Modem help
Hi all - I need some help troubleshooting my internet and really don't feel like dealing w/ customer service reps. I don't consider myself a tech savvy person, so I'm wondering what this community might know..
I've been having issues with my internet for a while. we have xfinity with a plan that promises up to 1000mbps. I'm lucky if i get up to 250 on a good day. beyond that, we constantly lose connection, or get very slow connectivity. i'm using a Netgear c7000v2 as my modem/wifi router combo paired with a Google Nest Mesh router. My home is roughly 1000 sqft footprint split level. my computer is in a different room, but there's no doors between and about 600 ft from the modem/mesh routers.
i called xfinity to talk about the issue, they said that my modem likely needed to be replaced. the initial modem was also a Netgear c7000v2, but i figured maybe the hardware just burnt out(?) they sent me an xfinity modem, and everything seemed to work great (still not 1000mbps, but definitely better). when I realized they were charging me more than I was willing to pay monthly for a rental fee on the modem, i decided i'd go back out and buy a new modem. i bought a Netgear c7000v2 again, because it should be able to handle those speeds, and to my understanding is a decent enough modem. i also bought a new coaxial cable to double check. but after replacing, my internet is still spotty and constantly goes in and out.
i don't have any device to plug directly into the ethernet cable (because it's 2023...), so i can't pinpoint the issue through that. i haven't had an xfinity tech come out yet, because apparently that takes anywhere from 6-8 weeks to get a visit...
any ideas on what i should do? part of me is convinced that xfinity is throttling my internet because I'm not using their modem and paying them a rental fee, but i don't want to give into conspiratorial thinking...i'm about to file an FTC complaint on them because I'm just fed-up at this point.
this is really two problems, it'll be easier to troubleshoot them if you separate them out. ideally you want to get your connection to be stable, at whatever speed is possible, and then if you're unsatisfied with that speed there are ways to try to optimize it.
the c7000v2 is apparently DOCSIS 3.0 (DOCSIS is the standard used between your modem and Comcast's upstream hardware). do you have the model number or specs of the modem they sent you? it's possible that modem used DOCSIS 3.1 or 4.0, which support higher speeds.
if your upstream connection requires that higher DOCSIS standard, it would explain why they wanted to replace the modem. these modems are entirely solid state and rarely "burn out" or anything, unless subjected to prolonged extreme heat or something like that. and in that case they'd be likely to fail entirely rather than exhibit the symptoms you're seeing.
this is the first thing you'll need, because it divides the problem space into two. it's possible that the entire problem is your wireless network. wireless mesh networks in particular have failure modes in addition to "regular" wireless networks, because the mesh uses a "backhaul" wireless connection to connect the two routers, in addition to the wireless connection your devices use to connect to the closest router, so you really have two wireless networks, running on different frequencies, and either or both of them could be experiencing drop-outs or interference.
you want to rule out the wireless network entirely by confirming the problem still happens when connected via Ethernet. it's also possible that there's two problems lurking, one with the modem / cable connection and one with the wireless network, so you might end up fixing the modem, confirming it's stable via the Ethernet connection, and then still running into issues with the wireless, and fixing further problems with that.
simplest/cheapest option will be a USB-to-Ethernet dongle, which should be $10-$20 and allow you to plug in a laptop directly in to one of the Ethernet ports on the router.
a slightly more expensive option would be to find your closest computer recycling reseller (virtually every city has one) and buy a used laptop that has an on-board Ethernet port. the specs beyond this wouldn't matter, you could literally walk in and say "give me your cheapest laptop with an Ethernet port". this would probably run in the $50-$100 range. you could also find this on ebay in case there's no used resellers nearby.
DOCSIS 3.0 does still support 1gig download, so I wouldn't think that would be the issue. I wonder if Comcast does some kind of traffic prioritization to make speeds to their own modems faster, to justify the rental prices.
I think OP's problem is probably a combination of:
Also, I'm not that old, but boy do people talking about their internet issues make me feel old...no ethernet cables "because it's 2023"...
I would honestly put money on the coax cables in the house/outside just being shit. Or configured poorly for a single device. Probably 80% of time someone's speed sucks it's because they moved into their place and got lucky plugging into one outlet that's actually connected to a 5 year old 4 way splitter with two unused legs with the whole configuration riddled with ingress.
The ethernet cable comment chafed me too and I'm only 25. It's not fuckin dial up lmao it's the single best way for anybody to get an internet connection.
