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View Full Version : Time Warner Cable & RoadRunner


Player0
28th April 2002, 08:01 PM
I've just been having a not so good experience. For the past year i've had Citizens DSL 384k/128k. $50 a month. Not too bad, very reliable. But my friends in the area have gotten RoadRunner cable modem, and they were getting much faster speeds than me, at $40 a month. My DSL lease was up, so I decided I would try switching.

I installed the modem two weeks ago, and it has been working great. I get about 1900k/384k. Yes, almost 2Mbit connection. Its amazing, the speed is incredible and I love the service. The problem is the damn modem is flakey. Sometimes it just goes up and down all day, other times, it works great all day. I swapped all the cables, the splitter, and I still have problems. The cable light just goes down, and I loose signal.

So I had a tech guy come over last Thursday. He replaced some older RG59 line outside of my apartment with some RG6, which should definately have been an improvement. I replaced the 1-1000mhz splitter that came with the installation kit with a gold plated 1-1100mhz fully isolated splitter, and replaced the cables going to my TV with higher quality versions, etc. It helped the problem only a little bit, but still it goes down once in a while.

Its usually worse when its windy or bad weather outside, like a problem with the cabling on the poles themselves. I called today again, and they give me the run around, had to reexplain the problem like three times to people who know less about cable modems than I do, which is scary. I finally get someone who has half a brain, and he agrees with my idea about the problem being a line problem somewhere outside. So whats he do? He transferes me back to guy #1 who has no idea about anything to make the final resolution of the problem. So he's going to send out a tech on thursday! Probably the same tech who came out last time who DIDNT check the signal strength and just BLINDLY replaced the cable without doing any sort of tests on it or anything. He just assumed it was the RG59 that was causing problems, even though I explained to him that WIND was causing problems, with the TV signal too. TV would have kept working if it was just the RG59 cable.

Arggh! So, Im getting quite frustrated. I'd cancel this cable and stay with my DSL if it just wasnt so much faster. I just want someone to come out and do some signal strenght tests, or go outside and wriggle the cables around, because im fairly sure that will cause problems to occur. Anyone else have roadrunner? Is this sort of non-reliability normal? If I get one more person telling me to restart my PC because the CABLE light is out im going to scream.

TGC
28th April 2002, 08:09 PM
Same here, on windy days it will lose the signal quite often, takes a reboot to re-acquire the signal. But when it is working it is fast (I have had as fast as 2800/452, but the norm is 1900/384). I doubt they can fix the problem (at least here) as all the cabling runs on poles rather than underground in the nieghborhood.

Player0
28th April 2002, 08:27 PM
Well thats disheartening ;) Yeah its all on poles here too. I've had some other friends mention that disconnects are just life with cable. On the other hand, some people who are on the same network as me have no problems at all.

Well, I'll see what the tech can improve thursday. I may keep DSL and Cable together, or just pick one or the other. It's a tough call for me. I do need a broadband line thats 100% though.

TGC
28th April 2002, 11:16 PM
I think posting in this thread jinxed my connection. It has been down for a couple of hours now and my IP has changed (first time in months). DSL is not available here yet, but I do keep a dial-up account just in case. ;)

Player0
28th April 2002, 11:31 PM
Haha...well, theres karma for you :)

tripodal
29th April 2002, 07:42 AM
ive got timewarner / roadrunner as well.. i havent expericenced too many downtimes... one in the last 6 monthts that i recall...
although i am in WI, so i guess its a whole new world...
my only problems are that they keep changing my ip addy, and the modem had a difficult time switching computers, it store the network cards unique id.. and rejects for about 4 hours any other nic attached.