Good morning @stgmsa!
In this case, you've got more than just mere latency, this is an issue of packet loss.
We'd be happy to take a closer look to see what is going on! Feel free to send a private message to @CommunityHelps so we can assist you further. For more information on how our Private Messaging system works, you can find out more here.
Regards,
RogersCorey
@teamlloyd wrote:
I've been in contact with the rogers forum moderators about the markham upgrades and after asking for updates for the last couple of weeks they've replied saying "The work is still in progress, and we are still waiting for an estimated resolution time. We will keep you posted as new information flows in." so the only choice is to wait for this work to be completed however long that takes, or just bite the bullet and switch to Bell if the packages available at your address are good enough for your use case.
I don't know what is actually going on behind the scenes but I suspect that there are significant technical problems that are forcing Rogers to pause their node upgrades.
In autumn, 2022, line conditions in my neighbourhood were not great. I don't think my node was overloaded but my power levels were low, SNR was really bad, I was getting varying levels of packet loss, and watching as my signal levels were deteriorating, wondering when my modem would finally drop off the network. My neighbourhood needed some serious maintenance but the "area issues" were not being addressed. However, being fairly close to my Node, my issues were relatively minor. For others farther downstream, their Zoom calls kept dropping every few minutes. Students taking online exams had to gamble whether their Rogers Internet would be stable-enough that day; if the Internet went down while they were taking their test, the test would close and their mark would be their mark. I don't know any serious gamers but I doubt that they were happy.
Fast forward to January/February. Things were still not fixed but the signal levels tended to be better on cold days, so I watched the weather forecast and managed to get a Senior Tech dispatched on a rare nice warm day... and the test results were bad enough that the ticket HAD to be escalated to maintenance. At the same time, in the days before my tech arrived, contractors were installing a new cabinet next to the old Rogers fibre node. Perhaps Rogers was FINALLY going to start the FTTH rollout in my neighbourhood. Unfortunately, that was not the case; the techs were installing a next-gen DAA node. I asked Rogers why they were going in that direction, especially when that new gear had serious stability issues. I never got an answer -- didn't expect one either -- but the next big question was whether they would stay on the old analog fibre node but fix the "area issues" or cut over to the new node. They opted to cut over to the new node. (Okay... I guess I should put my tray up, put my seat in an upright position, stow any loose articles, and assume the crash position.)
The upgrade apparently did not go badly, as I had feared. My DOCSIS channel configuration had changed but things were in a relatively simple, safe configuration, my signal levels were absolutely perfect, the the network was performing relatively well. However, the reason for keeping DOCSIS around is to enable Rogers to offer higher upload and download speeds over coax, improve latency, improve capacity and scalability, make the HFC infrastructure easier to maintain, pave the way for DOCSIS 4.0, all while keeping familiar technologies around that support techs and staff were comfortable with.
A few days after my Node got upgraded, Rogers pushed out a change that would be the first of many steps toward a bright new future... but the result was a horrible, HORRIBLE train wreck. The network was unusable for days, and this was not a change that they could simply revert. They ended up going back to that "safe" channel configuration, and it has remained that way since early March. It looks like the Rogers network teams are still tinkering with their routing infrastructure, which causes other network issues to come and go, but they haven't implemented any changes that would allow them to unlock more upstream and downstream capacity on DOCSIS. And if they did or could, I don't know whether their routing infrastructure would be able to handle even moderately higher traffic volumes.
Taking a longer-term outlook, the other reason for making DOCSIS infrastructure upgrades is to allow coax to compete with FTTH. If their vendor(s) can't deliver, Rogers will have wasted a ton of money AND be at a serious competitive disadvantage. I suspect that this is what is holding up your upgrades.
Right now, CIK is also making a push to deploy FTTH in Markham and Richmond Hill, and both Bell and Rogers will need to figure out how they will respond. (From what I have seen, CIK's customer satisfaction is extremely poor... but they are still attracting customers based on price. If people find their Cable Internet unreliable or unusable, and DSL Internet doesn't cut it either, people will take a chance and jump to the any provider that can offer them a viable alternative.)
@teamlloyd wrote:
hmmm. interesting. still seeing bad latency spikes on my end so i hope these upgrades get put through asap... was originally told by RogersAdam on April 21st that the markham upgrades should take 6 weeks. We're now 7 weeks since then and counting...
The good news is that my signal levels are solid, there are very few errors at the DOCSIS level, and the minor latency spikes that I saw (caused by upstream issues) seem to have settled out. Here's a quick ping test that I ran earlier this evening:
--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
1000 packets transmitted, 1000 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 11.582/16.493/27.376/1.441 ms
I'm also getting in excess of 1.8 Gbps throughput with my Ignite 1.5 Gigabit service.
Sometimes I will still see signs of congestion in their network -- occasional latency spikes of 200 (or so) milliseconds and some lost packets that are not caused by uncorrectable errors -- but things seem to have gotten much better recently.
However, the Rogers network team also has not tried to provision my node with the configuration that caused all those problems back in March, which suggests that they may still be trying to work through some potentially serious unresolved technical issues. Hopefully, they are just temporarily pausing upgrades to put pressure on their vendors.
I don't know what's actually going on behind the scenes so I'll resist the temptation to speculate any further.
I hope that Rogers will be able to resolve the issues that you (and everyone) are experiencing as soon as possible.
@Markham1 The only thing that a Rogers tech can do (contractor or in-house tech) is check the quality of the connection from the pedestal/tap on the street to your modem. If that signal path is clean, then this confirms that the cause of your problems are upstream. Once that is done, get the tech to document the actual problem(s) that you are seeing (whether it's extreme latency, a poor signal to your modem, etc.) in a ticket so that it can be escalated to the appropriate team for resolution.
Only a maintenance tech can fine-tune the signals emanating from the node.
If your node is overloaded, Rogers will need to upgrade it and/or perform a "node split", and that involves planning and a special team to preform the work.
If the problem is upstream from the node, that will require escalation to Rogers' network teams.
@ngehani I have not seen ping RTTs over 1000 ms in quite some time. However, these stats are pretty typical these days:
--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
1000 packets transmitted, 997 packets received, 0.3% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 11.103/27.494/85.065/5.203 ms
Ping test was performed mid-day, off-peak, with a Mac connected to an XB7 running in gateway mode. Node was upgraded to DAA / R-PHY back in March. Packet loss is actual.
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