US Cable Support > Comcast HSI > [Speed] Heads-Up: Time to Replace Your DOCSIS 1.1 Modem

reply to jlivingood

Re: [Speed] Heads-Up: Time to Replace Your DOCSIS 1.1 Modem

reply to jlivingood
Nevermind, wrong question to ask. D2 modems will still work but won't be capable of new speeds. D1 modems will fail to work.

reply to jlivingood
With recommendations to go to a D3 modem now, is Comcast going to increase availability of D3 modems so techs can swap out devices for those customers who rent from Comcast?

reply to jlivingood
iF i lease a D2 EMTA can i request a D3 device to ensure future compatability?

I'm sure they will notify and ship D3 devices to you well before it is required.
for our area going all digital for tv, we just recieve a second letter with still a month to go (and we already had the new equipment delivered a week ago, plus they will attempt to call any remaining subs.
It is never in ComCasts interest to make thing more difficult that nessesary for any customer so cutting people off or forcing 2 replacemnts in short order will be rare mistake (it probably will happen, but they are working hard to avoid that.

reply to cwpc
You may have to temporally upgrade to a D3 tier, but you can drop it back down after they replace your modem.
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»www.VAJeeps.com

reply to jlivingood
jlivingood , I have a question pertaining to the Comcast CSR side of things when it comes to troubleshooting.

With DOCSIS 1.x and 2.x modems, a subscriber's modem negotiates a single downstream and single upstream carrier frequency (e.g. 2 channels total).

However, with DOCSIS 3.x and use of channel bonding, depending on the modem brand and the configuration on Comcast's side, a modem can have up to 8 downstream carriers and 4 (or more?) upstream carriers in use simultaneously. (For example, my SB6121 negotiates 4 downstream / 3 upstream, while my Zoom 5431J negotates 8 downstream / 3 upstream). The advantage here is that this "distributes the load" across multiple frequencies. But you know this already.

Here's my question:

Every single time I have spoken to Comcast CSRs about problems with a carrier frequency range (e.g. "an issue with a single channel") -- and here's a real-world example -- the CSR appears to have absolutely no visibility into this (or if they do, they aren't being trained how to do it). Instead, they just say "your upstream looks fine" and "your downstream looks fine". I ask them to give me numbers (for which a SB6121 should show them 4 downstream SNRs and power levels, and 3 upstream SNRs and power levels), but all they appear to have on their screen is a single downstream SNR + power level and a single upstream SNR + power level. This does not help when it comes to DOCSIS 3.x.

I hope you can see where I'm going with this... The problem quickly becomes an argument while on the phone; "no, my modem shows that downstream carrier freq. 753MHz has a serious SNR problem" "Well sir our system shows that your downstream SNR is just fine".

So with the major push to DOCSIS 3.x, is something being done about this from a customer service perspective? Visibility into all the details is extremely important when it comes to troubleshooting issues, while the existing system seems to be set up with the DOCSIS 1.x / 2.x mentality in mind.

Can you shed some light on this? Thanks!
--
Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer.

reply to cwpc

reply to koitsu

Just ordered a Motorola SB6141. Does it support IPV6, my SB6120 does, and can it be configured via the walled garden method or must I call in?

All D3 modems support IPv6 as it's part of the specification. The difference is if Comcast certifies it on their network to be IPv6 compliant. AFAIK, they do however.

reply to mb
Comcast doesn't show it as IPV6, but it is.
Go to the Motorola site or any dealer that sells them and it will show it does support IPV6.
I have that modem and really like it, I think you will to.

Did you use the walled garden process to associate it with your account, or did you call in to have it provisioned?

No. I had tried the wall garden a couple times without success on other modems so stopped trying.
Call Comcast, give them the MAC address and they can have you up and going in about 10 minutes.
They can also look at your signals at the same time.

reply to jlivingood
I am glad to see that Comcast is offering several popular cable modems/gateways at competitive prices because I have been considering getting an SB612x for my business class account since I no longer have a pressing need for static IP addresses (but I don't want to have to use the SMCD3G's limited NAT implementation).

I have a question that perhaps jlivingood (or some other Comcast employee) can answer. If I purchase an SB6121 from the »mynewmodem.comcast.net/ Amazon affiliated store, does Comcast honor the warranty, or would I need to go through Amazon or Motorola should that device go belly up during the warranty period? I know that when I was an AT&T DSL customer, a DSL modem/gateway that was purchased from AT&T (as opposed to Amazon, TigerDirect, et al) would be replaced by AT&T should if fail during the warranty period (and I would hope that Comcast would do so as well).
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We can never have enough of nature.
We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

reply to jlivingood