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WiFi blues
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Jun 7, 2021 21:14:42   #
TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC
 
Well, this has been a frustrating week.

I have Spectrum as an ISP and since the Google/UTube TV vs Roku battle is still in play, I decided to give Spectrum’s streaming service a try. Unfortunately, I’d get a “you need to be connected to your home internet” error on some channels. Of course I was connected to my home internet, or I couldn’t have gotten the error message in the first place. I have my own Modem which is exactly the same model as their previously leased modem (intentionally, so they couldn’t claim it was incompatible). It has 2.4G and 5G WiFi and 4 full speed Ethernet ports built in. I’ve been using it for ~3 years, and it benchmarks just over 200MB (down) which is the spectrum service speed for my plan. After spending the better part of last Saturday on line with several levels of Spectrum support, the lead tech finally managed to “fool the router into thinking it was a Spectrum router” (the tech’s words). Unfortunately, in so doing she disabled the WiFi, 2 of the Ethernet ports and console access so I couldn’t reactivate them. They worked on that problem for another wasted day only to ultimately tell me that they could not undo the changes they’d made and buying a new router was the only answer. The router now thinks it’s a spectrum router, and isn’t authorized for WiFi etc. of course I escalated the case, but they swore that they had no way to tell the router it was customer owned or that WiFI is enabled (which I don’t believe), but I was stuck, so I ran down to Best Buy and grabbed a Netgear AC WiFi router with 4 Ethernet ports. Then I called Spectrum and cancelled the new service. So after being a customer for about 40 years, they remotely trashed my router, cost me $100 and caused an extra hop and the attendant latency and one more device to fail and reboot as a reward for giving them more business. Google is 6 blocks away burying Gbit fiber (for the same cost as Spectrum’s 200/10 service). I can’t wait.

You’d think that would be the end of the issue - $100 and 2 days of wasted time for a worse network, but noooo. So yesterday, I benchmarked the performance of the new Router, and was disgusted to find that this AC router which on the box states AC speeds (800Mb + 400Mb) actually only benchmarks 80Mb either directly connected or over WiFi to Gbit NICs. LONG call with Netgear and two levels of support (in India) before the Lead finally, after tryin a dozen different settings, stated that the router would only support AC speeds on one client port to the other (which I didn’t test), but was limited to less than 100 MB from the Internet WAN port to either the WiFI or Ethernet ports. I pointed out the exact verbiage on the box, which stated AC speeds, nothing in the specs that says it doesn’t apply to the WAN port, and the fact that he had tried changing settings for an hour before he came up with this BS excuse. I called BS on this, told him the product was incorrectly advertised, that they could either provide a router that made the specs or I send it back and NEVER buy another Netgear product. No joy. My next call was to Linksys to order a new router and made a point of verifying with their tech support (which was not off-shore) that there were no “exceptions” to the specs. As soon as it arrives, the Netgear is going back and both Spectrum and Netgear are on my permanent SList forever. I will NEVER do business with either again..

End of rant.

Reply
Jun 7, 2021 22:43:55   #
johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle
 
That is horrible customer (supposedly) tech support from Spectrum. It just goes to show that their lower, and sometimes upper tier support, is basically a fresh IT guy with little to no experience working on gear. You have to do a lot to brick a consumer-level router without modifying the firmware, and somehow they were able to do it.

Not that you probably care at this point, is there a way to hook up the router to the crappy netgear and assign it a different IP address and re-install the factory firmware? If not, you might check out https://dd-wrt.com and see if they support that model router and unlock all the features on it. I used dd-wrt for an older linksys router and was able to increase the power on the wifi signal to create a bridged router connection to my garage for my real-time hydrometer readings in my fermentation chamber.

Either way, I typically stick with Linksys products, especially since they were bought out by Cisco years ago.

Hope you find hapiness at the end of the new router :)

Reply
Jun 7, 2021 23:02:16   #
TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC
 
johngault007 wrote:
That is horrible customer (supposedly) tech support from Spectrum. It just goes to show that their lower, and sometimes upper tier support, is basically a fresh IT guy with little to no experience working on gear. You have to do a lot to brick a consumer-level router without modifying the firmware, and somehow they were able to do it.

