I may have "stumbled" onto a solution.....maybe. The COX upper tier engineer pulled the recent logs for my modem, and told me the transmit levels were high, and had exceeded expected levels several times in the last three days. When I looked at the modem stats, the transmit level was at the upper edge. He suggested that COX come to the house to check and set levels.
When I put my new system together this past weekend, I did not re-install my HDTV tuner card. I have a dedicated CATV drop for my PC desk. It hits a splitter, that feeds the modem and the HDTV tuner. Since I did not hook the tuner back up, I had an unterminated RF port on the splitter. I removed the splitter, and hooked the cable directly to the modem. The modem then displayed a transmit level 3.5Db lower then before, well within the range the COX engineer expected me to have.
The ping plot did not look much better, but I then flew in AH for 4 straight hours without a burp! SKHammer emailed a ping plot to me(he is on the same ISP here in Wichita. He utilizes the same paths as I do, and never gets discoed. His plot had some of the same "anomalies" as mine.)
COX is still coming out tomorrow morning to check the levels and the ping plots. Fingers remain crossed!!
Colt