I appreciate the insight you and others gave here. That said - OP said they aren't a tech savvy person. So, it's not surprising to me that they would think this way about ethernet cables (I can completely understand thinking that cables are an older way of doing things, and that everything modern should be wireless). Everyone learns, and if someone has not had a reason to use ethernet cables in the past, I wouldn't expect them to be aware of their usefulness.
It wouldn't have ground my gears if they didn't make the snarky remark of "because it's 2023...". It's okay not to be savvy, but don't admit you're not savvy and then make a wild remark like that lmao
I honestly didn't read OP's remark as being snarky, just a misunderstanding and innocently making an incorrect assumption about how things work. We are all ignorant of many things in life (yourself and myself included).
Depends on the area. If OP is living in a rural area with limited external interference then 2.4 is more reliable. If in a more dense area then you are right.
Don't worry, boomer. I'm still out here running ethernet cables. No other way to get 10 Gb/s to my computer!
I'm not even 30 ;~; I just work for an ISP and have spent too much time arguing with gamers about how ping spikes over wifi are inevitable to a certain extent, and trying to convince them that ethernet cables are the solution to their complaint.
I'm sure this person has something that can connect via Ethernet, they probably just don't have a cable. There are still tons of Ethernet-capable devices, and there will be for a long time yet.
The first thing to do would be to connect a computer directly to the modem with Ethernet and run a speed test from there. If you see higher speeds and more reliability than you do when connecting through the router, it's something to do with your router or network setup. If you still have problems, it's either your modem or something on Comcast's side.
Do you have any sort of laptop, desktop, or game console you can hook up to it?
all of my devices are USB C. appreciate the help, though
Anker and TP-Link are two reliable brands I'd recommend for a USB-C to Ethernet adapter.
This - get a USB 3.0 one if you can, and use a device capable of USB 3.0 speeds over USB-C (just about any laptop should do the trick).
You can pick up an adapter from a reliable brand for less than $20, and it's something that is useful on plenty of occasions, so it's worth keeping one around. I have a USB-A gigabit adapter that just saw use yesterday when I was setting up a new router.
Network engineer here. @blueshiftlabs and @spit-evil-olive-tips (here and top comment) are right.
Beg, borrow or steal a laptop or PC with an integrated Ethernet connector and test that. USB-C connectors can work, or not. It might just become one more thing to troubleshoot. Try to borrow a known good working computer first.
Take internet speed tests with a grain of salt. They are not necessarily authoritative and not necessarily representative of your connection or your particular traffic beyond that specific test. "This internet test shows 200mb download" is not the same as "my internet connection is running at 200mb." They aren't testing your route to your streaming provider, or game downloads, or linux distros or what have you. Run the tests, just don't take them as gospel.
Also - take your laptop to someone else's (known good) wifi. Not all chips (nor all wifi environments) are created equal. Replacing your wifi card is an option, it's the first thing I did on mine.
In general, wired connectivity will be faster and more reliable than wireless. Your airspace is subject to constantly changing interference. Neighbors next door just got a new router. Business across the street got a new ISP. Maybe you're in range of an airport with local radar. One day all these things are stepping all over your wifi and you don't even know it. Even cars these days broadcast their own frequencies just driving by. If you can get wireless working, great. If not, the potential factors are never ending.
Oh and last do not crank up your wifi power all the way. The signal refracts off walls, ceiling, furniture etc and interferes with itself. Imagine talking out loud in a room with an echo. The louder you talk the harder it is to actually hear the words. Turn the power down about half way and test by walking around and walking to the furthest area of your house. Turn up only if you need to. And if it works for you, stick to 5ghz and turn off 2.4 completely.
Onlooker here, and someone who is highly interested in home networking, but still incredibly ignorant about it. Yourself and others are prompting OP to test their speeds via direct ethernet connection; I'd like to check if my understanding is correct about what insight this will provide them.
So the only troubleshooting benefit I see for plugging into ethernet, is helping them determine if it's a problem on Comcast's end (i.e. if they plug into ethernet and are still getting wildly low speeds, then I'd assume there's some signal issue with the cable coming into their home). If it turns out that's not what's going on (and that it's on the home network side of things), is plugging into ethernet really going to provide any further info?
