Need to reboot my TWC Cable modem every few days, Why??
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I have had good luck with Time Warner, the Motorola Surfboard SB6141 cable modem, and pfSense. Recently I moved to a new state and left my old modem there and picked up an identical model. The internet has been working great for months, TWC even bumped everyones speeds to 125Mbps/10Mbps to compete with Fiber.
The problem is that for the last few months the internet will stop working or be incredibly slow. A speed test shows speeds of maybe 1Mbps or less. I then either physically reboot the modem or I reboot it via the following link, http://192.168.100.1/reset.htm?reset_modem=Restart+Cable+Modem during with pfSense stays up of course. As soon as the modem reboots the internet works again and the speed is back to 100+ Mbps.
I use pfSense for many of its advanced features but primarily because it is rock solid and rarely ever has issues needs to be restarted. I have two different Alex boards and two different VM installs of pfSense that I have swapped between, all which show the same symptoms in regards to the internet slowing down.
I assume the issue is either coming from TWC or the modem.
Any ideas on what I can do to make my internet more stable? I considered buying a device that will ping a number of sites and reboot the modem if it cant ping a few different websites but the issue isn't no internet, just internet so slow the URL requests end up failing but I can still ping.
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if you've tried with different devices/cables then the problem is more then likely a flakey modem. get TW to replace it
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if you've tried with different devices/cables then the problem is more then likely a flakey modem. get TW to replace it
I bought the modem myself. My best guess is the modem is flakey though. Hoping their is something else I can try to narrow it down.
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Many providers are selling to their clients "modems" but in real they are routers that would be not really
bad or would also pretty working well, but in some times this devices are giving then over DHCP an IP Address
to the WAN Port of the pfSense firewall and this might be ending then in a story like yours if the lease time is
ending and the pfSense needs a new IP address at the WAN port. So you might provide us please with more
informations like "I was buying a similar modem like the before", please.The other thing is a possible LAN Port auto sensing miss match that you got with the new modem
and now you should perhaps have a look to this point.If your provider want to compete to the fiber offering from other ISPs and he was perhaps overbooking
his routers on his site (ISP) or only his equipment is not really well suited for this amount of users he is
covering or want to cover up you can´t do anything against that on your side.I bought the modem myself.
An from what brand and what model this modem is now?
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@BlueKobold:
Many providers are selling to their clients "modems" but in real they are routers that would be not really
bad or would also pretty working well, but in some times this devices are giving then over DHCP an IP Address
to the WAN Port of the pfSense firewall and this might be ending then in a story like yours if the lease time is
ending and the pfSense needs a new IP address at the WAN port. So you might provide us please with more
informations like "I was buying a similar modem like the before", please.The other thing is a possible LAN Port auto sensing miss match that you got with the new modem
and now you should perhaps have a look to this point.If your provider want to compete to the fiber offering from other ISPs and he was perhaps overbooking
his routers on his site (ISP) or only his equipment is not really well suited for this amount of users he is
covering or want to cover up you can´t do anything against that on your side.I bought the modem myself.
An from what brand and what model this modem is now?
The modem is the very popular Motorla SURFboard SB6141. I bought both from Amazon. When I moved the people in the house still needed an internet connection so I left the modem and just bout a new one. It has been working fine for about 6 months, well past the return date, and in the last 3 months has needed to be rebooted once a week or more.
This device is only a cable modem and not a router or dhcp server. Though, technically you can access it's admin page at http://192.168.100.1 their are not many options except to reboot it.
I have two dedicated pfSense boxes running on Alix hardware and I'm currently running pfSense as a VM with 1Gbe Intel NICs. The VM is speeding things up in general but my install of pfSense or the specific hardware I am using does not seem to effect things in anyway.
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I would try a different brand of modem. Zoom makes a few different ones that work well on Comcast, just make sure it's at least DOCSIS 3 and check the number of channels bonded up and down.
I've been using a Zoom 5341J that has been pretty good for me.As to "why" if you can get to a web interface, see if there is anything about "statistics". Look for errors and such on the channels. Cable modems are very sensitive to signal levels and SNRs. There maybe a bad or marginal device inbetween the cable modem and the wore from the street. If you have any splitters, try removing them (yes you may have to give up TV for the test). You may need better quality and higher bandwidth ones. See if you can make a straight run from the outside to the cable mode.