

Ask HN: How to Evaluate ISP. Diagnosing timeouts.  - mydpy

Hi HN,<p>I&#x27;m visiting my sister for the holidays. She owns her own start-up business and questions the reliability of her existing Internet connection and asked me to help evaluate.<p>I tested the Comcast-provided Arris TC-862 modem&#x2F;router by monitoring the RSSI Signal, SNR, and Tx Rate. As far as I can tell, the router works fine. The MCS index falls between 11-15. The Tx rate seems quite reliable, so I don&#x27;t suspect any problems with the router.<p>Normal transmission rates however around 240ms. However, when I ping Yahoo.com, I occasionally see connectivity issues like this:<p>64 bytes from 206.190.36.45: icmp_seq=96 ttl=42 time=178.174 ms
...
Request timeout for icmp_seq 102
64 bytes from 206.190.36.45: icmp_seq=101 ttl=42 time=2272.216 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 104
...
64 bytes from 206.190.36.45: icmp_seq=102 ttl=42 time=5060.234 ms
...
64 bytes from 206.190.36.45: icmp_seq=104 ttl=42 time=9104.651 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 114
...
64 bytes from 206.190.36.45: icmp_seq=105 ttl=42 time=14243.274 ms
64 bytes from 206.190.36.45: icmp_seq=106 ttl=42 time=13242.296 ms
...
64 bytes from 206.190.36.45: icmp_seq=115 ttl=42 time=4356.262 ms
64 bytes from 206.190.36.45: icmp_seq=116 ttl=42 time=3384.265 ms
64 bytes from 206.190.36.45: icmp_seq=117 ttl=42 time=2385.716 ms
64 bytes from 206.190.36.45: icmp_seq=118 ttl=42 time=1398.363 ms<p>Notice the transmission times out and then suffers long completion times.<p>What can I do to find the source of these timeouts? I suspect it is the ISP and not the router. What information can I collect to confirm this?<p>Thanks, 
Myles
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mydpy
Here are downstream/upstream power levels:

DCID Freq Power SNR Modulation Octets Correcteds Uncorrectables Downstream 1 8
561.00 MHz -2.91 dBmV 37.36 dB 256QAM 27285151766 778 1019 Downstream 2 1
519.00 MHz -3.37 dBmV 37.64 dB 256QAM 19274768929 1183 4486 Downstream 3 2
525.00 MHz -3.39 dBmV 37.36 dB 256QAM 19591285152 1152 5588 Downstream 4 3
531.00 MHz -3.60 dBmV 37.09 dB 256QAM 20693153371 1653 6611 Downstream 5 4
537.00 MHz -3.54 dBmV 37.64 dB 256QAM 19632522571 1589 6033 Downstream 6 5
543.00 MHz -3.45 dBmV 37.94 dB 256QAM 21582618321 1185 6468 Downstream 7 6
549.00 MHz -3.43 dBmV 37.94 dB 256QAM 22146242524 1182 5274 Downstream 8 7
555.00 MHz -2.93 dBmV 37.94 dB 256QAM 21833121210 1057 5449

UCID Freq Power Channel Type Symbol Rate Modulation Upstream 1 10 37.60 MHz
49.00 dBmV DOCSIS1.x (TDMA) 2560 kSym/s 16QAM Upstream 3 11 30.80 MHz 48.50
dBmV DOCSIS2.0 (ATDMA) 5120 kSym/s 64QAM Upstream 4 12 24.20 MHz 47.25 dBmV
DOCSIS2.0 (ATDMA) 5120 kSym/s 64QAM

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mydpy
I performed a line quality test (it failed):

[http://www.dslreports.com/pingtest/64474bb63856/3123715?r=71...](http://www.dslreports.com/pingtest/64474bb63856/3123715?r=712)

