Comcast flakeout--or was it an upgrade?

["Rich Braun" <user=44@nabble.blu.org>]

 Starting about 10 days ago, my cable-modem connection started acting up.  I 
was seeing high packet loss and occasional loss of sync (the "cable" link 
light would go out for up to a minute of time). 

Had service techs come out from Comcast last Friday; the first one yanked out 
the short piece of cable connecting my old Best Data CMX110 to the wall jack 
and said "aha, here's your problem right here" pointing to a loose connector. 
Well that wasn't the problem so hours later I had a more-competent tech come 
out.  Both techs reported strong signal quality; the latter did a 
more-comprehensive DOCSIS test at the packet level.  Scratching our heads, I 
had the tech take a look at my own Linux-based test:  we concluded the only 
viable test at that point was to swap out the CMX110 cable-modem unit.  I 
rented a Motorola SB5120 for the month to see if that works better. 

Well it sure does!  I now get over 10 megabits/sec in download speed, and 
don't see the dropouts and packet loss. 

So I'll get rid of the old cable modem and get a new one.  It's not obvious 
what failed but my hypothesis is that Comcast quietly did an upgrade of their 
network that rendered my old cable modem unusable.  It has a 10BaseT 
connector; I'm theorizing that the speed upgrade simply choked the poor thing, 
in a way that made it appear that something--almost anything--else besides the 
cable modem was the culprit. 

Anyway I'm posting this here to share my experience and see if perhaps my 
hypothesis proves correct over time.  If so it'll save a lot of aggravation: 
the service techs really don't have much expertise so you have to figure these 
things out pretty much on your own.  I'm more than happy with the Comcast 
network's performance and reliability but it'd be nice if this mystery were 
solved. 

-rich 


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