Equipment Support > Hardware By Brand > Motorola > SB6141 Firmware Update?

reply to Meatball

Re: SB6141 Firmware Update?

I know it's something outside at this point as well. Truck # 6 showed up Wednesday with the 'supervisor'. Guy was pretty cool and basically started outside and swapped out a bunch of stuff that hadn't been done. He saw a little kink in one of the lines, so he cut it back and put a new end on it. Saw a little bit of oxidation on the grounding block on the house, so he swapped that out. He tested the heck out of the lines, and it worked out well because he was here for almost 90 minutes. And while I didn't have any disconnects he got to see the wild fluctuations (on the order of 4-5 dBmV) I was getting in my signal, so he knew something was wrong.

He also discovered some other interesting stuff. First, they apparently still had my account flagged as having home phone service, which hasn't been the case for 3 months. He said that could cause issues and when he called in to have them remove that, he found that my account was not 'balanced.' They had 4 modems active on my account and there should have only been 2. The Arris for internet and an Ubee for their Intelligent Home service. He had them get that squared away.

He was amazed (as was I) that all the technicians I had dealt with before had missed all this stuff, any of which could have been the cause of my issues. He then called someone he knew in maintenance to get them out here to deal with the fluctuations in signal, since he was still seeing that at the tap out at the street. He leaves and 15 minutes later calls me back, "I think we have the wrong MAC address for your modem." I give him the MAC of the modem, and they had the wrong one in the system, so they fixed that and he tells me to call his cell phone if I had any issues after the maintenance guys show.

I see the maintenance truck outside about 30 minutes later and the guy does some stuff at the tap on the street for about 15 minutes and then bails. Two hours later...disconnect. I call the supervisor back, he sends the maintenance guy back, who I see once again outside for about 15 minutes. I don't have any more disconnects, but the supervisor calls back and I tell him I haven't disconnected, but I'm still seeing upstream and downstream fluctuations (I'm tracking them every 1-2 hours at this point.) He tells me the maintenance guy will be back out the next day, but maintenance wanted to bring another guy so they could trace the entire line and figure out the issue.

Thursday comes and I have 6 disconnects by early afternoon. I still haven't seen the maintenance truck by then so I call the supervisor tech. He calls the maintenance who claims that he couldn't get a 2nd guy to go with him, but 'should' be able to come out the next day (Friday). Regardless of that, the supervisor tells me they've discovered something. Since they've been out here so many time, and there's so many techs monitoring things, they've figured out that when my modem goes down, every modem on my block is also going down.

What??? An entire block of people are all dropping their modem connection at the same time for over a month, and it takes me calling them 30 times, six techs and 3 maintenance trucks before they figure that out? Ugh...

So to wrap up, my last disconnect was about 4 hours ago, and I wait with my fingers crossed to see if the maintenance guy actually shows today. The supervisor tech told me he's off today and tomorrow, so my gut tells me that I probably won't see or hear anything from them until Sunday, but I'll still be dealing with disconnects the whole time.

Wow. I would think now that they have identified it as an area/neighborhood issue it would be escalated to the point where it is on a few people's radar's and their main priority to fix it???

Saturday evening, no truck, still getting disconnects. 6 yesterday, 4 today (so far). Time Warner is just awful. I'm going to phone blast the one tech who seemed to do anything tomorrow because he's the only one getting stuff done.

I swear, there's 10 different 'support' departments, none of which knows what the other is doing, and none of which seems to care if they actually fix an issue, they're just there to get in and get out to pass the problem on to another department so they can wash their hands of it.

Nothing new to report on Tuesday evening. Still not seen any trucks, and now the tech that gave me his cell (the supervisor) isn't returning calls. The quality of customer support with Time Warner is amazing.

Only 1 disconnect Sunday, 2 on Monday and back up to 9 today. Called in yet again and expecting what I assume will be truck and tech #7 out here. It's funny, I'm starting to know what keys to press on their phone systems before it even says it.

Holy jumping jehoshaphats...I just got off of the phone with phone support. (It took me 4 calls and 45 minutes, because the first 3 techs disconnected me.)

According to this tech, everything in their records show that's it's been fixed and I'm not having any problems. Considering I've had 9 disconnects today, I just don't get it. They've put my modem on a 'watch list', which apparently checks my modem every 15 minutes. This of course doesn't do jack, because when I do drop it's only for 2 minutes, so it's most likely they'll not see it being down. This is probably why when I call in and say I'm having disconnect issues, they say it looks like my modem has been up for days without issue. They want me to wait another 24 hours now that I'm watched and call back if I'm still having issues.

I asked if they could check the modem every minute, b/c then they'd be sure to see the disconnects, but the tech didn't think that was possible.

