US Cable Support > Time Warner Internet Services > How to lease SB6141?

reply to bluepoint

Re: How to lease SB6141?

I found a single reference about a SB6120 and some Dlink with a few seconds of googling. Not that he'd believe anything off the internet.

reply to cramer

reply to cramer
He IS on Wideband. 20/2 (Turbo) is wideband and requires a DOCSIS 3 modem. It sounds like you think he has Standard at either 10/1 ( in Hawaii that is all islands except Oahu) or 15/1 (standard for Oahu.
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When governments fear people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. Thomas Jefferson

reply to bluepoint
I don't recall TWC bricking any 6120 modems but we have not used that one in Hawaii so I suppose it is possible I missed this happening...unlikely though as I read this forum regularly and have since before I joined this site back in 2001.

You guys don't seem to realize that it is RARE for TWC to upgrade the firmware on any of their modems. In the almost 12 years I have had Road Runner, I have seen TWC upgrade the firmware on Surfboards TWO times only. The first time, I was responsible for forcing them to either upgrade the firmware on the SB 4100 due to a security problem or face lawsuits. Since every other cable ISP of reasonable size world wide had, a year or more earlier, upgraded the firmware to fix the security hole EXCEPT TWC which was still on the original factory issued firmware version, TWC didn't have much choice when I challenged them on it. They agreed to push a firmware upgrade across all divisions (not just Hawaii where my complaint started out) and agreed to start keeping timely firmware updates as Comcast and others were already doing.

They pushed the firmware update shortly afterwards. Their excuse for ignoring the security update for so long when other cable companies pushed it as soon as Motorola released it was that they had bricked some modems once with a firmware update...but that was many years ago...*long before the 6120) and a rather feeble excuse since other cable companies had updated the SB 4100 firmware multiple times with no ill effects. The other firmware update pushed by TWC between 2001-2013 was to make my SB 5100 DOCSIS 2 capable.

I got the SB6141 from Oceanic TWC when I upgraded to 20/2 recently. It was a brand new one still shrink wrapped and had notes with it in its factory box. It has the firmware from 2011 that you guys are griping about TWC not updating your personal bought ones that have that firmware. Why would TWC update yours when they have not updated their own? They won't push a firmware update unless absolutely necessary. TWC is notorious for this bad practice and they have not kept up that part of the agreement we reached many years ago.
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When governments fear people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. Thomas Jefferson

reply to bwash
20/2 is not "wideband" and does not require a docsis 3 modem. You can theoretically put extreme on a D2 modem if you really wanted to (Though it's not recommended). Accounting for overhead, channel bonding (The Docsis 3 feature) isn't a requirement until you start getting over 30 down.

Having a D3 modem will offer a lot of advantages on the turbo (20/2 speed) but again, is not a requirement in any sort of fashion.

reply to Mele20
that may be true in your market but in the Midwest Region Turbo is allowed on D2+ modems, I see it all the time. there's plenty of bandwidth for 2Mb/s up on a D2 channel, but of course multiple channels being bonded ensures a more consistent connection, and since there's no powerboost on Turbo (just standard now) there's little reason not to get a D3 modem anyway.
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I see what you're saying, even though I'm really just listening...

reply to cramer

Good info DrDrew , thanks.

reply to Mele20
Around here, unless they've changed their song, "Lite", "Standard", and "Turbo" are D2 plans, "Extreme" (30/5), and "Ultimate" (50/5) are wideband/D3 plans. Will they let you use a D3 modem with a D2 plan? Sure, esp. if you own the modem, but they aren't likely to give you a new D3 modem. (they have a small warehouse of old D2's while the D3's are in "limited supply" -- which is why our recent BC line was originally setup with a "residential" modem -- it was a rush job (the whole office move was) and that's what he had.)

reply to Fleeced

reply to DrDrew
Am I the only engineer who read that tech note and thought, "well that's easy enough to fix." (not having used an Arris CMTS, I don't know how hard it is to remove that attr from it's response.) After all, why send a D3 attr to a D2 modem? (TWC's database does know what your modem is. myservices/myaccount shows the correct modem for my accounts.)

