Is my cable modem the culprit of bad upstream signals?

[TJN23]

Long story short:

I've had 2.5 months of cable internet, 4 techs have come out to my house, i have my main cable line coming into a 2 way - one goes directly to my cable modem - the other out to the TVs...

-my upstream signal will be nice around ~49dBmV but every now and then jump to ~60-61 (unacceptable) [this is when using a D-Link 604+ 4 port router]
-using just the cable modem attached to the PC, the upstream chills around 59 and hops in and out of *surfability* (again about 61)

Therefore we're stuck with a connection that will crap out at any given moment and will never remain connected 24/7

As you can see I've exhausted pretty much all other possibilities, except swapping out the modem for a new one - i have been using a brand new SurfBoard 5100 that Adelphia gave us - Friday they're coming to give us a new one (not sure if it will be the same)

Has anyone else had/heard of a problem where upstream sync issues (falling in and out of the acceptable upstream range) and the modem has been the culprit?? I'd say it's usually never the cable modem's fault...

TIA - any help/comments would be much appreciated

Tim

 

[gaidin123]

Yes, I had a very similar problem to you though we never got so far as to check the signal levels. Basically we had a cable modem that was slowly getting worse and worse upstream until you literally couldn't upload a file of any kind, via any normal protocol, to anywhere. It would always drop. The odd thing was that the downstream, and very short upstream bursts like surfing web pages worked fine.

Doing a dslreports speedtest showed my modem getting about 2Mbps down, and under 50kbps up. They told me I should be getting over 300kbps up. It was pretty crazy. Immediately the roadrunner techs knew it was the modem. When the guy showed up to swap mine out with a new one he commented that the one I had was an older model and that basically most all of them were eventually running into this problem. He swapped the modem out and I now am able to get around 43KB/s up, and around 200KB/s down.

Good luck!
Gaidin

 

[TJN23]

Thanks for the reassurance...

It sounds like the Roadrunner guys ran into that problem a lot with that particular model - the Adelphia (btw they suck) tech said the brand new SB5100 is a great modem and hasnt dealt with any problems of this type..

My upstream power is bad but my downstream seems to be fine

Tim

 

[VictorLazlo]

In my area we install surfboards, 3-coms, Teryons, and Toshibas: whatever happens to be in inventory that day. The Toshibas are the best (any model, preferably the 1100, or the 2500). The surfboards are by far the worst. If you have them replace your modem, request a Toshiba. If that's not possible, request anything but a surfboard, you should have some choices. If the tech isn't carrying anything but surfboards that day then just wait a few days for something else to show up at the warehouse.

Many RR techs won't even waste time installing surfboards, because the failure rate is so high. We would always fight over who got the Toshibas from the warehouse, and who got stuck with the surfboards.

 

[TJN23]

that is a very interesting piece of information - the Adelphia tech told me on the phone that he was surprised they gave me a SB5100 b/c it is "such a good modem". At any rate, I will request a different model and see if that does the trick.

Thanks a lot,

Tim