Not that you probably care at this point, is there a way to hook up the router to the crappy netgear and assign it a different IP address and re-install the factory firmware? If not, you might check out https://dd-wrt.com and see if they support that model router and unlock all the features on it. I used dd-wrt for an older linksys router and was able to increase the power on the wifi signal to create a bridged router connection to my garage for my real-time hydrometer readings in my fermentation chamber.

Either way, I typically stick with Linksys products, especially since they were bought out by Cisco years ago.

Hope you find hapiness at the end of the new router :)
That is horrible customer (supposedly) tech suppor... (show quote)


That is an excellent suggestion - I appreciate it and will give it a try tomorrow. Thank you! I can actually disconnect the router from the Internet, reboot and get into the console and turn the ports and WiFi back on, but as soon as I hook it to the Internet Spectrum turns off everything as soon as they provide it an IP address. Perhaps I can lock the configuration while offline so it can’t be reconfigured remotely or disable remote access. I think there’s a little more to this than meets the eye. Spectrum actually provides the same router and for a monthly charge, turns on the WiFi, so it’s pretty clear to me that all they need to do is tell their switch that WiFi is authorized on this router, but are unwilling to do it.

I have always used Linksys until now as well, and being owned by Cisco is a plus for me also. Btw, since I posted this, I received a survey from Netgear concerning my satisfaction with today’s support call. You can imagine what I wrote back.

Again, thanks for the hint.

Reply
 
 
Jun 7, 2021 23:35:35   #
johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle
 
TriX wrote:
That is an excellent suggestion - I appreciate it and will give it a try tomorrow. Thank you! I can actually disconnect the router from the Internet, reboot and get into the console and turn the ports and WiFi back on, but as soon as I hook it to the Internet Spectrum turns off everything as soon as they provide it an IP address. Perhaps I can lock the configuration while offline so it can’t be reconfigured remotely or disable remote access

I have always used Linksys until now as well, and being owned by Cisco is a plus for me also.

Again, thanks for the hint.
That is an excellent suggestion - I appreciate it ... (show quote)


Yep, if you assign it a static private IP address and set the gateway to the router with internet access, they "shouldn't" be able to see it (theoretically). When I had AT&T, I disabled the wifi on their router and had my better linksys router set up to provide the wifi, that way AT&T only had access to the public facing IP and a router that acted as a true gateway. Since our move, I had to go back to the cable modem and separate router setup.

Basically I had it set up like this (your IPs may vary):

AT&T router - IP: 192.168.100.1/24 (internal) // xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (whatever AT&T assigned)
Personal Linksys router w/wifi - IP: 192.168.100.2/24, Gateway: 192.168.100.1

Reply
Jun 8, 2021 11:27:39   #
Earnest Botello Loc: Hockley, Texas
 
TriX wrote:
Well, this has been a frustrating week.

I have Spectrum as an ISP and since the Google/UTube TV vs Roku battle is still in play, I decided to give Spectrum’s streaming service a try. Unfortunately, I’d get a “you need to be connected to your home internet” error on some channels. Of course I was connected to my home internet, or I couldn’t have gotten the error message in the first place. I have my own Modem which is exactly the same model as their previously leased modem (intentionally, so they couldn’t claim it was incompatible). It has 2.4G and 5G WiFi and 4 full speed Ethernet ports built in. I’ve been using it for ~3 years, and it benchmarks just over 200MB (down) which is the spectrum service speed for my plan. After spending the better part of last Saturday on line with several levels of Spectrum support, the lead tech finally managed to “fool the router into thinking it was a Spectrum router” (the tech’s words). Unfortunately, in so doing she disabled the WiFi, 2 of the Ethernet ports and console access so I couldn’t reactivate them. They worked on that problem for another wasted day only to ultimately tell me that they could not undo the changes they’d made and buying a new router was the only answer. The router now thinks it’s a spectrum router, and isn’t authorized for WiFi etc. of course I escalated the case, but they swore that they had no way to tell the router it was customer owned or that WiFI is enabled (which I don’t believe), but I was stuck, so I ran down to Best Buy and grabbed a Netgear AC WiFi router with 4 Ethernet ports. Then I called Spectrum and cancelled the new service. So after being a customer for about 40 years, they remotely trashed my router, cost me $100 and caused an extra hop and the attendant latency and one more device to fail and reboot as a reward for giving them more business. Google is 6 blocks away burying Gbit fiber (for the same cost as Spectrum’s 200/10 service). I can’t wait.

