[TriLUG] OT: Check your cable modems! TW wont tell you to trade up.

[Heath Roberts]

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Mike Shaw <mdshaw89 at gmail.com> wrote:

> FYI - if you have an old Surfboard modem you may want to trade up . . .
>
> After a week of having internet cable issues my wife finally traded
> our old(5years +) Surfboard 4100(upright beige) cablemodem at the
> local Time Warner office for a newer model(Surfboard SB5101 - smaller
> upright black).  The difference was to more than double my download
> speed(measured via Speedtest.net).
>
> Before testing the lady at the cable office mentioned that TW had
> upgraded their network and the older modems like I had were not
> capable of the higher speeds.  I didn't put much stock into the
> comment until I ran the tests.  Nice of TW to let people know, huh?
> Looks like I've been running capped!  Keep in mind we did have a
> technician come out to investigate and all he did was put a signal
> booster on the line at the modem connection.  Needless to say it only
> masked the issue for a bit.
>

I'm pretty sure TW is using DOCSIS 2.0 in Raleigh/Durham, and both the
SB4000 and SB5101 are DOCSIS 1.1/2.0 modems. The 4000 should be good to
about 11Mb/s and the 5101 should go to ~22Mb/s.

What sorts of speeds were you seeing before & after? I have 'standard'
roadrunner service, which Time-Warner advertises as 7M down & 384K up. I
occasionally turn shaping off and do a speed test, and get pretty much
exactly 7/384. This is with an eight-year-old modem--I don't know the exact
model number, but it's largish and beige, and I'm pretty sure it's an SB4000
variant.

-- 
Heath Roberts
htroberts at gmail.com