Paying full price for a "weak signal line"

[BlakeSauner]

Hello there, members of Tech Support Forums!

I'm having an ongoing issue with my cable internet connection. By ongoing, I mean, for months. My provider is Time Warner.

Most of the time, the service is fine. Speed tests indicate an average of 7.5-8Mbps D/L and 500Kbps U/L. Pretty standard, and suits my needs.

However, for no apparent reason, sometimes the network is just down, for hours, approaching the 6+ range, and usually in the evenings. I have called exactly 12 times of the past few months describing everything I possibly can, and after doing the dog and pony show over the phone of

"please restart your machine, now unplug the modem, wait, plug it back in, etc etc. Yahoo you're connected! have a great day!"

I'm tired of that, and after some more interesting agents have been so kind as to actually troubleshoot further than that, we've found that the cable lines running to my house, as well as many of my neighbors' houses is actually a weak signal line. Great! I'm paying full price for something not even working at normal capacity.

The main wireless Motorola Surfboard is in the basement. Although I dare not bother with the Belkin wireless adapters. That's just asking for dead connections. I hard wire two PC's into the hub. Two, nothing major. I've got a guy coming out to "boost" the signal tomorrow. Although, I'm thinking if they've finally admitted to running a sub-par line into my house, should I even bother continuing service with them? Will the cable guy boosting my signal even make a dent? They were "supposedly" doing that two months ago, obviously to no avail.


Any insight or commentary would be lovely. And greatly appreciated.
All signs point to that weak line just dropping for hours at a time, which, to me, just sounds ridiculous to say out loud.

[johnwill]

Insight? What you need is a new line run to the house, there is no fix that we can suggest that you can do. Clearly, this is an ISP issue, and they're the only ones in a position to address it.

[BlakeSauner]

Thanks JohnWill, for the reply.

I knew it was probably solely an ISP issue, but I was just tossing the post out there just in case I had overlooked something else.

Now, I guess a basic question would be...if the line running to my house for cable is a weak signal line, dropping my current ISP for another one still means that they would be using the same line to the house, correct? It looks as though I would either have to get TW themselves to re-run a new line to the house, or the new ISP would have to agree to do that if I were to get a line that was carrying a "normal" or "standard" signal strength.


As far as tomorrow's "signal boost" is concerned, would it also perhaps benefit me to inquire to the tech about a different modem? The one they keep "replacing" is this Motorola one. But i doubt it would have any impact to get a different type of modem.

And as for the incoming signal boost, if the line is weak in the first place, I presume this boost will have little to no effect. It just seems thus far their attempts to fix the problem only stave it off for a week or two at best.


I guess I'll have to keep on them about running a line out to my home correctly, if the signal boost doesn't hold.


Again, thanks for the reply to the post, I appreciate it :)

[johnwill]

You have cable, so the option of getting DSL might exist, which would use your phone lines.

You can consider better wiring inside the house, just to make sure it's not that.

You need a QUALITY 2:1 splitter with 5-1000mhz response where the ISP service enters the house, one side goes DIRECTLY to the cable modem using low-loss cable like RG-6U or similar. The other side goes to the TV distribution.

If that doesn't do the trick, it's beating on the ISP all the way.