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0 pointsaltairprime4mo ago0 comments

In my case, one of the main loops had a cable break under a roadway, in a place on the loop that was wholly Comcast infra rather than subscriber. You’re not wrong about the general case! But for that reason, they basically stopped acknowledging the issue to me at all, never followed up on support calls ever again, and it took them maybe three years to close that roadway overnight and fix their cable. (I was able to manifest the issue at a service speed of 125mbps when capacity up to 1+ gbps was available, but of course that low limit didn’t stop the modems from negotiating whatever full-width max-QAM links they could.)

Diagnostics mastery note: logically ruling out a readily testable possibility is only (somewhat) logical when one hasn’t exhausted all other possibilities. Displeasing and successful diagnostic tests that ought not to differentiate but do are how one exposes issues hiding in the blind spots of other experts. (If they hadn’t explicitly said ‘I have no ideas left’ in as many words, I probably wouldn’t have posted at all.) Here is an idea they hadn’t openly said they considered. The reasons this idea might or might not pan out are still interesting to me! TIL! But it was a beautiful and consumer-accessible scalpel of diagnostic and earned me a walkthrough of the signal contamination specifics by the senior truck tech who showed up to help the lesser truck tech, so perhaps it’ll help another.

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razingeden4mo ago

for sure. youd definitely be a case of “hey wait, this is still screwed up at my NID/drop at the curb its NOT me!”

on friday theyd just settled on tacking new drops and outlets to the crown molding as a solution. i was the second one they were about to do it for. its a building that had maintained its 90-100 year old character and kept all the infrastructure concealed and elegant for all these years .

i would have dug a LOT deeper as a tech before i ever did that to your property.

and then even if it is you. half these guys would just as soon drill a hole through your wall and run cables along your siding or brick and be on to the next ticket. they dont run wall fishes or do a mission impossible in the dead space of an MDU or crawl up into a hot attic full of bees like we used to. maybe its contracting culture where you get $40, if that, for the connection and dont get anything extra for effort or aesthetics.

thats a lost art for cable techs and you gotta hire an electrician A/V or phone tech for that now.

and thats … exactly what im going to have to do to get at&t fiber up here from the facilities in our basement whenever ive finally had it with spectrum because apparently this is a lost art over at at&t as well! and “im not allowed to do it” /rant

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