This is extremely aggravating and I'm seriously thinking of dropping TWC and going with Windstream DSL. But I've had them in the past, and not only are they slower, but their service/support is just as bad. Man, what I wouldn't give for Fios or Google Fiber right about now.

That is insane. If they've identified it affects everyone in the neighborhood you would think they would be all over it?

I'm not sure what exactly they "fixed" in my area, but I've not had a full disconnect since Jan 6th. Jan 7th I received an automated call saying they fixed something in my area. I still receive maybe 1 "T3 Timeout" single message per day. Here and there I also see a new one, "Timing Synchronization Failure". But again, I have not had a full blown disconnect/reboot now for over a week.

I feel your pain, that is ridiculous that it is still going on. Again, if they have identified this as a neighborhood issue I can't see how they are not trying everything under the sun to fix it.

Well, the fiasco continues. On the morning of the 16th I received a call from a 'supervisor' over at TWC and he said they were going to send someone out to sit outside and monitor the line for a while. He seemed to think it was a problem in the house (even though previous techs have tested the lines 5 times, replaced just about everything and seen the problems at the tap on the street.) He said they have someone out first thing in the AM on the 17th.

Have 4 more disconnects that evening.

17th rolls around and the tech (#7) shows up bright and early. He spends about 20 minutes testing things and can't seem to find anything wrong. Decides to swap out the Arris modem in the off chance the high signals I had a while back fried something. He puts the modem in and tells me to call back if I have any more problems.

Within 3 hours I start getting disconnects again. I call back the supervisor and tell him. He says he's going to walk down the hall to talk to the maintenance supervisor and get their trucks out to check the neighborhood stuff. I'm working and don't notice any maintenance trucks for 5 hours, but had 5 disconnects in the meantime. I call the supervisor back, he doesn't answer, so I leave a VM that I haven't seen anyone, and still having problems. Amazingly within 15 minutes I see two maintenance trucks (the ones with the bucket lifts) drive down my street. Ten minutes later, off they go and fifteen minutes after that, disconnect.

I figure maybe they were working up around the corner so I give them the benefit of the doubt and don't have any other issues before I head to bed. When I wake up this morning I see two disconnects overnight in the error logs, so I call the supervisor again this morning. He says he's going to send his 'lead tech' out between 3-5 PM and run some line tests on everything going from the street to the house (even though that's been ruled out already multiple times). He's also going to tell the maintenance guys the problem isn't gone. Five more disconnects before 4 PM.

'Lead Tech' (up to tech #8!) shows up around 4. He runs a test both on the line going from the street to the box on the house and from the box on the house up to the modem with some super duper Coax cable tester that apparently the only have one of in the whole region. Tests all come up fine, but he decides to run a new coax from the street tap up to the house and see if they can rule that out. (Didn't we already do that?) If that doesn't work, he tells me they can come out and run a new line from the outside box up to the room the modem is in. Now I'm kinda cranked, because he'll leave, I'll have problems, they won't get out here for a day or two to replace that second line and I'll have problems again and be stuck with another day or two before maintenance comes out.

I tell the 'lead tech' that and he calls the supervisor. The supervisor agrees to set up another call for first thing in the AM tomorrow morning (just what I want to do on my day off, get up at 7:30) to run the second line if I continue to have problems and I can cancel if need be.

So...I sit here and wait for them to run the 2nd line from the side of the house to the modem tomorrow, just so they can prove that it's absolutely, positively no way something going on in my house, which I think we've proved multiple times already. I haven't had a problem since the tech left, but that was only a few hours ago, and I've seen, on rare occasion, things work for 15-20 hours before going to crap again. I'm not cancelling tomorrow and I'm going to let them run that 2nd line b/c I'm positive I'll have problems over the weekend after they do that. At that point they replaced everything from the street to the modem, multiple times.

At this point, if it's not fixed by month end, I'm going to search for every TWC exec email I can find and send an email blast with this big ass text log I have of the whole disaster.

Unreal.

What make/model modem did they swap your Arris out with? Same one?

Do any of the techs still say that it is a neighborhood issue with multiple homes dropping at the same time? Like you said it seems like that was already proven, but they're still focusing on house-specific items.

Nevertheless, good luck. Hopefully the tech tomorrow finds something, although it seems like they're still kind of going the wrong direction.

Keep us updated - I'd be really interested to see what the root cause of this is.

Yeah, same modem. The Arris DG860A. Every tech I've asked about modems, the only one they're giving out is that one.

The problem I'm finding is that these guys don't communicate at all. One guy comes in, does his thing, and then when the next guy comes here, I have to explain everything that's happened all over again. With the 8 trucks that have been here, it's been 8 different guys.