Right. No sleep and no caffeine.

Either way, how hard is it to not send the TLV? On a Cisco, it's usually as easy as "no" in the right place to turn off a default. (maybe not to a specific subset of modems, 'tho)

As for "old stock"... I know first hand how much of a pain in the ass it is to get a new firmware image into the manufacturing processes. (granted, our products are trivial to fix in the field.)

reply to cramer

Not to keep kicking the dead horse, but... Either way they go, there will be issues. No updates mean there will be buggy modems out there. Doing the updates means some of them are going to fail -- yes, with a sample size as large as an ISP, there. will. be. failures. (I've been there, signed the PO for the t-shirts.) If you screw up a modem, you'll have to replace it. This makes for a very pissed customer -- esp. if they owned the modem. Angry customers are very vocal customers.

DOCSIS 1.1 introduced a number of security processes for firmware updates. The process is specifically engineered to only come from the network, so no manufacturer even has a channel to get a new firmware to end users.

Given that, it follows that the firmware on any given modem will either be a "GA" release loaded from the factory, or an ISP specific firmware they loaded on it. The operator has to authenticate every modem on the network. So they (should, can, etc.) know the manufacturer, model, serial number, and firmware version of every device out there. Proper testing means having one of everything in your testlab. How the 6120 bug didn't happen in their lab leaves me bald. This wasn't some random Chinese modem; it was a very popular, and approved, modem they themselves used, and they were coming from the factory with the old/buggy firmware. It makes no sense that they wouldn't have *one* 6120 with that firmware on it in the lab. Or that they wouldn't've retrieved one from the field as soon as this started to put it in the lab to see *why* it's failing. (I'm also assuming motorola didn't have it striped down so far it wouldn't log why it was rebooting. "invalid field" doesn't help much if it doesn't say which field; that doesn't mean you cannot find it, just that the engineers will have to earn their massive paycheck to find it.)

I've been there and worked through many a panic. The test lab cannot simulate an entire universe. Bugs are going to be missed; this is a fact. The 6120 issue should've been seen in the lab, but it wasn't. (we'll come back to that when we're looking for someone to fire.) This is why it's suicide to do any rapid, large scale roll out. When an issue surfaces -- and it will -- you now face a network-wide problem instead of localized problem. Rolling back an entire network is, well, more of mess than the upgrade. "Staged Upgrades", say it with me class. Given the size of TWC (Comcast, etc.) network, they should never be finished with an upgrade -- they should never have the same version on every system... there should be several versions rolling across the network like ripples in pond. </rant>

[Edit: I've worked for and with several ISPs over the decades, but TWC isn't one of them. I have no idea what they test, or how -- and it's never come up in conversation with the people I know there. There are pictures of someone's test lab over in the bbphotos forum.]

reply to Fleeced

reply to bluepoint
Basically, yes. You go with your own modem, your options are limited. If you get one which is not on their current approved list (as I did) and they accept your MAC address, and it works, great. (Many times this is because they themselves have that model or similar still on their network, such as if they've used them in the past.) If they don't accept your MAC address or it won't work, you're kind of stuck, and have to take it up with whomever sold it to you; many vendors have a good return policy though. If you get one that's on their current approved list, I think you get something close to support as if you rented/leased, except of course when they go through all their troubleshooting and their conclusion is, it's your particular unit that's the issue, so you're on your own to rectify the problem at that point (in the sense that you can't just go on down to your nearest TWC store and get a modem, unless you want to start leasing).

Don't forget that part of the MAC address identifies the manufacturer, so for example ordering a firmware push for some model based on MAC address is likely very possible.
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English is a difficult enough language to interpret correctly when its rules are followed, let alone when a writer chooses not to follow those rules.

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