You’d think that would be the end of the issue - $100 and 2 days of wasted time for a worse network, but noooo. So yesterday, I benchmarked the performance of the new Router, and was disgusted to find that this AC router which on the box states AC speeds (800Mb + 400Mb) actually only benchmarks 80Mb either directly connected or over WiFi to Gbit NICs. LONG call with Netgear and two levels of support (in India) before the Lead finally, after tryin a dozen different settings, stated that the router would only support AC speeds on one client port to the other (which I didn’t test), but was limited to less than 100 MB from the Internet WAN port to either the WiFI or Ethernet ports. I pointed out the exact verbiage on the box, which stated AC speeds, nothing in the specs that says it doesn’t apply to the WAN port, and the fact that he had tried changing settings for an hour before he came up with this BS excuse. I called BS on this, told him the product was incorrectly advertised, that they could either provide a router that made the specs or I send it back and NEVER buy another Netgear product. No joy. My next call was to Linksys to order a new router and made a point of verifying with their tech support (which was not off-shore) that there were no “exceptions” to the specs. As soon as it arrives, the Netgear is going back and both Spectrum and Netgear are on my permanent SList forever. I will NEVER do business with either again..

End of rant.
Well, this has been a frustrating week. br br I ... (show quote)


Trix, I have had Spectrum for about 2 years with their standard setup and have had no problems with them, my internet speed I pay for is 400 mbs and usually runs at 450 or above mbs. I have Hulu, Roku, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Prime and Netflix and they all run great with the
Spectrum router and the WIFI works great throughout the house. BTW, Spectrum is is far better than ATT, by far.

Reply
Jun 8, 2021 12:16:59   #
TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC
 
Earnest Botello wrote:
Trix, I have had Spectrum for about 2 years with their standard setup and have had no problems with them, my internet speed I pay for is 400 mbs and usually runs at 450 or above mbs. I have Hulu, Roku, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Prime and Netflix and they all run great with the
Spectrum router and the WIFI works great throughout the house. BTW, Spectrum is is far better than ATT, by far.


I’m not complaining about their service - it works fine for me too unless we have a brief power outage and then they are down for many hours (not a very resilient infrastructure). I’m complaining that they trashed MY equipment and are unwilling to do anything about it. I’m Sure if I were willing to toss my router and lease one from them, they’d manage to make it work just fine.

Reply
Jun 8, 2021 13:16:25   #
johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle
 
Earnest Botello wrote:
Trix, I have had Spectrum for about 2 years with their standard setup and have had no problems with them, my internet speed I pay for is 400 mbs and usually runs at 450 or above mbs. I have Hulu, Roku, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Prime and Netflix and they all run great with the
Spectrum router and the WIFI works great throughout the house. BTW, Spectrum is is far better than ATT, by far.


The service provider, and what people think are the best ones doesn't really help Trix with his actual issue. I have no stock in any ISP, so realistically I could have replaced AT&T with any fiber-based service provider and my suggested (possible) solution to his problem would still be applicable.

If I missed anything with possible troubleshooting and fixes, please feel free to add them.

Reply
 
 
Jun 8, 2021 13:34:47   #
Earnest Botello Loc: Hockley, Texas
 
johngault007 wrote:
The service provider, and what people think are the best ones doesn't really help Trix with his actual issue. I have no stock in any ISP, so realistically I could have replaced AT&T with any fiber-based service provider and my suggested (possible) solution to his problem would still be applicable.

If I missed anything with possible troubleshooting and fixes, please feel free to add them.


John, all that I was saying is that I have Spectrum's standard equipment and it works great for me, maybe it's the area he lives in. Maybe he should try a Firestick.

