Comcast won't acknowledge a problem with their ibone. Need advice please!

Posted by: bobbyk

Comcast won't acknowledge a problem with their ibone. Need advice please! - 12/21/16 02:33 AM

I have been dealing with terrible packet loss and latency every single night for almost three weeks now through a Comcast ibone (IP 75.149.230.69 / be-201-pe01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net.

The issue always occurs around peak hours between 5pm EST and 11pm EST and it literally happens every single evening.

I have contacted my ISP (Time Warner Cable), Comcast's corporate office, and Comcast's tech support registration email without anything being done and Comcast pushes the issue off to my ISP. They say I am the only one complaining of this issue and I am at my wit's end. I have sent them PingPlotter images like the ones below but they claim that the packet loss is only due to their server dropping ICMP packets but I am using UDP packets engine so how could that be?

I need some advice on how you feel about my PingPlotter Pro trace results and what you would do if you were me. I feel as if I have done just about everything I can at this point but noone cares or takes this issue seriously.

Thank you very much.

Below are the images from tonight's traces in which I once again could not play my game as the latency and packet loss was just too terrible between the hours of 8:58pm – 9:20pm as well as 10:30pm – 10:48pm.

The first two images are trace to server I play my game on and the graphs are of what I believe to be the originating ibone server owned by Comcast causing the issues.

The last two images are to a different server I play my game on which takes the same hops to reach the final destination and the graphs once again are of the same problematic ibone server.

I can also upload the .pp2 files if needed.







Posted by: Gary

Re: Comcast won't acknowledge a problem with their ibone. Need advice please! - 12/21/16 05:27 PM

Hey Bobby,

Thanks for sharing your results. Fighting this kind of battle can be tough - but hopefully we can help out.

From what we can see in the screenshots you've provided, it definitely looks like there's some packet loss starting at hop #8 (75.149.230.69) in each of your traces, and it *appears* that packet loss is carrying through the rest of your route.

There are a few factors in play that make things tough to tell for certain, though (which may be why you're getting some push back from Comcast).

Only having the timeline graph open for hop #8 is the first thing. It's usually best to have graphs for the subsequent hops (in your case, #9, #10, #11, etc) open as well; as this can help illustrate if the pattern of packet loss occurring is carrying through the route. The other thing that's adding some uncertainty is your final destination. With the target reporting 100% packet loss, it adds some room to question if the packet loss in earlier hops is contributing to any issues at the last point in the route.

Are there any targets you can trace to that *don't* come up with 100% packet loss (if you try tracing to www.triongames.com - does it follow the same route with the problem hop)? If you can show results where the final destination is responding (not showing solid 100% packet loss), it may help make your case a bit more clear. If you can tie those results with some real-world implications (creating comments in PingPlotter when you start to experience problems playing your game), it can help make for a more compelling case, too.

We've got a few articles that may be of some help to you here - the first would be the "Building a Compelling Case" section of our getting started guide:

http://www.pingplotter.com/gsg/buildingacase.html

The other would be our guide to using PingPlotter to troubleshoot and solve network problems:

https://www.pingman.com/network-nirvana/

Hopefully this helps out. If you have any questions, or if you want to send over any pp2 files - we'll be happy to offer any other guidance we can!

Best wishes,

-Gary