Exactly 3 weeks ago on June 8, 2017, I replaced my Arris SB6190 DOCSIS 3.0 modem with the Arris DOCSIS 3.1 SB8200 modem, I have been having timeouts browsing the internet as many connections will timeout and require that I reload before it will work properly including posting here where I hit the Post Now! button, it just will say waiting for connection in the browser for 1+ minute until I hit Post Now! again before it will post. Even with speedtests, I was getting 50Mbps down/11Mbps up most of the time and about 5% of the time, it will be somewhere in the 140Mbps down/11Mbps up range. This is on a BlastPro 200Mbps/10Mbps connection here in Comcast San Francisco, California. I have already resetted the modem to factory defaults and have tried directly connected via Gigabit Ethernet using CAT6 cable to a computer with the same results. I had confirmed with netcool within 2 hours on the same day I began using the modem and he said it was provisioned correctly and the signal levels look good. The SB6190 did not have the same issues but the speedtests were 80% in the 180Mbps down/11Mbps range but that was when it was running on 24 channels down/4 channels up. Now it's 32 channels down/4 channels up and 1 DOCSIS 3.1 down channel. And we all know the SB6190 has other known issues that the SB8200 does not have. Even on this side, as I have posted status pages before, the signal all looks good even though it reports a T3 timeout about once every 2 days per the error logs.
So on June 15, 2017 - I wrote on the Comcast Direct part of the Comcast/XFinity forums here on DSLReports.com describing the problem and the response was:
"Hello {first name} looking at the signal on your modem I confirmed there is a high amount of resets and highT3 timeouts count which can be related to a RF problem can you please confirm connections from the back of the modem as far back as you can. Thank you"
All the connections look fine to me as there is the underground cable from the underground tap which is in the private street in the back of the house to the grounding block at the back right corner of the house and then cable from the grounding block going up the roof and then down to the left front outside wall of my living room going into the coupler and then the cable directly to the modem. The coupler and cable directly to the modem was professionally installed by a Comcast Business Internet contractor in February 2016 before I switched to Comcast Residential High Speed Internet. Everything before the coupler back to the tap is atleast 10 years old if not longer.
I wrote back and basically the Comcast representative did not respond until 4 days ago saying there has been a huge increase in T3 timeouts and they like to send a technician to check the signal which was scheduled for yesterday at 1PM-3PM.
The technician arrived yesterday near the end of the appointment time window at 2:50PM and first checked the signal from the modem which looked good but was on the telephone with his manager who said there were 100s of resets during the past 3 days while it only shows 2 in my error log so they checked the signal again at the outside of the living room wall and then at the grounding block where the underground cable from the underground tap comes in and they all look good and then we went to the underground tap which feeds 3 houses, mines and my neighbors and basically, instead of the wires deep, it was all on top of the solid dirt and it appears one of the ports on the tap is broken so what was done was the following:
The cable from the grounding block in the rear right corner of the house going up the roof and down the left front outside wall of the house was replaced with a new one and the old one was removed while the coupler was also replaced. I do not have a photo of what it looked like on the grounding block side before the cable was replaced. He had a fellow co-worker came over who agreed that the broken port on the tap could cause ingress even though the signal looks fine. So what is being done is that Comcast Construction will fix the tap as soon as today while they will run a new underground cable from the tap to the grounding block, the later which will take about 7 business days. Now a question, is there a such thing as a defective grounding block since I thought if it is old, it might not pass all the frequencies.
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