By the way, if it does turn out it's on the home network side of things, what can OP really do at that point? As you said, there could be so many issues at play on the networking side (wifi interference, a crappy wifi adapter in their laptop, router isn't broadcasting the correct band, w/e) I know they could do things like swap their wifi adapter, etc. but isn't this sort of going down a rabbithole, especially for someone who might not be too familiar with these things in the first place? I'm also curious if Comcast techs would even be able to help troubleshoot such things (or can they only check if it's an issue with the signal coming into the house). I guess at least on the wifi adapter side of things, this would be easy enough to determine (if they are having the same poor speeds on all devices vs. just their laptop, then maybe it could be their wifi adapter.. but then again, even a device-specific lag could still be a problem on the router's ends, no? [In how it is choosing to send info to that particular device?])
Sorry that this is sort of random. I actually came in here wanting to make a post to OP, but realized I was so ignorant about what I was writing that I might mislead them, so I ended up not making my post. Would love to check if my understanding is correct.
Hey there. You're right, that comment did go a little down the rabbit hole. I get into a lot of technical troubleshooting day to day, and probably let too much detail spill into my comment. I don't have experience with Nest or home mesh wireless, because, well, I do my own wifi design and planning my own way. But I realize that doesn't address OP's setup which is likely more automated and less self-managed.
@spit-evil-olive-tips was right about breaking the problem down. OP is trying to solve an issue that could be one link (or several links) in a whole chain all the way from the ISP's central office down to OP's laptop components.
ISPs will take the same approach - breaking down the problem and solving one step at a time - and basically refuse to troubleshoot anything beyond their connection. OP will need to plug in a physical cable (preferably testing two devices, not just one) in order to get effective support.
The ISP approach will be, well, it could be your laptop, your home environment, etc and they will not troubleshoot beyond the cable modem. They are taught to follow a script, not to troubleshoot.
If the wifi comes from the ISP, they'll basically say something like, we're broadcasting, and it looks good. Maybe they'll reset your password, but they're not equipped to troubleshoot your airspace.
The idea is to separate the problem into steps or parts that you can test independently. Easiest thing, and most leveraged on the ISP, is to take wireless out of the equation and call the ISP. That will push them to do their job fixing the connection.
It's OP's job basically to either push the ISP in line, or solve their own in-house network problems.
Wireless design, at times, almost looks like black magic in the networking world, just because there are so many unique factors. Every single design is unique. Airspace is more or less hostile (with outside signals and interference) and constantly changing. Every client behaves differently - every phone, every tablet, every tv, etc etc all have unique and different behaviors on wireless. Some devices will interfere with others, and some will appear to have random issues. Your own wifi will interfere with itself to some extent. Plus the airspace in your neighborhood changes every day. All the EM radiation in your neighborhood goes through your house.
It's too easy to go down that rabbit hole right out of the gate. Best thing is for OP to isolate and test specific things and then come back for more advice.
For example, does his laptop work in another wireless environment. Does his friend's laptop work better. How do they behave wired vs wireless. etc.
OP's wifi can be helped, maybe, but OP would have to answer those questions and come back. That will open further steps OP can take on advice from the group.
Edit - the multitude of wifi factors and constantly changing airspace is why folks like me will always say, in very general terms, wired networking is always more straightforward and simple than wireless. When wireless works, it's great. But, neighbors doing home renovations, or getting a new router, or a new ISP, or a work truck parked outside - none of that will interfere with a Cat6 cable.
Thanks so much for this. I didn't mean to imply your comment was going down a rabbithole or was leaking too much technical detail. Rather, your comment just intrigued me and I wanted to see if I was understanding things. I love networking stuff; I think it's so cool that you have this skill.
I hope OP can get a USB-C to ethernet adapter. It seems like it might be the easiest first step for them, and could be a really inexpensive thing to do (maybe $15-$20 for the adapter, and $5 - $10 for the ethernet cable, they could even go cheaper). I just hope they understand what the point of doing it is, so they don't think it's just like throwing darts at a dartboard (I'm not implying it is - to me it seems like the smartest first step, just wanted to make sure they understood why that is). That's originally what I was going to do: try and explain to them why this would be valuable and kind of the overall idea, but in writing my comment to them, it revealed to me that I might not understand what I was talking about in the first place, which is what made me want to check here :) @squalex (OP) - perhaps check out this comment chain and see if any of this insight is useful for you. I hope it might clarify the overall troubleshooting strategy being suggested to you by many in this thread.
Most certainly happy to answer questions or help with anything. My experience is in the enterprise environment, not so much consumer brands but hopefully it helps.
