An excellent ping test: just what we all hope for

By Peter Vogel

I recently encountered trouble with my Shaw cable Internet service. Having used the cable service from its origins as the Rogers @home product, I can say that it has been dead reliable, with just a couple of outages over just less than a decade. One of those was as a result of a utility pole being knocked over in a motor-vehicle accident. The other originated in a failed network switch a block from my home.

More recently, however, our service has been dropping out sporadically. Rebooting the Shaw Motorola modem usually got the service running again but the problem had begun increasing in frequency. An initial phone call to the Shaw service centre led to an observation by the tech person that there had been several connection losses to our modem in the previous week but there was no problem evident at the moment.

In early August the problem became particularly bad. The modem began cycling repeatedly through its startup process. Connectivity existed only sporadically. I decided to run a ping test, a test in which a series of data packets is sent to a server of your choosing. I use www.sfu.ca, a web server that is generally reliable.

The results of the test were disconcerting. Data was being lost on each test. The basic test sends four packets, and in my tests at least one was being lost on each run.

I decided to run a longer test, over several minutes (ping www.sfu.ca -t). When you key Ctrl-Break after such a test you'll get the packet-lost figure for the duration of the test. In my case it was 50 per cent. Under such conditions it becomes very difficult to do anything meaningful online.

Armed with this data I phoned the Shaw help line once more. This time I was in luck, so to speak. The technician was able to confirm the data loss figure through testing from the company's end. Furthermore, he reported that my modem had lost its connection to Shaw's servers 14 times that day.

Quite confidently the technician suggested that the actual line to the modem was likely the problem. He noted that the cable itself can degrade over a decade or so. That timeline certainly fit. In my case I have a dedicated line from Shaw's external box with no splitters on it.

A replacement of that line would, supposedly, be needed. Unfortunately, the next available slot for a technician's visit was two weeks off.

I don't know about you, but I can't do without my Internet feed. The TV, okay, I can live without it for a period, but don't take away my Internet. I'd rather not have to pinch a signal from a neighbour's unsecured wireless transmitter to get my telecom "fix."

Without my asking, the tech help person offered three weeks of service credit and the same period of free access to all the Shaw pay TV services. (Note to family: we won't be signing up for any of those services once the free access ends!)

I should add that Shaw's tech did suggest plugging the modem into another outlet. I didn't have one in a handy spot and I was fairly sceptical of the suggested solution in any case. Nevertheless, I found a 15-metre network cable to test the other outlet.

Indeed, that was the problem, or so it seemed at the time. On this line there was no data packet loss whatsoever. In the meantime, while we await the technician's visit to replace the older cable, we'll have to put up with a few wires of our own snaking across the floor.

To run a ping test you drop into a command prompt console window (Start-Run and type cmd in Windows XP, and in Vista type cmd into the search box off the Start menu). At the command prompt type in "ping" followed by the site you plan to use for your test.

Update: three days after making the suggested cable switch, the Internet service began cycling off and on again. "Off" periods were typically short, of several minutes duration, but they became increasingly frequent. A call to technical support didn't elicit too much help, other than the report: "Your modem has lost touch with our servers about 100 times today!"

No further help. I'll just have to await the technician's visit. Extremely frustrating and annoying for a service that has otherwise been excellent for more than a decade.

Update 2: Thanks to a cancellation I managed to get an earlier house call. Of course there was no problem at the time of the call!

The excellent technician first checked recent signal dropout records for other Shaw customers in the immediate area. He found no problems similar to mine.

He then measured the performance of all the splitters and other line components, and although there were no obvious indications of failure he replaced everything other than the wiring. As for the cable itself being the problem: no, the technician had no concerns whatsoever there.

A 24-hour ping test showed no dropped data packets, and return times averaging 12 milliseconds. Excellent results. I'm hoping we're good to go for another decade of trouble-free Internet access!

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Suggestions and comments about this column may be sent to peterv@portal.ca.