Reply
Jun 8, 2021 14:29:24   #
SteveR Loc: Michigan
 
You're frustrated!! We're buldling a house near my daughter. The people on the lot next door just moved in. The made an appt. with AT&T to install internet and learned that there wasn't an internet line on the street yet. When she finally spoke to a higher-up at AT&T, she was told that they didn't have funds to install the line in advance and would only install it when people moved in. Who knows when they consider that to be?? She needs the internet so a health device can transfer data as necessary to her doctor. Fortunately we're over 2 months out. Hopefully it will be in by then.

Reply
Jun 8, 2021 15:23:48   #
TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC
 
Earnest Botello wrote:
John, all that I was saying is that I have Spectrum's standard equipment and it works great for me, maybe it's the area he lives in. Maybe he should try a Firestick.


Glad everything is good for you Ernesto. My issue is a bit more complicated than that.

Reply
Jun 8, 2021 15:24:07   #
TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC
 
SteveR wrote:
You're frustrated!! We're buldling a house near my daughter. The people on the lot next door just moved in. The made an appt. with AT&T to install internet and learned that there wasn't an internet line on the street yet. When she finally spoke to a higher-up at AT&T, she was told that they didn't have funds to install the line in advance and would only install it when people moved in. Who knows when they consider that to be?? She needs the internet so a health device can transfer data as necessary to her doctor. Fortunately we're over 2 months out. Hopefully it will be in by then.
You're frustrated!! We're buldling a house near m... (show quote)


Starlink?

Reply
 
 
Jun 8, 2021 17:09:48   #
burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC
 
TriX wrote:
Well, this has been a frustrating week.

I have Spectrum as an ISP and since the Google/UTube TV vs Roku battle is still in play, I decided to give Spectrum’s streaming service a try. Unfortunately, I’d get a “you need to be connected to your home internet” error on some channels. Of course I was connected to my home internet, or I couldn’t have gotten the error message in the first place. I have my own Modem which is exactly the same model as their previously leased modem (intentionally, so they couldn’t claim it was incompatible). It has 2.4G and 5G WiFi and 4 full speed Ethernet ports built in. I’ve been using it for ~3 years, and it benchmarks just over 200MB (down) which is the spectrum service speed for my plan. After spending the better part of last Saturday on line with several levels of Spectrum support, the lead tech finally managed to “fool the router into thinking it was a Spectrum router” (the tech’s words). Unfortunately, in so doing she disabled the WiFi, 2 of the Ethernet ports and console access so I couldn’t reactivate them. They worked on that problem for another wasted day only to ultimately tell me that they could not undo the changes they’d made and buying a new router was the only answer. The router now thinks it’s a spectrum router, and isn’t authorized for WiFi etc. of course I escalated the case, but they swore that they had no way to tell the router it was customer owned or that WiFI is enabled (which I don’t believe), but I was stuck, so I ran down to Best Buy and grabbed a Netgear AC WiFi router with 4 Ethernet ports. Then I called Spectrum and cancelled the new service. So after being a customer for about 40 years, they remotely trashed my router, cost me $100 and caused an extra hop and the attendant latency and one more device to fail and reboot as a reward for giving them more business. Google is 6 blocks away burying Gbit fiber (for the same cost as Spectrum’s 200/10 service). I can’t wait.

You’d think that would be the end of the issue - $100 and 2 days of wasted time for a worse network, but noooo. So yesterday, I benchmarked the performance of the new Router, and was disgusted to find that this AC router which on the box states AC speeds (800Mb + 400Mb) actually only benchmarks 80Mb either directly connected or over WiFi to Gbit NICs. LONG call with Netgear and two levels of support (in India) before the Lead finally, after tryin a dozen different settings, stated that the router would only support AC speeds on one client port to the other (which I didn’t test), but was limited to less than 100 MB from the Internet WAN port to either the WiFI or Ethernet ports. I pointed out the exact verbiage on the box, which stated AC speeds, nothing in the specs that says it doesn’t apply to the WAN port, and the fact that he had tried changing settings for an hour before he came up with this BS excuse. I called BS on this, told him the product was incorrectly advertised, that they could either provide a router that made the specs or I send it back and NEVER buy another Netgear product. No joy. My next call was to Linksys to order a new router and made a point of verifying with their tech support (which was not off-shore) that there were no “exceptions” to the specs. As soon as it arrives, the Netgear is going back and both Spectrum and Netgear are on my permanent SList forever. I will NEVER do business with either again..