Once they change that last cable there's no way they can say it's anything other than a neighborhood issue. Problem is, maintenance will come out, check the line and if it's good right then, they drive off. The chance of them catching the 2 minute downtime when they are watching is slim.

I've also found out that since the modem isn't actually rebooting, from their perspective, it's not having a problem b/c they look at it and it's been 'up' for a week or two.

I've been going through the exact same hell that you've been experiencing Meatball and I think i found a solution!!!

»forums.cox.com/forum_home/intern···751.aspx

He had the same exact T3/T4 drops, MIMO, ACK, etc issues and finally COX came out and did a re-wire of his house and everything works perfectly now.

Knowing this makes me so f'ing mad because last summer I was supposed to get a re-wire and the tech got there to do the job and ended up only running new wire from the tap which was just in front of my house, underground for about 10 feet, and up the wall in my backyard where it hit the first splitter.

oh yes... he did one last thing. He found out that we had a second dedicated cable line running from the tap down the opposite side of my house to my home theater setup and the a$$hole decided to cut it off the connector and ran ANOTHER splitter on the other line which ran into my attic and the lazy SOB then spliced it into a 35 year old coax cable that was originally for the antenna on our roof before cable existed. I'm still pissed.

So basically there are two DCX3510 boxes, one SB6141 modem, and the modem for VOIP which is Arris. Oh yeah... and a third TV which doesn't have a box but is getting signal.

That's a total of 5 devices and a total of 3 2-way splitters.... ALL of which are now between the SB6141 and the tap. The modem is the last device in that long mess....

Well, we'll know for certain today. I had 4 more disconnects after the tech left yesterday, so I let the next tech (#9) come out this morning. He just left and ran a new cable from the box on the house up to the modem. Everything from the tap on the street to the modem has been switched out (multiple times in some cases) and is brand new at this point.

If it drops again, it's a maintenance issue somewhere beyond my street tap.

Was he an in-house tech? Or contracted out? I tell TWC when i make an appointment that the person MUST be in-house. Contractors are never in-the-know when it comes to TWC's BS and for some reason the in-house guys always make it a point to dish the dirt such as how the past two appointments never resulted in the tech adjusting the amplifier for the tap.

Surprisingly, every tech that's showed up here has been an in-house guy. I think TWC must be bringing most of their guys in house in this area b/c I haven't seen a contractor doing TWC work in a few years.

Well, as expected, have had 2 drops since the tech left. Called him back and since we've basically proven it has to be something beyond the tap at the street, they're going to try to get maintenance involved again.

He called his supervisor (who is off today), who emailed the maintenance supervisor (who is also off today) and also called the one maintenance guy on call today. That guy likely can't get out today, and since maintenance supervisor isn't working, he said I may not see anyone out until Monday. Two more days of disconnecting fun!

The only positive is that they're apparently seeing the disconnects now, so they know I'm not crazy.

So they have officially rewired your entire property with brand new RG6 coax???

Here in SoCal, the guy who actually adjusts the amplifier is maintenance and is never the same guy that does the work on your property. Perhaps the amplifier needs to be adjusted to get the numbers back in line with the much better lower resistance RG6??

Well, the rewired the whole property with new cabling, but I don't think anything would change unless distance would cause a problem. They replaced the cable from the street tap to the house with the same cabling that was already underground and same with the cabling from the house box to the modem.

I don't think that's causing any of the issues since I had the exact same issues long before they replaced anything. I will keep it in mind though.

Wow, this whole thread bring back bad memories. My issue ended up being a bad cable under the street from one tap to the tap in front of my house. I can't ell you how many techs came out and checked before someone actually went over to the main tap and saw the signal was good on one side of the street but was crap when it got to my side.
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Driving with 2 feet since 1999

Yeah, I've had a joyous time in the last day or so. I had 8 disconnects yesterday after the tech left, and today I've had at least 19. I say at least because the modem log only holds the last 20 entries and there were about 10 hours that I can't actually account for because by the time I was home/awake to check the log, it had rolled over past a big block of entries.

On average I'm seeing the full disconnect every 20-30 minutes. I've called the supervisor twice today (he's off, so not answering) and the tech that was out here today. The tech actually answered and said 'he'll see what he can do', but I'm not holding my breath. If they haven't called me by 9 AM tomorrow morning, I'm going on a calling spree.

And I've about had it with this. I work from home, so this is just absolutely unacceptable. I feel like I've been patient enough and with almost 7 weeks of issues if this isn't fixed by Friday I'm going to start hunting for every TWC exec email I can find and email them my text log detailing every call/visit and disconnect I've been seeing. That text file is over 450 lines long and 20Kb in size already.

let us know how this plays out if you dont mind.

Sucks about the whole firmware update problem. I do understand their position but I wish there was a way for us to do it on our own. oh well.
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Driving with 2 feet since 1999