I’ve had two reboots since the 5100 was swapped in–one at 3am for about 10 mins (iirc) and another a few hours later that lasted nearly an hour. We’ve not done any serious testing yet, but plan to. We did download a couple of Linux ISOs that first night, as a quickie test. During that time, no reboots, and while speeds were noticeably better, they’re not really up where we think they’re should be (hovering around 10Mbps instead of closer to the 15Mbps that’s advertised; and yeah, we know 15Mbps is not always possible).

@Norb: Thanks for commenting, and we hope your stuff gets fixed. You’re apparently right about the fix memo and who does/doesn’t know about it; I’ve been following this situation very closely online for a LONG time, and haven’t seen any mention anywhere about it.

If it’s been published/public knowledge for a month and a half or so already (as I was told), you’d think SOMEONE would get around to mentioning it online SOMEWHERE. Maybe I just haven’t stumbled across it yet, I don’t know; I’m certainly not infallible.

UPDATE: I did find some mention of people getting newer cable modems and having issues improve, but I’ve not seen any mention of any TW employee confirming it being a CM issue “officially”.

I would very much like to know when it actually came out, who received it, and why customers haven’t been notified (I was told I should have been, but never was, afaik). Is it limited to the Milwaukee service area? No answers so far…

It really does seem like they’re waiting for people to notice things are broken; most people, if they have the problem we’ve had, probably won’t. And Time-Warner is notoriously, shamelessly insistent on blaming the customer (house, wiring, equipment, etc) instead of taking responsibility, so most customers that DO notice will either believe, or be led to believe, it’s their fault somewhere, somehow, anyway. I’ve literally heard every possible excuse why this has been OUR fault over the last year and a half. Very frustrating.

There’s nothing a tech coming out to do a speed test will do that you can’t do sitting there and running one yourself. What a waste of a 4-hour chunk of your time waiting for them to show up for…nothing, except another chance to reinforce how it must be something on your end, and your fault, not theirs.

You can go to a local TW store/office and swap out your cable modem anytime at no charge, by the way–assuming they provided it. I was told people should “ask for a black one”, which the SB 5100 is, and I’m assuming the Terayon model @Steve mentioned is as well (but I don’t know, yet).

Good luck to you, again. Looking forward to hearing from you again after your next encounter(s).

However, they are sending someone out to perform a speed test. more news to follow…

I have always been of the understanding that Time Warner (at least here) will indeed let me purchase my own cable modem and use it, but they don’t give any sort of credit or discount because they don’t bill modem rental separately.

The best modems out there are the Toshiba modems (they quit making them), surfboards (not 4100 / 4200) and the ZyXEL modem P971 (good luck getting one).

You can buy a quality modem and not have to pay for modem rental.

It’s unfathomable, frankly, that companies can act this way and be so irresponsible. You really should still consider an FCC complaint at the very least, if not local-media “consumer affairs”-variety coverage of your issue. And don’t forget your state’s Attorney General’s office.

Here’s to hoping that the new cablemodem fixes you up, and that TW gets their act together. They OWE you, BIG TIME.

I checked on the availability of AT&T’s UVerse after @compujeramey suggested it, and it wasn’t available at my address (Greendale). (AT&T’s standard DSL service isn’t really an option.)

A couple of weeks ago I noticed an AT&T store in Greenfield–not more than a couple miles from where I live–had a sign up promoting UVerse, so I’m thinking hey, maybe it’s finally available here… Turns out they do indeed sell it, and the store address has an active, functioning UVerse account attached to it, but it’s still not available to me here. So close…

Our best (and probably only) hope at this point is our upcoming/eventual physical relocation to Ozaukee County. Time-Warner Milwaukee still owes us a boatload of money for all this nonworking service here, though, imo, but I’m not holding my breath, for obvious reasons.

My roommates at first assumed it was my wireless adapter, because neither of them did anything beyond basic browsing. But then I showed them traceroute logs and ping statistics, along with the fairly obviously massive ping times in my online games, and the guy with his name on all the bills tested it himself and confirmed.

