Comast Screwing Up
Starting Friday, I noticed that my Comcast Cable connection has slowed dramatically.
I ran a speed test today and found I was getting 21 down / 62 up
Comcast's website has changed, so I'm suspecting upgraded servers
My friend 2 miles down the road says he is blazing along at full speed, but 5 people over 20 miles away are getting 20-30 kbs download speeds
I'm switching over to my free AOL account (they keep extending my free time... i've gotten over a year free now) for some better speeds
Would you suggest that I complain to Comcast? Get my money back for the time they let me down?
I've had about enough of Comcast's farces... should I switch to DSL?
The best speed I can get is 144 kbs up and down, which is IDSL
Comcast is complaining about running servers, and I have a local server which puts out a TCP port request every once in a while, which they warn me about every time
Or I could always stick with Comcast for a while until DSL companies put in new equipment
So are my choices:
Stay with Comcast and get 1.5 mb up/down occasionaly, halfway for most of the time, and less than 100 kbs sometimes
Get IDSL and suffer through constant 144 kbs up/down
Stay with Comcast for now and then switch to a faster DSL when its becomes available
Get donations and get a T1 :)
If you are on Comcast, let me know if you have noticed a slowdown
Thanks
hagar posted this at 03:31 — 28th October 2002.
They have: 104 posts
Joined: Oct 2002
if you use your server hooked to cable as your main webserver, and its a money maker, constant 144 is better then sometimes perhaps 1.5, you might even consider some sort of connection teaming if you can afford two adsl accounts and modems. Who knows, adsl may even be worse for reliability in your area if its maintained by the usual trained chimps. What are the acceptable use policies of the dsl provider? they might not like servers either.
I know cable can go slower depending on how many people are on your node, have 14 teenagers recently signed up and running WinMX constantly in your area?
You know I'd donate.... but.... Marge... was taken prisoner... in the holy land... and...
"I ’ll make thee glorious by my pen, And famous by my sword." - James Graham, Marquess of Montrose (1612–1650)
nike_guy_man posted this at 03:37 — 28th October 2002.
They have: 840 posts
Joined: Sep 2000
Nah, everyone in my neighborhood works for the government... or should I say is employed by the government because we know they don't work
They all get government ISPs
Non government employees in my neighborhood are mysterious and I suspect witness protection
I can't get ADSL... or so I've been told
I'm 17,531 feet from a substation...
I can run the server on IDSL
The server isn't a money maker, in fact I only have 3 sites on it now... 2 of mine and 1 person testing out if I can host other sites
What was Marge doing in the Holy Land?? Tell the captureres that you need to donate to someone to get a good connection and to let her go!
hagar posted this at 03:54 — 28th October 2002.
They have: 104 posts
Joined: Oct 2002
lol ill tell em:D
sorry to hear about not being able to get ADSL... have you considered perhaps using wifi? there are a few non profit wifi guerilla networks out there that "share" their net connections, and legitimate microwave/wifi providers are out there too.
"I ’ll make thee glorious by my pen, And famous by my sword." - James Graham, Marquess of Montrose (1612–1650)
nike_guy_man posted this at 04:00 — 28th October 2002.
They have: 840 posts
Joined: Sep 2000
Here's the strange thing:
I ran ethereal (traffic analyzer) for 5 minutes and found 400 SSDP incoming packets
I shut down the server and I have noticed an increase in speed almost immediately
The logs looked something like what is being described here
I also had a few hundred requests for port 1900 and 1901
What are those ports??
hagar posted this at 04:04 — 28th October 2002.
They have: 104 posts
Joined: Oct 2002
check this out
http://is-it-true.org/nt/xp/registry/rtips18.shtml
nike_guy_man posted this at 04:11 — 28th October 2002.
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Joined: Sep 2000
Yea I had already come upon that... I have windows messenger disabled on all machines and I can't imagine why thousands of messenger users would be connecting to MY IP and getting past my firewall... I dont even have these ports open
What is port 1900?
hagar posted this at 04:20 — 28th October 2002.
They have: 104 posts
Joined: Oct 2002
its for universal plug and play, XP/98/ME etc feature(read crap). there are some exploits for it as a dos attack, which what might be happening to you.
white paper warning here:
http://www.infowar.com/iwftp/xforce/20Dec2001_ISS_Security_Alert__Multiple_Vulnerabilities_in_.shtml
"I ’ll make thee glorious by my pen, And famous by my sword." - James Graham, Marquess of Montrose (1612–1650)
nike_guy_man posted this at 21:21 — 28th October 2002.
They have: 840 posts
Joined: Sep 2000
The computer that I shut down was a RedHat... and unless my Windows machine was attacking my Linux, I dont think that's it
hagar posted this at 21:46 — 28th October 2002.
They have: 104 posts
Joined: Oct 2002
The RedHat box should be unaffected unless its having trouble dealing with the packets on that port for some reason. Is the traffic on that port excessive?
Is your server a proxy firewall? or a web server?
I'm wondering if you can setup a firewall to block the packets on that port and see if performance changes.
"I ’ll make thee glorious by my pen, And famous by my sword." - James Graham, Marquess of Montrose (1612–1650)
nike_guy_man posted this at 21:53 — 28th October 2002.
