PSA: Important details about the new multi gig platform upgrades rolling out

bikeaddict

Yesterday, the map on the Mediacom site that shows which neighborhoods in Cedar Rapids have been upgraded to the new multi gig finally flipped my area as blue/upgraded. There was also a notice on the customer dashboard stating “Mediacom is excited to announce the launch of our Multi GIG platform.” A modem reboot did not automatically switch my speed from 1000/50 to 1000/1000.

So I contacted Mediacom customer support. First, I tried email, but got no response all day, so tried chat later. The person on chat wasn’t too helpful and just said it’s not available for me yet. Email support later did give some important details, summarized below:

After customers are notified by the notice on the customer dashboard and your neighborhood shows it’s available, you still have to wait 1-3 months before it’s actually available.
Mediacom will send out another notice once your neighborhood is really upgraded and the new plans are available.
Then customers will have to contact support to switch to the new 1000/1000 or one of the other new plans.

Hope that helps other people in Cedar Rapids or other cities from wasting time trying to upgrade right after the new multi plans are supposedly available.

bikeaddict

The map (https://mediacomcable.com/built-for-future/) is now showing most neighborhoods in Cedar Rapids have been upgraded to the new broadband plans. But after having Mediacom chat support try to upgrade my service this week, their system supposedly showed it as available, but there was some kind of error in their system when submitting the order, so it’s still not available for me.

Has anyone in the Cedar Rapids area actually upgraded to the 1000/1000 plan yet?

bikeaddict

Mediacom sent out an email today announcing that faster speeds were available. So once again I tried Mediacom chat support and the 1000/1000 plan was finally available. My account was upgraded and they rebooted my modem.

Speedtest now returns 1325/1139, compared to 1130/62 before. Cloudflare test returns 1.20Gbps/589Mbps. Fast.com returns 1.6Gbps/980Mbps. Waverform’s Bufferbloat returns 1293/1132, Grade A, latencies of 19/15/25.

B_W

Thanks for the update. I check this forum every day but there sure isn’t much activity. I wish more of the people who used to be on the DSLReports forum migrated to here.

bikeaddict

I should have also mentioned the email says customers on the 1000/50 plan should now be seeing 1000/100 after a modem reboot. This upgrade appears to have been in place for weeks. But I haven’t been seeing 100Mbps up. The speed tests would very briefly surge to 200-300 and then average out to 62 at best.

Wondering what kind of speeds older modems will get. Customers will need a Netgear CM3000 or CM2500 with mid/high-split for full upload speed.

Of course people will also need at least 2.5 gigabit Ethernet on their PC and router. There are inexpensive 2.5Gbe adapters/NICs for older PCs with only gigabit. I recommend the Ubiquiti Dream Router 7 (UDR7) for any networking nerds thinking about upgrading their home network. Minor word of caution on the faint fan hum from this router. It might not be ideal on a desktop in a silent room.

bikeaddict

Update on results of occasional speed tests over the last couple weeks…

Download speed has mostly stayed consistent over 1300Mbps. Upload speed has started intermittently slowing down in recent days. First it dropped back to 900-1000Mbps. Sometimes it’s at 400Mbps, sometimes under 100 and sometimes well under 10. Then it returns back to around 1000 at random.

Mediacom may still be doing maintenance on their network, or maybe there are technical difficulties that need fixing for consistent speeds.

bikeaddict

My upload speeds had continued to be inconsistent, varying from 1000Mbps down to 1Mbps and anywhere in between. It seemed to be deteriorating in recent weeks and I was considering calling Support, but didn’t feel like waiting around at home for a tech.

Mediacom had a scheduled outage early last week, causing service to be down for about 1.5 hours. They seem to have fixed the problem. My upload speed tests have stayed been 900-1100Mbps for the last week.

Anyone else do the upgrade to 1000/1000 or 2000/1000 service?

MysteryAce

My neighborhood is currently being upgraded for the multi-gig service. Do i need to upgrade my own modem to take advantage? I have the Arris SB8200. This modem use to be supported but it not anymore.

bikeaddict

MysteryAce
To take full advantage of multi-gig, the chain of networking devices needs to be capable of greater than gigabit speed. A cable modem with 2.5 gigabit Ethernet (NetGear CM3000 for example, available as discounted refurbs on eBay/Amazon), a router with 2.5 gigabit (or 5 or 10 gigabit) on the WAN and LAN (Ubiquiti Dream Router 7 for example). And a desktop or laptop with at least 2.5 gigabit, or support for one of the faster wi-fi 802.11 protocols.

bikeaddict

My modem disconnected this morning and seemed stuck trying to reconnect. After a power cycle, it connected again. After a speed test to confirm it was operating properly, my upload speed has increased from the usual approx. 1030 Mbps to 1136 Mbps. Download is same range at 1325 Mbps. Mediacom may have rolled out a slight upload speed increase, at least in my neighborhood.

This is the speed range I was originally at last August when the new plans were first rolled out. My upload speed was erratic for a while, before they fixed something in February, but upload speed peaked around 1030 Mbps then.

If you regularly use a lot of upload speed, try power cycling your modem to see if you also get an increase.