a l e x f a l k e n b e r g

The dropoffs in speed you see in the following graphs appear to be gradual, but the reality is that they’re immediate cable modem disconnects. These graphs are from a bandwidth/speed graph plugin used inside the Deluge bittorrent client under Linux (Ubuntu Gutsy), by the way. Not that the OS or software matters. It could be Windows, uTorrent, FTP, SFTP, WinSCP, large ISO http download, whatever.

The bittorrent software takes some time to tidy up packets from the various download sources, making the dropoffs to zero-speed look gradual, when they’re really not gradual at all. So don’t think they’re gentle disconnects, because they’re not.

The first graph below depicts a typical cable modem (CM) drop/reboot and dead connection with some dead connection time (30 seconds or so), followed by a completed reboot with a live connection that lasted all of about 20 seconds before it dropped/rebooted again.

During a heavy downloading session, this can happen dozens of times an hour.

More examples of CM reboots follow below.

I’ll add that while I’m paying for "premium" 15Mbps down/1Mbps up service I’ve not noticed better than 10Mbps down since this started. And even when I get that kind of speed, it’s never for very long before everything reboots. When I’m downloading something larger, several reboots in succession confuse my router (two different routers, in fact: a Linksys WRT54G (running either stock Linksys firmware or alternative DD-WRT firmware, take your pick) and an older Netgear wired router). This usually ends in a router WAN IP renew needing done, or a router reboot, or a complete router reset (losing all settings).

This situation actually FUBAR’ed my Linksys router last year, but I was able to bring it back from the dead several months later doing a number of warranty-voiding things to it not for the faint of heart; most people would have tossed that $80 router in the trash and bought a new one, even though the router’s malfunction wasn’t their fault, at all.

Is this kind of constantly-unstable connection worth $50-60 bucks a month to you?

I really just want is the problem fixed. However, it would certainly be nice and proper to receive some remuneration from Time-Warner Milwaukee/Roadrunner for all the lost time and hassle, too, both for the current ongoing situation, as well as this same thing when it happened last year and went on for most of a year’s time. Given the lack of response when this happened last year, I suspect nothing will be done again this year.

How many other Milwaukee-area customers, or Roadrunner customers in general out there, have this problem?

It seems entirely possible it’s not your fault.

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Posting the previous posts on the Time-Warner/Roadrunner cable modem constantly rebooting issue, from last year. A couple of them were not public until today, left protected for Time-Warner’s eyes only, as a courtesy.

The spontaneously-rebooting cable modem problem actually started in December of 2006, but we didn’t start documenting it here until March 2007, as it was becoming more and more of an issue for us with family and customers alike.

The other reason we didn’t start reporting on the problem right away is we were attempting to work with Time-Warner to solve it, jumping through all of their standard support hoops like good little monk…err, customers, swapping out cablemodems, letting them send techs out, etc.

What a colossal waste of time, money, and effort all of that turned out to be.

• time-warner-roadrunner-problems-still
• time-warner-roadrunner-update-april-2007
• time-warner-roadrunner-update-may-2007
• open-letter-to-time-warner-milwaukee-roadrunner
• cable-modem-reboots-log (2007)

We documented the issue as best we could at the time. It was way often too much to cover, and too frustrating to keep explaining and writing, and rewriting, trying to remember every detail, over and over again.

We probably should have posted again last year when it finally cleared up, but it never really did in a clear-cut, obvious way, so it was hard to say it was actually “fixed” at the time. Rebooting problems tapered off, but we still had speed issues after that… And of course we just wanted to not have to think about it anymore.

It eventually seemed to clear up altogether, but in such a gradual way that we consider it more coincidentally than deliberately repaired. We’re fairly certain they still have no idea what caused it then, and therefore still won’t have a clue about solving it properly now.

Déjà vu of this sort really stinks…to put it mildly.

We still don’t know who the ‘they’ might be, either; we were never successful in reaching anyone with sufficient power or expertise to look into or troubleshoot the issue.

Customer-service reps and technicians would often promise to call us back, and then never did. One tech was going to put our cable modem in debug mode, monitor it for a while (a week?) and call us back either way. Never did get that call, either. One tech visit to the house apparently doesn’t exist in Time-Warner’s records, either (the visit when the cable from house to pole was entirely replaced; the guy was here for several hours). He didn’t have me sign anything or give me any paperwork, so I have no real record of it, except for the 100 feet of thick, bright-orange cable line still laying on top of our back yard since January of 2007. Yeah, they never came back to take care of that, either. 14+ months isn’t too long to wait, is it? (Yes, it’s winter now, and the ground’s too hard until spring, but still.)

From our perspective, the random cable modem reboot problems all seemed to start shortly after the speed upgrade (to “Turbo”, from 5Mbps to 8Mbps) we agreed to in mid/late-December of 2006. The rebooting problem seemed to go away round the time they flipped the switch for us on another upgrade from 8Mbps to 15Mbps service in the fall of 2007. Speed issues remained, but those eventually evened out to an acceptable level.

Switching to “premium” service is what seems to have started this mess. And in fact, we’ve been paying extra for premium service this entire time.

Oh, the irony.

We had this problem last year with Time-Warner/Roadrunner-Milwaukee and it appears we’re having it again now. Constant, random cable modem reboots off and on all day. Yesterday, 45 times. In one day.

Can’t ssh/telnet, can’t do any audio or video streaming. Can’t do downloads, OS updates, Tivo updates, online gaming, no remote-desktop sessions… No file transfers or data backups. And our Vonage phone service? Dropped calls.

We’re being a lot more open about the issue this time than last year when this very same thing happened, because Time-Warner/Roadrunner never actually fixed anything…

In fact, they never contacted us at all.

We had a lot of days of 100+ random cable modem disconnects last year. The random-rebooting problem kind of “went away” when they upgraded their package speeds. We put up with it last year for most of the year, initially with constant disconnects, and then with severely reduced speeds.

We never got a solution or any real help with the problem last year, and it went on for most of the year, with us paying full price the entire time (with a couple of minor loss-of-service credits along the way that ultimately didn’t matter).

You’ll notice 10 most recent Twitter entries in the right sidebar for the TW/RR tracker account. And you’re certainly more than welcome to directly follow either the TW/RR tracker, or Alex, or both, on Twitter itself:

• @TWCMKECblMdmLog
• @alexfalk

We’ll probably be opening up posts from last year’s incident that have been locked down… We’ll post again if/when that happens. Mostly a direct letter to TW/RR and some logs from the modem back then, with accompanying commentary. Boring, maybe, but also possibly insightful.

We want to be clear that all we’re after is the properly working service we’re paying Time-Warner/Roadrunner for. Hopefully they can figure out a way to make that happen, soon.

Security update, and a few other fixes. Let us know if anything is broken.

Additional site and content updates are in the works.