They have: 840 posts
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My Router is blocking all ports but 80 and 21 and 22
The Web Server is blocking all ports but 80 and 21.
Somehow, port 1900 is getting bombarded with packets, which my logs say are coming from my router... although sometimes I get that with incoming traffic
nike_guy_man posted this at 23:58 — 28th October 2002.
They have: 840 posts
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I shut the server down at 1 AM and noticed a small increase in speed
Around 2 PM it was back to the slow speed again
I booted up the server at 4 PM and immediately the SSDP packets were still coming in at port 1900
Here is what Ethereal (the Linux traffic analyzer) gave me:
It seems that something is coming to my router on port 1900 and it is getting through that port and is getting re-routed to port 1901 and is masking itself as my router???
That's just how I see it though
If it's not better by mid-Tuesday I'll call Comcast and see what they have to say about it
I have port only TCP ports unlocked, and those are only 80, 21 and 23
So how am I getting UDP and SSDP ports through on 1900 and 1901???
What is goin on?
hagar posted this at 00:11 — 29th October 2002.
They have: 104 posts
Joined: Oct 2002
I don't know... but it seems very interesting:D
I'd definately contact comcast and report what seems an obvious DOS attack if your connection is getting pounded. They might be able to block the traffic on the edge of their network instead of letting it smack ya.
Are the packets coming from multiple IP's? If only one, trace route it, and contact the admin of the ISP that the IP belongs to. If you're lucky it isnt AOL or Earthlink, or other mega ISP's who dont care if you live or die, as long as you pay.
Take another look at your router(cisco?) and confirm your settings and security, it may have been compromised or misconfigured somehow, if its cisco, they give excellent support usually, contact their helldesk. SSDP might be specifically allowed through the router as some sort of network broadcast as its a service discovery protocol that is searching for internet gateways, it might be considered a quasi networkesque protocol, and is thus being granted access.
I can't think of anything more to do except these things atm. If I think of anything more I'll contact ya in a private msg or here. Wish I could have been more help!
"I ’ll make thee glorious by my pen, And famous by my sword." - James Graham, Marquess of Montrose (1612–1650)
nike_guy_man posted this at 00:17 — 29th October 2002.
They have: 840 posts
Joined: Sep 2000
Thanks for your help so far...
I'll check it all out, see how it all goes...
I'm calling Comcast tomorrow, see if they can help me out
kb posted this at 01:23 — 29th October 2002.
He has: 1,380 posts
Joined: Feb 2002
DSL FOREVER...besides that, can't help
nike_guy_man posted this at 02:47 — 29th October 2002.
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Joined: Sep 2000
I'd get DSL if I weren't 18131 feet away from a CO... I was 17822 a month ago... hmmm
Well here's the current situation:
I lost my connection through the router completely
I called Comcast, and they said to troubleshoot, connect directly to the modem, so I did that and the connection works fine. I told them that and they said "Good! Problem solved. Good day!" and hung up before I could tell them that the router wasn't working
My computer talks to my Linksys router fine, and the router picks up a DHCP Comcast IP just fine, but they won't cooperate.
I'm going to run a speed test, see how fast this is moving without the router
The router doesn't look, smell, or feel fried, but who knows
nike_guy_man posted this at 02:50 — 29th October 2002.
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Well I'm off to call Linksys... see if they can offer any assistance
You can't spell assistance without ***... and thats what tech support usually is
nike_guy_man posted this at 21:11 — 29th October 2002.
They have: 840 posts
Joined: Sep 2000
Haha this is getting funny
Every 10 minutes I get kicked offline for 30-45 seconds
I call Comcast to see what they have to say, and they can't tell me anything because they can't access their network
I couldn't understand the woman most of the time she was talking so low... so i turned up the volume and she starts screaming...
I'd better post this before it kicks me and the rest of the Comcast world off again...
'Scheduled maintainence'... I'd like to see the schedule for that!
hagar posted this at 21:34 — 29th October 2002.
They have: 104 posts
Joined: Oct 2002
its a simple schedule, it occurs every 30 - 45 seconds:D
nike_guy_man posted this at 03:54 — 1st November 2002.
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How come everything is always fixed the second I call tech support??
I called Linksys and after he checked out if I had it all configured correctly (I didn't change a THING), I clicked IE and it worked
hagar posted this at 04:06 — 1st November 2002.
They have: 104 posts
Joined: Oct 2002
network pixies, they steal your packets when you arent looking..
they are in league with the car key elves, who hide the car keys just before you plan to go out:)
I find if I verbally threaten my PC daily, i don't have to do any maintainence to it. Last year I threatened to install OS2 on it, not a problem since.
"I ’ll make thee glorious by my pen, And famous by my sword." - James Graham, Marquess of Montrose (1612–1650)
mjames posted this at 17:42 — 3rd November 2002.
They have: 2,064 posts
Joined: Dec 1999
I recommend you post your problem in the Comcast forum: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/comcast
I read it regularly and post there to see when my area is going to (or not
) get upgraded to two-way. I can't really help you with two-way since I am only familiar with puny one-way. But good luck.
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