mouse over their user name and a popup will appear with a link to send a Private Message. Follow that Private Message link to the message composition page and as before the message addressee will fill in automatically. Fill in the subject and details and hit Send Message when you're ready to send the message.
Ok, so, ask the moderators to have a look at you signal levels and ask for a tech visit, given the upstream data rate issue that your experiencing and your high upstream signal levels.
If you look at the back of your modem, is it connected to the cable directly, or is there a silver signal attenuator sitting between the cable and the modem. That would explain the higher than normal upstream signal levels, and, given the normal appearing downstream levels, that would indicate that Rogers has cranked up the downstream signal levels in your neighbourhood, only to have to drop them by using signal attenuators, which in your case would also push up the upstream signal levels, given that Roger uses a run of the mill signal attenuators instead of forward path attenuators to drop the downstream signal levels and leave the upstream levels alone.
Fwiw, if you look around for issues relating to your Killer E3100G 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet you will see that other uses are having data rate issues with that network controller, specifically with the negotiated data rates when the controller is set to auto for speed and duplex operation. You could try a manual assignment for speed and duplex ops to see if that makes any difference.
You can copy and paste the whole signal level tables, one at a time. Place your curser just ahead of the Downstream title at the top of the table. Hold the shift key down and scroll down and to the right within the table until your curser sits just after the last character in the lower right hand table element. Release the shift key and with the data still selected, right click .... copy. In a new post, right click .... paste. That should paste in the whole table. The forum software will generate a scroll bar automatically when the data is posted, so that it's possible to scroll to the right to see the whole table.
Do the same for the upstream table and the codeword table.
Fwiw, you can actually paste that data into excel, copy the same data within excel and then paste (transpose) to paste the data into a vertical format. Then you can copy that same transposed data and paste it into a post. Thats just a slightly different way of doing it in order to be able to scroll down to see the table.
Yup, thats why I suggested looking at the ethernet speed and duplex settings. Set them manually to their highest setting to see if that makes any difference. As I indicated above, other users of that network controller are also experiencing issues. I'm guessing that the network card has an Intel controller which might be the version that has so many issues with it. I haven't done any research on that card to determine what the base controller happens to be.
Personally I think that the download and upload rates should be higher, higher download on the ethernet side, higher upload on the wifi side, and personal opinion, I think that the upstream OFDMA signal levels are too high. Fix the ethernet issue and it should be possible to see data rates above the advertised plan rates, if in fact there wasn't an issue with the coax cable system.
@Datalink wrote: ...Personally I think that the download and upload rates should be higher, higher download on the ethernet side, higher upload on the wifi side...
He's on Ignite 500. I got similar rates down when I was on that plan and my up was 50 at the time, but it's now closer to 180 as is his on WiFi since my neighbourhood was upgraded.
Your downstream levels are a little low, but, the upstream levels are high. Personal opinion, something is out of whack. Usually the numbers are pretty balanced, 0 dBmV on the downstream side, 36 to 40 dBmV on the upstream side. When the cable and its connectors degrade, the downstream goes down and the upstream goes up. Its normal to see that when the cable system degrades, and although its not a one for one correspondence, its usually easy to determine from the pattern. Now, with Rogers cranking up the downstream levels out of the neighbourhood node, far above a 0 dBmV modem receive level, that makes this determination of cable failure a little more difficult, but, the upstream levels don't lie. If there's a failure issue, or an attenuator in the system, that will show up in the upstream signal levels, no matter what the downstream is showing. With the cranked up downstream levels, you pretty well have to divorce the upstream and downstream and work with whatever available data that you have to diagnose the situation.
I think you have two situations on the go, the first is the network card, the second is the cable system.
Any chance you thought of installing a separate network card for test purposes and disabling the killer controller while you're doing that testing? If it turns out that a stand alone network card solves most of the issue, you can turn your attention to the cable system. You should be able to exceed the advertised plan speeds in a speed test.
Did you reboot the modem recently? Its interesting to see that you have just about zero Uncorrected Codewords.
