[Sephiroth]

Yeah - mucho congrats.

With regard to TH's point about being moved to a higher attenuation tap point.

The thing that's wrong is that your SH is maxing out on the upstream because there's a struggle to reach the CMTS. The internet may well work, but upstream will potentially be sluggish (loading web pages).

The upstream should not be high when the downstream is high. The downstream does indeed need to be brought down and the VM tech will (usually) tell you this. A forward path attenuator (FPA) on your modem can achieve that. By moving you to a lower attenuation tap point the downstream FPA will need very high attenuation (c. 20 dB IMO). That might not fix the problem at all if the upstream impairment is such that the lower attenuation is insufficient to overcome that impairment.

So it is the upstream issue that needs to be identified because the downstream power can be attenuated at the modem.