Those USB adapters can be hit or miss. Sometimes they work great - or they might appear to work great from the desktop end. But then sometimes they have odd issues on the wire, like presenting multiple MACs, or the system getting confused between wired and wireless. The main issue I ran into is that a few dollars worth of dongle doesn't come with support coverage. No argument against them, the brand recommendations here may be great. I suspect it highly depends on the chipset and the driver. I just wouldn't want OP to have to troubleshoot anything extra.
If you're interested in anything else just ask, I'll be happy to talk.
EDIT: If you want to see your wifi environment, there's a free Android app called Wi-Fi Analyzer. I think there are several apps, likely all clones but they probably all work the same. Anyway it shows you all the competing frequencies and wlans that it can detect, and access points. Both 2.4 and 5 Ghz. You can just walk around and watch the signals go up and down.
It won't show you non-wifi interference, like radar, but you'll see other wireless networks. Walk around your house, and the neighborhood, you'll be surprised at all the noise.
Interesting. I had no clue about that, TIL. Sorry to keep tagging you, OP, but @squalex, something else to be aware of. Yeah, that would surely suck to go to the trouble of getting such a tool, only to have it cause other problems and further confuse someone. Sounds like actual device (laptop, etc.) with ethernet port is the way to go.
I will check out Wi-Fi Analyzer, thanks. I would not be surprised to learn of such interference. Back when I was on a dedicated 2.4 ghz network (my wifi card was only single band then), every day (well about 5/7 days per week), my internet would drop somewhere between 11:55 am - 12:05 pm. It would go out for about 1 minute then come back. I was mystified by this for so long, until I learned about wifi interference; it was then suggested to me that this might be a time when there is some sort of radar or other testing going on in my town that could be interfering with the wifi signal. I no longer have this issue since (as I upgraded my wifi card, and can now connect to 5 ghz), but it's something that still sticks out in my mind as interesting.
By the way - enterprise level networking is the coolest of the cool in my mind; home networking fun on steroids haha. This is such a cool job you have, and a valuable skillset. Thanks for sharing your thoughts in the thread
My guess is you have some other radio interfering with your network. I'd see if there's any consistency to when it drops (such as the microwave being ran) and/or go into your routers settings and change the band it's on to see if that helps with reliability.
As for speeds, you're unlikely to ever see your advertised speed over wifi, unless you have an excellent (and expensive) access point, as well as having a WiFi card in whatever device you're using that supports those speeds. Also worth noting that the higher band wifi devices (5Ghz, etc) have shorter range and are more suceptable to interruption than 2.4Ghz.
I have excellent Wi-Fi in my house, but I generally only see about 100Mbps on my Wi-Fi devices , whereas my server/gaming PC which is wired in, has absolutely no problem seeing 1000Mbps.
As someone who works for Cox (90% identical to Xfinity; they're both owned by Comcast), I feel that I can give some reliable insight.
While it can be the modem on occasion, I hate pointing the finger at the equipment straight away. There's a whole lot going on with the coaxial cable that connects your modem to the wall, and it extends past the wallplate screwed onto there. I would put money on your issues being caused by the physical aspect of internet service delivery: The coax cables running through your house. There are a handful of different things that could be interfering with your services. Usually, it's the age of the coax cable, damage to the cables, poorly made connectors, old connectors, poor signal as a result of unnecessary splitters, old passive devices left on your feed line, the list goes on. There are a great many things that can add up to poor performance from your modem. And it isn't anything that any customer service representative would be able to see.
At risk of sounding like a shill, I really can't recommend a technician visit enough. There are just too many variables and many of them are something you don't have the tools or the knowledge to fix yourself. Honestly, it sounds like your intermittent connection issues are being caused by ingress and nothing but a technician visit is going to fix that.
Also lmao at the ethernet comment. You may not use it dude, but it's not some archaic, lost technology. It's the only way you can even make use of the 1000mpbs/1gbps speeds you're paying for. WiFi can only go as fast as ~750mbps (and that's rare) on the 5G connection. If you only have a single WiFi connection, then the router will decide to put you on either the 2.4 or the 5. If you're on the 2.4, you'll only get up to ~120.
Seriously though. I know it's a pain, but get a tech to look at it. It's nothing you're doing wrong. Probably just some old cables/ill-fitted splitter configuration from previous tenants' services.
It may need a tech to fix it, but in my experience (with optimum) be prepared for multiple visits from multiple techs, continuously having to press them, and having to produce as much hard evidence as you can to get anything done beyond replacing the modem and blaming your router.