End of rant.
Well, this has been a frustrating week. br br I ... (show quote)


Hmmm… we have Spectrum in High Point. We own our Arris/Motorola cable modem and separate Netgear router. Both are fine until there’s a cable outage. 5 GHz WiFi gives us the same speed as a wired connection (to the Internet).

We have consistently had 112 to 127 Mbps down and 11.8 to 12.7 Mbps up (Speedtest), for four years. Spectrum advertised 100 Mbps/10 Mbps until recently “upgrading” us to 200 Mbps/20 Mbps. We assume that our old modem and router are the speed limiting factors. We can’t complain much… no movie buffering most of the time.

Reply
Jun 8, 2021 17:44:25   #
TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC
 
burkphoto wrote:
Hmmm… we have Spectrum in High Point. We own our Arris/Motorola cable modem and separate Netgear router. Both are fine until there’s a cable outage. 5 GHz WiFi gives us the same speed as a wired connection (to the Internet).

We have consistently had 112 to 127 Mbps down and 11.8 to 12.7 Mbps up (Speedtest), for four years. Spectrum advertised 100 Mbps/10 Mbps until recently “upgrading” us to 200 Mbps/20 Mbps. We assume that our old modem and router are the speed limiting factors. We can’t complain much… no movie buffering most of the time.
Hmmm… we have Spectrum in High Point. We own our A... (show quote)


Yep, I have 200 down and 10 up also and I still have 2 active Ethernet ports on the Arris Modem I own. I have my desktop plugged into 1 and it typically benchmarks 210-220 Mb/sec on either of the 2 ports. I now have the other port connected to my Netgear WiFi/router, and I’m only seeing 84 Mb on any of the 4 ports or on either the 2.4 or 5GHZ WiFI ports even though it’s advertised as an AC 1.3 Gb router and I’m using Gbit NICs on both the wired and WiFI clients, which is my complaint with the Netgear. The Linksys router arrives tomorrow, and I’m hoping it’s better - Linksys sales say it will easily handle the 200 Mb on Ethernet or WiFi - we’ll see. What pisses me off about spectrum is that when all the ports and WiFi were working on my Arris before they screwed it up, I had 200Mb on all ports and WiFi and didn’t have the latency of the extra “hop” I have now, plus one more device to boot up after a power failure. $100 to go backwards in performance which just grates on me.

I was discussing this with my ham friends on our weekly tech net Saturday, and several members had suddenly had their owned routers stop working after a Spectrum “change”, and the only option was to buy a new modem/router. The suspicion was that since Spectrum gets $ to provide a modem and WiFi, it was a strategy to cause customers to move to a leased device. Is that true? Don’t know, but I do know that since this modem is exactly the same as the one they supplied, and that since they commanded the WiFI off, they could command it back on if they wanted to. My guess is support isn’t authorized to do that, even to fix their own screw up. I actually picked that particular modem to match the leased one so there couldn’t be any finger pointing about compatibility. I have friends who have Google symmetrical (same speedup/down) Gbit, and they love it. It’s 6 blocks away and almost exactly the same price. Can’t wait.

Reply
Jun 8, 2021 18:44:28   #
Earnest Botello Loc: Hockley, Texas
 
TriX wrote:
Glad everything is good for you Ernesto. My issue is a bit more complicated than that.


Thank you, Trix.

Reply
Jun 8, 2021 20:10:02   #
TheShoe Loc: Lacey, WA
 
TriX wrote:
Btw, since I posted this, I received a survey from Netgear concerning my satisfaction with today’s support call. You can imagine what I wrote back.

Don't those surveys require a minimum rating of 1? They usually don't recognize 0 or negative numbers.

Reply
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