We’ve had an enormous amount of problems with Comcast routing over the last month. It manifests itself as Internet drops, slowdowns, disconnections and it’s been inconsistent.
We’ve pulled out all the stops. Both Parrish and Ted have put in a huge number hours behind the scenes working through various levels of support and putting pressures on all of our contacts there to try to get the issue resolved.
But as our contacts have admitted Comcast support is in disarray. Following the collapse of the merger with Charter, in which Comcast was leaving Michigan to Charter organization, they switched their support team over but when the merger failed to be approved Comcast was left without a support department. They brought back their staff from Charter, what was left of them anyway, but it’s a disastrous mess right now. No one seems to have authority to move a problem along to the right people.
Here we see the firewall recording up and down incidents for a client in Bloomfield
Here we see incoming connections to a client in Troy withering on the vine
I won’t bore you with more screenshots but suffice to say that this is repeating itself each time internet access passes through Troy. Not every time but often enough to cause significant business disruption. We think only when certain load balancers are hit. We’ve see this issue for clients in Troy, Bloomfield, Auburn Hills, Royal Oak. The Internet travels in hops and when you make a connection to the web location whether that is a website, your email or a remote connection to your office your request passes through up to 30 hops to get there. Hops are the routers and load balancers that get your request from point A to point B.
Our Suggestion. Because Comcast isn’t coming up with a solution to this problem our suggestion is the put them on the back burner as a secondary Internet source and instead use another Internet solution. We’ve recently made a great connection to a powerful wireless solution that has been very fast and very stable. One of our clients has been using it for 6 months or so and others for a few months.
With so much happening now with remote workers and Cloud software, secondary Internet is the new standard. It’s incidents like this one with Comcast that really drive that home. While we continue to believe that eventually when Comcast works out their Internal organizational issues that they will get back to being a solid choice for Internet service with great support again, business can’t wait. So if you’re in the zone where your traffic passes through Troy it’s time to make a move into a new primary Internet service.
– Amy
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About Harbor Computer Services
Harbor Computer Services is an IT firm servicing Southeastern Michigan. We work exclusively under contract with our clients to provide technology direction and either become the IT department or provide assistance to the internal IT they already have. We have won many awards for our work over the years, including the worldwide Microsoft Partner of the Year in 2010. We’re the smallest firm to have ever won this most prestigious award. Most recently we were recognized as one of the top 20 visionaries in small business IT by ChannelPro Magazine (2015). And in 2016 as the top Michigan IT firm for Manufacturing. There are a few simple things that make Harbor Computer Services the best choice for your business. •We are Professionals •We are Responsible •We are Concerned About The Success of Your Business