Of course, when I contacted Roadrunner Technical Support, they narrowed it down to a “problem with our router” and that they couldn’t help me because it wasn’t a “Roadrunner” brand router. Essentially I had to jack my PC directly into the modem via ethernet, and then my ping times were just fine. But I can’t exactly keep it that way when we have three computer users in the house.

I will constantly and consistently, at least once every other day, receive massive ping times while browsing and attempting to just use the internet access I help pay for. It’s quite frustrating to attempt to play an online game that I also pay monthly for and then end up having my playing experience worsened by the literal 2 seconds it takes for my connection to send a few packets to the game server.

I’m really really getting sick of this. And it’s not like I experience these issues only at peak times, either. I get this kind of stuff at 3 in the morning. What can any of us do?

Pinging google.com [72.14.207.99] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=1402ms TTL=243
Request timed out.
Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=971ms TTL=243
Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=1114ms TTL=243

Ping statistics for 72.14.207.99:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 3, Lost = 1 (25% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 971ms, Maximum = 1402ms, Average = 1162ms

I appreciate the feedback, wherever you might post it.

AC: I’ve actually run a cord from the next-door neighbor’s place since I’ve seen it mentioned that it could be that (but honestly, TW themselves have blamed sunspots, overpowered ham radio, CB radio from semi traffic nearby, every network and phone and cable-using device ever made…and on and on, no lie). Anyway, it made no difference.

The cable modem is currently connected just inside my foundation where the line enters the house (albeit currently with a splitter (also replaced by them) so we can watch TV). The problem still occurs with just the CM connected, sans splitter, btw. Literally every cable and connector from the cable modem’s current location 3 feet from my basement wall, all the way back to the pole behind our house, has been replaced by TW since this started. None of that has fixed anything.

As for interference, wouldn’t that be an ongoing problem anyway? We’ve been in a pretty steady weather pattern lately, so no real changes as far as furnace use or anything else. Heat is a gas furnace on opposite side of the house from the coax and cat6 runs. As for cables running near anything electrical, they’re where they’ve always been for the last three years we’ve lived here (with the exception of a recent move of the CM to the basement to test the house-wiring-of-some-sort-is-mucking-things-up theory), so the lack of any changes inside our house would seem to rule out it being a problem inside our house, imo…right? We’ve not added any new electronics or phones or anything of the sort since this started again.

I’m really at a loss about how to even explain this to anyone at TW, when we can even GET anyone to talk to us about it. NO one I’ve talked to seems to really ‘get’ that it could be a problem anywhere but inside my house. The last tech they sent out did the smallest/fastest local speedtest possible, which runs quite quickly…and that passed, so he called everything OK. Before he left, I hopped online right after that, and it’s same-as-it-ever-was. He shrugged, said he didn’t know, and to let them know if it continued!

I’ve lost all patience for service calls involving my home interior at this point, because they’ve all proven to be complete wastes of time. I’ve literally tried everything I know to try/test, eliminating other equipment, etc.

So clearly there’s something wacky _somewhere_, but it seems like a ghost in their machine “out there” and I would love to be able to direct them to some specific part or location or something–anything–to get them to take a look. It seems like they’re monkeying around with something, and it’s wreaking havoc on us here.

What does it take to get TW to take this seriously, and do some good testing? I’d think they could bring their own cable modem, sit out at the pole 100 feet behind my house, try to download something–anything–and watch the CM reboot… Keep tracing it backwards from our pole, until it goes away. With only one guy (me) noticing and complaining, though, they apparently don’t feel particularly pressured to take the time and spend the money investigating this. Meanwhile, I’m out $55/month for Roadrunner service I might as well not even have for as much as I can rely on it.

As for CM levels, they are always within the limits I’ve seem mentioned around online. Nothing weird there. Very rarely I’ll see some “No FEC lock” errors in the log, but for the most part, nothing weird in the logs or admin UI at all except for the constant spontaneous rebooting I see listed.