Unfortunately, I agree with you. Losing the tech lottery is all too common an occurence
Yeah exactly this. I've been dealing with my internet dropping nearly hourly for half a year because I don't want to deal with customer service.
There are an awful lot of things that can cause your speeds to tank. Many are already covered here, but I'm going to give you a couple of other things to check out.
First order of business, make sure your router is the first device on the cable line inside your home. Cable splitters work fine for having four TV sets hooked up, but if your modem is behind those four splitters, it's going to be a lot slower than if it is in front of them. If your home/apartment just has a bunch of cable jacks on various walls this can be hard to trace, but somewhere there will be a panel in a closet where all of those individual lines meet. If a cable tech comes by you can ask them about this directly. Older splitters also can cause this problem if they aren't up to the latest standards. The cable tech can trace, test, reorder, and replace until it's working properly. Probably won't even take them a half hour.
Next, wireless technology has to use collision avoidance for broadcasting, because you can't do collision detection like you can on a physical network. That's how the network layer resolves multiple devices talking at the same time. Avoidance is a lot slower and it has a serious performance cost that gets nasty fast as you add more and more active wireless devices to the same router. You're only ever going to get peak speeds over wifi if there's just the one device transmitting at a time. If you end up with 20+ it's going to move at a fraction of a fraction of the total speed for all of them, because it has to waste bandwidth avoiding the collisions.
This particular quirk isn't just about your router, either. All of these wifi routers use channels (typically fourteen bands total). Most factory routers all use the default channel and nobody ever changes it. This means if you have ten neighbors all using the same brand of router you are using, you're now incurring their collision avoidance costs because you all use the same channel. All of your devices have to share the band, and that really sucks.
This is easy to fix, all you have to do is log in to the router and change the channel - but to which one? There's a simple android app called wifi analyzer which can let you see all of the wifi devices active in your area and how strong/close they are, what channels they use, and their names (along with a ton of other performance info). The first screenshot there is a great example - it shows six access points active, the one colored red is doing it right using a channel that has no overlap, unlike the other five. So, run that app on your phone and see if there are a lot of other APs broadcasting, and if so, look for a channel number that hasn't got anything else on it. This will get your neighbors off your back. You would not believe how many free drinks this trick has earned me at bars and restaurants where people are complaining about the wifi being slow.
Another gotcha is the number of network connections out to the internet. Call this 'downloading discipline' - DOCSIS gets exponentially shittier after you have more than fifty active connetions. If you're downloading on bittorrent, for example, the upshot here is that you want to limit your torrent client to fifty total connections, rather than letting it open five hundred connections. The larger number is actively harmful. You may not be the only person in your home running torrents, either - this number is for your entire network, not just the one computer.
Adding to the comments about WiFi problems a bit; I've noticed since moving my TV, computer, and Xbox over to Ethernet I get better WiFi on my mobile devices.
If you own your home and you're able to run Ethernet to a few devices, do that.
turn off the mesh router for now, in a 1000sqft home you shouldn't really need it and it may be causing issues.
just buy the Ethernet dongle or spend a bit extra for a more universal one that's also a USB hub, then it's actually useful for other stuff
make sure your WiFi password is secure and maybe see if there are some updates as well
It's possible that this is simply the maximum speed that you can expect. The speed that Xfiniti quotes you in your internet package is the speed from your modem to the outside world, not the speed of each device on the network. It's like the water company telling you that you'll get up to 20 gallons per minute of water pumped to your house, but the flow rate out of any given faucet will likely be lower than that depending on a number of factors.
You mentioned that you have a Google Wifi mesh set up. Two things to note about that:
Every hop on a mesh network will cut your bandwidth in half.
There are 2 frequency bands that wifi can travel across (technically 3 if you have a newer Google Wifi, but your phone/PC are probably only able to use the two): 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. The 5Ghz band works really well, but only if you're near the access point; it tends to have more interference and doesn't travel through walls or around corners as well. The 2.4Ghz band is slower, but more reliable. Depending on how far away you are from the nearest mesh node, you may be on the 2.4Ghz band. On Google Wifi, the 2.4Ghz band has a maximum speed of about 300Mbps.
If you want the fastest speed on your PC, your best bet is to hardwire directly into your router. You will get much closer to the full advertised speed that way (depending on how many other devices are sharing network resources, etc).
Also, if you want to check that Xfiniti is giving you the speed that they promise, connect to your router's management page in a web browser and see if there's a way to run a speed test from the router itself. That'll tell you what your baseline internet speed is before having to factor in other devices.