Hey all,

We're working on a press-freedom / anti-censorship project and we're testing a variety of scenarios in which a journalist's internet traffic is being monitored by a hostile state. We'd like to simulate an ISP's access to the journalist's traffic so we can run some packet collection and other tests to see what it looks like.

What's the best way to do this? Put a few routers in series and collect on the last one?

I just wanted to see what everyone else’s experience has been working with your ISP. I recently had a horrible experience and wanted to see if anyone else can relate and maybe just vent a little.

My recent experience: I moved to a new town, and I had been experiencing issues with my internet dropping out, as we all probably have had at some point, and I contacted Cox communications through their chat app. After multiple attempts to fix it, they finally sent a tech out to find that the coax connectors at the pole were rusted out. He replaced them but it wasn’t fixed completely. The tech dismissed it and said to just use it for now and I wouldn’t notice. So I did, and it wasn’t great at first, but it actually slowly got better and was good for a while until the last couple of weeks. This past week every single night it would drop out. I watched the connection drop while I was trying to watch mythic quest (great show btw) and every night for the past week the internet was unusable in the evenings. I then contacted Cox again multiple times, got a credit refunded back to my account and they wanted to do the whole reset modem thing again, so I did just to get to the next steps. Again they said use it and see if it improves, so I did, and it didn’t. I contacted them again, and again the modem reset, so I got fed up and filed a complaint with the FCC while I was chatting with this guy and he had the nerve to try and sell me home automation at the end of our chat!

The next day goes by, a woman from their escalation lines contacts me about my FCC complaint and they send a new tech out. Turns out Cox never buried my original line in conduit, so the line was probably damaged underground as it was sending a weak return signal. The tech ran a new drop from a different tap and used the thickest coax I’ve ever seen. So far it’s been good after the new drop, but it took multiple chats and calls with two different field technicians and an FCC complaint to get it fixed. The worst part about it is Cox Communications is the only broadband ISP in my area other than Starlink and I seriously considered Starlink. So if you read this far, thanks! Please share your experiences if you’d like, or if you want to vent that’s okay.

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