[ale] Cablemodem problems (Charter); DSL maybe

[James P. Kinney III]

For reasons best left to <rant> formatting, cable modems are apparently
very picky about grounding. To add to that, they are also very poorly
installed in most situations. The best thing _you_ can do is to get a
groundrod from the hardware store and pound it in yourself. Then run
appropriately sized bare copper from the ground in your power breaker
box to it. Repeat for the ground connection from the cable feed. Be sure
to use solid mechanical connection and use the anti corrosion grease.

On Mon, 2007-08-20 at 16:21 -0400, Ken Cochran wrote:
> 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
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> 
-- 
James P. Kinney III          
CEO & Director of Engineering 
Local Net Solutions,LLC        
770-493-8244                    
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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