Surely there's something wrong with my cable modem?
 

Hey guys,

In essence, I've been having problems with my Virgin 10MB Broadband for the past 3-4 months - random slowing of the internet at first, to in the past couple months the internet regularly randomly disconneting; either connecting again after a few minutes or needing to reboot the modem for it to work again. At first, the internet would only disconnect maybe once a day, now in the past few weeks - 1 month, it has been happening several times a day.

Reliability is a necessity for me since I work from home and after numerous phone calls to the terrible Virgin 'service' team who have given me a variety of wrong diagonostics from having a 'browser issue' to saying I have a faulty wireless router, hence sending a new D-Link router, but the problem still sadly reoccuring.

Around 4 years ago, we had a new Cable Modem installed (the Ambit E08C013 to replace the old NTL modem) and on the back where the Co-Ax cable plugs in, there is a 'Forward Path Attenuator' of 10dB. I have taken out this Attenuator, yet it still does the same occurance of the internet randomly disconneting happens.

I have data from the cable modem if this helps of the Downstream and Upstream status' if that helps?

Cable Modem Downstream
Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 6
Downstream Frequency : 402750000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 5360.537 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps32Increment4
Downstream Receive Power Level : 2.0 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 41.5 dB

Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 1
Upstream Frequency : 25800000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QPSK
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 43.0 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2

There is also some confusing information in the Event Log about DHCP warnings of a Non critical field invalid in response?

Sorry if this has been a lengthy thread, but I am fed up of Customer Support not sorting out this issue, and want your help if it is actually the Cable Modem that is causing the problem - since I can't see anything else causing it!

Thanks!

Re: Surely there's something wrong with my cable modem?
 

Your modem stats look to spot on so any issue has to be elsewhere, either with your equipment or on the network side and you need the modem to be checked out and some tests to be run on the line.

So you are best to call in as soon after 0800 either tomorrow or Saturday morning, if you are not happy with that ring 150 and choose the option "Thinking of leaving us" to get a good agent to run checks.

Re: Surely there's something wrong with my cable modem?
 

So by this, there could be something wrong with the line itself or anything along those lines? When phoning up and speaking to technical support from India, they always say they are running 'line checks' and they are 'fine' which confuses me.


Thanks for this - I will definitely try this as I have been happy for Virgin/NTL for over 6 years, just these past few months things have turned worse and Customer Support in seems to have become far worse than it used to be :erm:

Re: Surely there's something wrong with my cable modem?
 

We al run checks on the line but it depends on what the agent actually sees and how it is interpreted.


You should get a UK agent if you do as I said in post above.