[Discuss] Cable Modem Woes / Looking to Compare Notes

[betsy.schwartz at gmail.com (Betsy Schwartz)]

>From the side of our house, the line goes to a 3-way splitter: one to the
>cable modem, one to the 1st floor, and one to the 2nd floor. Before that,
>the 1st floor line was split at the TV to feed the cable modem.

We had a longstanding problem with a Comcast splitter when we first moved
into this house  in Arlington (16 years ago!), although ours was going to
two offices and one television. We had Comcast out several times and each
time they said everything was OK.  Finally Comcast sent out a senior tech
with trainee in tow, and he spotted the problem *instantly*. The splitter
was set up in a way that sent a considerably weakened signal to the
upstairs office (I'm afraid I don't remember now what exactly he did to fix
it)

Then, a couple of years ago I started experiencing high lag and dropped
packets. Comcast initially said the line was fine, again, and then scolded
me for having a very out of date modem that I should have replaced years
ago. They were Not Amused when  I pointed out that  I was renting the modem
from them; apparently I missed some sort of notice that I was supposed to
ask them to have it replaced.

Those two glitches aside I've had consistently good uptime and every once
in a while I get a notifcation that my service is getting faster. I don't
use them for email or other services, just connectivity.