[colug-432] Comcast and connectivity alternatives

[Richard Hornsby]

On Mar 1, 2014, at 23:11 , Robert Grimm <robertgrimm at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm closer than that. It can't be more than 400 feet away, yet the installer found no signal at the pole when he started. I asked questions about the gateway device before the install started and got incorrect and confused answers about it. I should have taken that as a sign and cancelled the installation right then.

Do you have the RJ-11 line filters installed on other devices in your house? Landline phones, alarm system, fax machine, etc. do you have a filter (plugged into the DSL side) on your DSL modem? If not, try using them. If you do have the filters, try removing them.  I've occasionally seen the filters actually cause problems.  Using ethernet, if you wire a device like a laptop directly into the switch on the back of the DSL modem, does that help the Netflix issues at all?

Beyond that, I'd call AT&T first thing Monday morning and make them come back out. Tell them you want someone competent, and none of the "we'll be out sometime Thursday 10am-6pm" nonsense.  That close to the DSLAM chances are you have a bad pair or some other correctable issue. The issues you describe should be immediately obvious to the tech, even if the solution isn't.  Frustrating they didn't check for or catch it during the installation.

Watch out though - if they decide to blame the problem on your house wiring (everything past the gray box on your exterior wall), AT&T may want to charge you big money to diagnose and fix it.

Before they come out, run a few speed tests to different places if you can to get some quantifiable data to compare after the fix.  Obviously speed (bandwidth) isn't everything, but it is something.

If they give you any grief, it might not be worth putting up with. WoW was always good to us.