Comcast, outbound dropouts, questions - Resolved

Posts: 28 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: May 15, 2006 Posts: 28

OK - tier 2 support showed up today right on time. He had a meter that acts as a modem that can do pings, etc. Everything on the meter looked great - no drop outs, ever. So, problem looks to be the cable modem.

Guess what? They admitted that a bunch of people with the 5120 are having problems since they rolled out their speedboost 2 months ago. It appears to be a problem with DOCSIS 2.0. The comcast guy was trying to get them to downgrade my modem back to 1.1, but it hadn't happened yet and he didn't want to interrupt a test they were running, so... he'll be back tomorrow with another modem running an older version of DOCSIS until they can figure out what's wrong. Hopefully, this will resolve my issue! Clearly, i'm not the only one!

Jeff

Posts: 34 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Jun 20, 2006 Posts: 34

That seems right to me, perhaps a reason why my SB3100 is working so wonderfully, DOCSIS 1.1. I also received a phone call from the tier 2 technician helping me with my problem and he stated the same instance where there speedboost was causing a problem for two other people and they are trying to roll the modems back to DOCSIS 1.1 only until they can resolve their problems with 2.0. Thank you Comcast for screwing up and making our lives so difficult for the last two months!!! Evil or Very Mad

Posts: 28 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: May 15, 2006 Posts: 28

What really bothers me is that they didn't seem to TEST their speedboost. You would THINK they would roll it out to a few beta testers - you know, the kind of people who actually use the service for more than just e-mail? Also, the fact that they just upgraded all the modems without letting any end users know - in case we saw issues... hmmm...

Anyway, hopefully the issues will be resolved and we can put this all behind us until "Super Speedboost" or whatever rolls out next year - ha!

Posts: 34 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Jun 20, 2006 Posts: 34

I know, what the heck... I don't lease my modem, I own it, when did I give them permission to change my firmware? Mad

Posts: 1123 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 1123

[quote="oly_fred"]I know, what the heck... I don't lease my modem, I own it, when did I give them permission to change my firmware? :x[/quote]

When you signed up for service, unfortunately.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 12:28 pm Post subject:

This is one of the few times I'm happy to have RCA, SMC, and Cisco Comcast cable modems. Usually I'd prefer to Moto 5100, but it looks like I lucked out this time.

Posts: 28 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: May 15, 2006 Posts: 28

I'm happy to say that my problem appears to be fixed.
Swapped the motorola 5120 with a motorola 5100 running DOCSIS 1.1 and i'm getting 0% packet loss.

I will continue to monitor the line, but things looks MUCH better.

Jeff

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 26, 2006 Posts: 1

Greetings,

I have been struggling with dropped calls, stuttering voice and one-way voice for months, like many of you. I am in Winchendon, MA (central Mass, near Gardner) on Comcast. I have been noting aroun 15% upstream packet loss for a while and found that it does indeed correlate directly with poor voice quality (and slow browsing). I tried calling Comcast and got the usual runaround from 2 different techs (we don't see any problems, we can get to your modem just fine, signal looks good, we can't really check upload side). After getting dropped off *another* conference call today and having to call in from my cell phone, I was moments away from giving up and cancelling. This post gives me some hope that my problems can be solved.

I have a Motorola SB5100 but no idea how to check what version it is running. I logged in but don't see anything referencing DOCSIS. This is what I see under "help":
Software Version: SB5100-2.3.2.5-SCM01-NOSH
Hardware Version: 3
MIB Version: II
GUI Version: 1.0
VxWorks Version: 5.4

Also, this is what I see from the Status page:
Downstream Value
Frequency 693000000 Hz Locked
Signal to Noise Ratio 36 dB
Power Level -2 dBmV

Upstream Value
Channel ID 2
Frequency 35600000 Hz Ranged
Power Level 43 dBmV

Currently, my voice quality sounds pretty good; I checked the Voip test and am not getting any packet loss right now. So, I guess my main question right now is just how to check to see what DOCSIS I have.

Thanks in advance for advice,

Bozman

Posts: 13 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 08, 2006 Posts: 13

bozman9,

I can't help you with the version of DOCSIS, but I can tell you that you must ask a supervisior to call you in order to get someone to come out and change your modem. It is my understanding that unless the level 1 person can detect that there is a problem, they cannot send anyone out. However, if you demand, errr, ask to have a supervisior call you back, they have the authority to dispatch someone. Once they come out, ask them to replace the modem.

Posts: 28 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: May 15, 2006 Posts: 28

I don't know why Comcast does the whole denial thing. The tech that FINALLY came out to fix my problem had FOUR other people in Andover with the same problem that day. They clearly know they have a problem, and they know how to solve it.

You need to get to the maintenance guys and they need to bring you a modem with DOCSIS 1.1 (or earlier) and flag your account so it doesn't get upgraded automatically (however they do that).

If i had a choice, I would RUN away from Comcast as fast as possible. Once FiOS is available, I'm gone.

Jeff