Site diagnostics, please

Hi Remy

Escalated support called me at noon Friday. Christine and case# 153709860 We had a 1:47 conference where we went through EVERYTHING. We tested modem resets, 2g, 5g, two routers, ethernet direct and routed, phone by wifi, etc.

She found no problems other than constant speed fluctuations that never got up to baseline. She said my  beam has no problems. After confirming modem, ODU and aim were good, she said the coax must be bad. I said it was replaced from end to end some years ago but I couldn't tell her when.

She dispatched a technician to change it out. This was scheduled for between 11 and 2 on Saturday. He called at 6:25 PM Friday and asked if he could come by in a half hour or so. Out of respect for his schedule and request, I agreed even though it was a very inconvenient time.

He connected to the modem wifi with his phone to check things out. He immediately said I was in FAP and was pleased he solved the problem so quickly and easily. My plan bytes were indeed 0%. That ran out during the earlier support call. He didn't seem to believe I was running on token byte reserve. He wasted a lot of time calling someone on the phone to verify I really had that much reserve. Whoever he was talking to eventually confirmed I had that many genuine token bytes in reserve and was not in FAP.

He checked things and couldn't find anything wrong except low speeds. I asked him if he read all the notes attached to his dispatch because he was sent out to change the coax. He declined to do that (which was good because it was getting late and that's a long, hard job) saying coax lasts over 30 years. (Uh huh, sure it does.) He started changing cable ends because he found some tiny spots of corrosion in them and changed the ground block. The cable ends I looked at didn't have any dielectric grease but I did see the black spots he showed me. Then he changed the radio and was on his way.

This helped nothing. Still slow and erratic. The next morning I set up a auto testing routine to run 50 hours of 5 mb downloads every half hour to make a nice, pretty 100 test page. This makes it easy to see the ongoing situation.I let it run on my main, Ethernet connected computer and made certain nothing interfered with a scheduled speed test. Inconvenient is an understatement but it tells the tale. My testmy page shows a low download of 0.56 Mbps, a high of 42.12 Mbps and a median of 9.55 Mbps. Same basic result as the two sets of tests the week before using the old modem and then the new modem. It appears something is wrong with my system but the problem does not exist on my property unless it could be the underground coax.

The repairman did see the RSS instantly drop from above 80 to 52 when he was watching his phone. No storms, no clouds, no wind, no nothing. I've never seen this happen before but I don't spend much time staring at the RSS in the SCC. Can this be a clue? Is there any way you or I can set up a data logging function in the modem to track signal losses and corresponding time?

GW