[ale] Cablemodem problems (Charter); DSL maybe

[Ken Cochran]

Hi ALErs:

Sort of a 2-part question/problem, cablemodem problems vs DSL:
(Lesser of 2 evils?)

1.  (Charter) Cablemodem service problems:  You folks in the
    cableco/outside plant world can maybe help me with this?

I've been having problems with Charter (cablemodem) for a long
time now (a couple of years or more, I track the tickets) and I'm
wondering if now that I can get dsl at my location, it might be
time to change.

At roughly regular intervals of every few months, I get sporadic
loss & restart of IP, TV works fine, usually the cablemodem
itself (& subsequently the dispatched tech) reports good signal
levels/s:n ratios, etc.  What happens is a loss of Internet
communications every few minutes, lasting for a few minutes.
Netstat reports non-zero send-Qs when this is "underway."
Traceroute doesn't even make it as far as the 1st hop.  A little
while later, things resume as if nothing ever happened.  This
repeats all the time.  Currently, this has been happening since
Friday afternoon and has not been corrected.  Last time (mid-May
2007) also took several days to correct.  The cablemodem itself
reported a borderline signal level; repair took a line tech.

Last couple of times (& now, still experiencing this), the
visiting (house services) tech says he has to dispatch a "line
tech" to "rebalance" (?) the neighborhood lines (along the
street).  He says it is because of the change in (weather)
seasons and/or ambient temperatures (going either hot or cold)
that causes this & line techs have to come out & rebalance these
a few times per year (roughly seasonally).  Any idea(s) as to
just what is happening here?  Sounds like BS to me; I find it
hard to believe that a cableco has to go out & redo its outside
plant 2-4 times a year to correct for what sounds to me like
design deficiencies in said outside plant.

Some local setup details:
Cablemodem is a Motorola SurfBoard SB4101.  Distance from service
entrance to the "node" (coax to fiber converter) is about 2000
feet via coax that's about as big around as my thumb.  Outside
plant is from Scientific Atlanta.

2.  DSL:  Location, Alexander City, Alabama (east central AL),
    ILEC & my local service is Bellsouth/ATT and DSL has only
    recently become available at my location.  It looks like my
    pickins' are slim wrt carriers.  I'm about 6500 feet from the
    "remote" box (or pair-gain mux or whatever they're calling
    that thing nowadays...) that serves my area.

a.  Recommended (or not) carriers
    Unless some things have changed/added, I think Bellsouth/ATT
    might be my only option for DSL but I need to check further.
    Any recommendations for/against alternatives?  I think my
    available options *might* be HiWaay (hq in Huntsville AL) or
    maybe SpeakEasy (but last time I checked, they don't serve
    here) or EarthLink/Mindspring (also an unknown right now).
    Looks like I *can* get the $10/month DSL here (with the 1yr
    committment of course); anyone besides Bellsouth/ATT doing
    anything similar?  Naturally I have problem(s) with ATT's
    customer monitoring but I may have to put up with this
    nastiness just to have Internet access that works at all. :-(

b.  NAT issues
    I see the little Westell modems from Bellsouth at customers'
    homes & notice the following:
    -  The modem itself handles the PPPoE/PPPoA stuff nowadays,
       so no need for that on the client computer.
    -  The client computer gets a gets an RFC1918 private
       address, 192.168.100.x iirc.

    My own internal private network is also RFC1918 & 192.168.x.y.
    If I change to DSL with its required PPPo{EA}, it appears
    that I'll become "double-NAT"ed; is this a problem?  If so,
    how do I deal with it?

-kc