@57, ok, gotcha, Ignite 500, which shows Download speed up to 500 Mbps and upload speed up to 30 Mbps. So, 1418 Mb/s down and 178 Mb/s up is pretty good for a 500/30 plan. I'd stick a multi-gig ethernet controller in the pc, if there's an open slot, just to see what happens. That's probably the quickest way to see if there's some unknown issue with that killer controller.
Hurrah. Is the secondary NIC a multi-gig controller capable of running 2.5 or 5 Gb/s, and if so, what do you get for data rates on a speed test?
Yup, definitely ironic that something called Killer Network Performance provides no performance (:
@57 wrote:
@Datalink : If there is a problem with the incoming signal, why would the OP be getting 178 up on WiFi, yet 0.13 up on Ethernet?
It's complicated. REALLY complicated. There are a number of factors that come into play at a protocol level when the link speed increases, you have a network interface with "smart" device drivers and/or hardware offload, and operating system network stacks that try to do "smart" things to improve network throughput. More complexities come into play when you have asymmetric links with a large difference between upload and download speed.
I have warned others about what can happen: https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/Internet/1-5Gbps-getting-600mbps-max/m-p/542015/highlight/true...
There is no silver bullet to fixing this... no settings that work for all... because of there was, we wouldn't see people reporting such problems over and over again.
As @Datalink pointed out, the upstream power levels are too high and that is indicative of a problem that Rogers needs to sort out.
@bobkiler You should also search the Internet for "Killer E3100G 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet slow"
That and the recommendations in: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/internet-is-extremely-slow-after-windows-11-24...
@bobkiler wrote:
it was a 5 Gb/s and it gave me 1421.38 down and 177.04 up.
My parents used to have a 500 Mbps service and typical speeds were around 750 Mbps and 175 Mbps up. Rogers normally overprovisions and customers typically see higher than their "advertised" speed.
I have never seen download speeds as high as you. @57 has. If you run a long data transfer, it probably will drop down to the speeds I saw. The problem with these large speed bursts is they they make it more difficult for a protocol stack to optimize for the actual link speeds. You may also be doing yourself a disservice by plugging your PC into the 2.5 GigE port because your service cannot sustain those speeds. When your computer tries to send traffic and 2.5 Gbps, the Rogers network will try to accept it but then TCP congestion avoidance and congestion controls will kick in. There are other mechanisms in the DOCSIS protocols for dealing with congestion, and mechanisms that the service provider's network gear uses to implement rate limiting, all of which eventually force a device on the network to slow down data transmission, sometimes severely.
If your network card supports protocol offload, keep in mind that it will have limited resources for buffering and that can kill your network throughput. The faster the network connection, the faster those buffers can become exhausted. Yes, it's possible for multi-gig network card to have great performance when connected to a 1 Gigabit network port and then run into all sorts of performance issues when connected to a faster network port.
If your network card implements QoS, internal buffers will be allocated into separate queues... and if you have no traffic tagged for the high-priority queues and/or traffic is not balanced across all queues, again, network performance will suffer.
You may find speed improvements by connecting your PC to a 1 Gigabit Ethernet port on the Xfinity gateway. If you cannot attain 750 Mbps down / 175 Mbps up on your 500 Mb service, you can troubleshoot further. You may also improve performance by disabling whatever "optimizations" you have enabled, benchmark, then re-enable optimizations, one at a time, until you get the best performance that you can.
So, if I'm reading recent posts correctly, as has been the case in numerous similar threads, the customer equipment or firmware was the source of the problem. Weird thing that threw me off is that in post 1 he states he tried a different computer???
OP may wish to look into those (high) signal levels though as they may cause issues in other ways. A PM to the mods on this forum may be the best way.
When I was on 500/30, I typically had download speeds of around 1.3-1.4 Gbps due to Rogers Speedboost. If you download for long enough, Speedboost is no longer in play and the speed ramps down to what you pay for - say 500 Mbps. It's not easy to do that since most files are not large enough for the ramping down to come into effect....
Upload speeds can be area specific. Areas that have not been upgraded typically see 50 max, My area has been upgraded to 150 Mbps and I often see numbers approaching 180, just like the OP.
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