Re: Comcast flakeout--or was it an upgrade?

["Jerry Feldman-2" <user=4@nabble.blu.org>]

 Comcast updated its specs a few years ago. I actually got an SB51xx 
cable modem from them free to replace my older SB41xx which was 
compliant, but their records showed that I had one of the ancient ones 
from back in the Highway1 days. 

I also noticed that on Monday the reordered their segment, and I got a 
new IP address, first time in at least 5 years. The one I had went back 
to attbi days. I currently use an ARIS cable modem that has the 
built-in phone system. I couldn't resist saving over $40/mo on my phone 
bills. Since I switched to Comcast phone I have had only one minor 
problem that corrected itself in a short period of time. 

In my experience over the past 14 years with cable, I've had relatively 
few problems overall with service deteriorating with attbi and vastly 
improving with Comcast. I do not recall a single Internet outage after 
Comcast's first year. With attbi we had occasional node failures that 
took hours to fix. 

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:52:06 -0400 (EDT) 
"Rich Braun" <[hidden email]> wrote: 

> 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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