The most frustrating part of this whole thing seems like it’s being blown off and not taken seriously by TW. Literally zero response to long letters, long explanations to techs, etc. Promises of CM monitoring with eventual callbacks…none of which ever happen, etc. But they’re always right on top of the bill! *sigh*

We’re moving 50 miles or so north eventually (month or two from now), but not out of the TW-Milw. service area… so if it’s a bad line or connection in a neighborhood junction box or something, maybe the problem won’t follow us and we’ll eventually be fine. Who knows. The lack of comparable options is quite frustrating. I’ll still worry for our current neighbors and the next family that lives in this house.

Thanks again.

Your modem is rebooting. That nearly eliminates purposeful ISP throttling as a cause as many DOCSIS modems cannot be rebooted from the headend. This is why most ISPs tell you to reboot your router when a network upgrade happens so that it can phone home and download and apply its new config file.

Now — I’m the guy holding Comcast’s feet to the fire for throttling. So if I thought it was TWC + throttling, I’d certainly tell you.

It still is TWC who owns everything from your rented modem up to the node at the CMTS. If the cablemodem loses contact with the headend, a “watchdog” function in the modem will cause it to reboot in hopes to reestablish communications. There are several reasons that can happen — 99% of those reasons are TWC issues. The modem normally won’t reboot if it loses connectivity with your router or computer — so if the modem is rebooting, it’s because of an issue on the DOCSIS side.

That said, there are some “you” things you can check — is the AC supply a clean one? Have you added any cables or splitters that might weaken the signal? Do your cables run near any electrically “noisy” sources that might dampen the modem’s link to the headend — such as an electric baseboard heater?

Thanks for letting me visit your blog. I might be back to your blog from time to time, but I read DSLReports every day or two. If there is anything I can do to help, please contact me on DSLReports.

–Robb (aka funchords)

i’m seeing the exact same thing, ALWAYS with bittorrent, sometimes with SCP/FTP and streaming video (youtube and others).

i bought a mac mini the other day and it took THREE modem reboots to get completely through the system updates.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20144672-

Why offer 15MBps service if they’re going to cap you at 15-18GB a month? It makes no sense to me.

And if they’re actively blocking my service, and still pocketing all of my money, then there’s really no other name for that than STEALING MONEY FROM ME. And you, too, if you’re having same/similar issues.

This has got to stop. I encourage anyone else, local to Milwaukee or not, to please post a response/comment (at dslreports or here, either way, but please link it somehow so I can track it) so we can get a more complete picture of the extent of the issue and/or possible consumer fraud TW may be committing. And again, I’d love to be wrong about all of this, but I’m not getting any answers from Time-Warner, so all I can do is speculate based on the evidence.

See post here: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20053273-TWC-Throttling-in-Milwaukee

I suspect there are problems like this all around Milwaukee for quite a few people, but most don’t notice because they’re basic-browsing/email-type users, or automatically assume because they’re slightly less tech-literate that THEY’re somehow the problem, not Time-Warner. And Time-Warner’s techs are more than happy to tell you it has to be something in your house or something you’re personally doing wrong.

I’ve never had a worse customer service experience anywhere, anytime.

As for the registration, yeah, it sucks. I don’t prefer it at all, but I got hammered with a couple giant waves of spam a while back, didn’t enjoy cleaning it up, and flipped on registration. Recently I’ve been considering turning that off again and seeing how it goes; I know it’s been affecting comments.

We then went out and got our own modem and got 14mb down for a week or so, then it fried the modem to where we could only get 1mb. Called Time Warner and went through literally one of the worst customer service experiences I have ever had.

They sent someone to our house after concluding we had burned through all the tech support they had. Took a look at our line, concluded it was too powerful (signal too strong) so they throttled that down. Didn’t really fix anything. Asked if he had another modem to test. He said no. Could he get one and come back? Or have someone come drop one off? No. Could he give us a new modem? No. He told us we had to call Time Warner again and schedule another appointment. My roommate asked him to leave.

Called AT&T Uverse and had it installed for free a week later. No problems since.

As a side note, the registration thing on your website is a huge barrier to commenting since it has to email you. Consider just using Akismet and moderation with Wordpress.