Cable modem woes

[time]

Cable data services in my area went out mid-afternoon Thursday, April 29. The problem was fixed about 11pm, but my Nortel CM115 still had no Link light. My neighbour with his <1year old Motorola came back up just fine.

Telco tech arrived Saturday, May 1. He plugged in a Motorola 5100, pointed out that it worked, and put me on the spot to agree to a new modem ($200!).

I was not happy. I could not believe that the apparent breakage of the modem was unrelated to the area outage. I wanted to switch to DSL. The tech got a sales rep on the phone and I was told three weeks!

So, I could either do without broadband for three weeks or fork over the cash. And I had to make up my mind on the spot. As a concession, the tech spoke to a sales rep who offered a new 18mth contract for me for $130.

I must have been insane, but I agreed.

The modem worked for about an hour before the next 21 hour outage started, but I digress. I remained suspicious about why my Nortel would no longer work, so after picking up some clues, I connected to its diags and checked what was happening.

As near as I could tell, it was locking onto the downstream channels okay, but could not settle on a particular upstream channel. The signal level was all over the place, but seemed to get quite high.

Bluntly, I think I've been scammed. I suspect, for example, that signal strength has dropped. I have a passive splitter with two TV outlets sharing my connection. Does anyone know of any way to prove whether the modem is functional or not? Or any ideas as to what really happened?

 

[ddrueding]

I know a few people at the other place are actually cable techs...don't remember who and don't remember if they come here.

Cable is still theorectially faster in my neighborhood (low saturation), but I won't touch such a clearly inferior technology. DSL/Frac. T-1/ISDN for me in that order.

 

[sechs]

DOCSIS cable modems are dirt cheap on the open market. A few days and fifty bucks would have gotten you something that worked. Buying the modem from the provider is always a rip-off.

You may want to look through the appropiate fora at BroadbandReports.com and see if you can get more information on your hardware or the ISP.

I'm a DSL person myself. Of course, I've never lived farther than six blocks from a CO....

 

[Bozo]

Even if you would have bought a modem at a local store, you would have at least got a warrenty. My Linksys modem came from Radio Shack for $99 with a $99 rebate offer.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Bozo]

Opps .... Thats a Motarola modem. My hub is Linksys.


Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Fushigi]

I just may the $3/month for cable modem rental. That way it's their problem if it breaks. It helps that my company reimburses me for my net access.

I prefer cable over DSL. Consistently higher speeds (3Mb vs. 768Kb down) for not that much more $. Both systems have minor outages, but both are generally up for weeks at a time between the (noticed) outages.

 

[mubs]

Was a DSL user since 1999. Moved this January, with only 64k DSL available at this location, so have cable with Adelphia. Bought my own Motorola Surfboard SB5100 from Circuit City for $80 - $40 rebates. It's one of the top rated cable modems. It's defintely faster than all of my prior DSL experience. And at $27 per month, it's cheaper than the $40 I was paying the local telco.

This doesn't answer any of time's questions, other than that at least he's now got one of the top rated cable modems. Perhaps he could have stalled long enough to buy his own modem. ddrueding's suggestion about cable-techs and sechs' about BroadbandReports.com are about the best bets.

 

[Will Rickards WT]

I'm sure you've tried the obvious, plugging your modem in over at your neighbor's house

 

[timwhit]

Have you tried the old cable modem without the splitter on the line?

 

[time]

I'm sure you've tried the obvious, plugging your modem in over at your neighbor's house

Well, I went one better than that, actually. I reasoned that there was every chance my neighbour's levels would be no better, so I tried it >10km away, AFAIK on a different POP (or whatever a cable hub is called).

Unfortunately, as with my neighbour, the house had cable TV as well and consequently a splitter.

Have you tried the old cable modem without the splitter on the line?

Not yet - I was looking for support for my conspiracy theory first. The telco techs seem to figure that the threaded collars on the coax connectors need to be tightened like car wheel nuts, so I need to get an 11mm (7/16) open-ended spanner from somewhere before I can change anything. :roll:

 

[Buck]

At the different places that I have lived for the past 6 years, I have been using cable for Internet access. So far, I have used Motorola and Toshiba modems. Additionally, each has been used through one splitter. The cable guys have always told me that they cannot exceed two splitters for a cable modem (this has always been with Cox cable), and have thus always run a dedicated line from the very first splitter for the cable modem. Connectivity issues have been extremely rare, however, I have come to learn that the power up sequence of a LAN behind a cable modem is important. I always power down the computer systems (unplug any cables that stay active when the system shuts down), power down the router, and then the cable modem. The modem must stay off for at least 60 seconds to ensure proper connectivity (a new MAC address?). Then power on the modem, wait for its diagnostic/startup sequence to complete, then power on the router and then the computer systems. This has always worked for me. If I don’t wait the appropriate amount of time before powering on the modem, or a machine stays on, the sequence doesn’t work properly, and I usually don’t get connectivity.

 

[timwhit]

A couple years ago i was having major connectivity issues with a cable modem on a splitter. The cable company kept insisting that it was because of a poor quality splitter. But, then they came out and put different combinations of filters on the line and it started working again. However, I would definately try taking off the splitter before anything else. Do you know what kind of splitter is on the line?

 

[Fushigi]

When they added cable net access to my house, they put some form of a splitter in the junction box ouside. Not a basic passive unit; I'm fairly certain there was some filtering or other electronics in there. Then that line went to the cable modem while the original line continued to service the TV side. Basically, the TV & Internet pieces enter the house separately.

 

[time]

My splitter, fairly standard in Oz I believe, is a static 3-way unit, i.e. 1 input and 3 outputs. It lives in the "junction box" with an isolator and presumably drops signal by at least 10dB.

Okay, I bought a 7/16 open-ended spanner and undid the wheelnuts - oops, coax connectors - and bypassed the splitter. New modem still okay, so changed to the old Nortel. I waited a minute or so but was not rewarded with a Link light - just a sporadic Sync.

Plugged in the network cable and browsed the modem diagnostic pages. Depressingly, this time it could not even lock in a downstream channel.

I waited several minutes while the modem stepped through every possible channel, then called the telco and checked that:
a) the modem was still registered on their network, and
b) even if it wasn't, it should still connect.

I'm very disheartened. Last time, it was only the upstream connection that wouldn't stabilize. Now it can't seem to even manage that. I'm reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I just have bad luck. I must remember to sacrifice some valuable semiconductors to the great IT god, Murphy.

 

[Buck]

Just as a side note Time, I helped a customer remove their old desktop system about a month ago and helped them connect their new laptop. Very little work was needed, but in the process, the cable modem was gently handled. After this simple event, the modem failed and was eventually replaced by the Service Provider. As you well know, electronics can fail at the most inopportune time.