Cox trying to push wrong firmware to my modem?

BUMP. 

Just to re-summarize the problem:

1)  You have a Motorola modem.

2)  When you are having the problem, you try to go to 192.168.100.1 and see that it is being stated that you have a Cisco modem.

3)  You power off your modem when it comes back up, you can go to 192.168.100.1 and see the Motorola page and not the Cisco page.

4)  You did at one time have a Cisco modem, but you do not anymore.

If this is correct, then either the Cisco modem is still connected and you are getting an IP address conflict as the DHCP renewals happen, or, as like you said, Cox is attempting to put the wrong software and HTML pages on your router.

Wired or wireless should make no difference with this, unless one modem is a gateway and has wireless.

@Chris or other Cox employees:  Is the account's config file set up properly?

I do have WiFi in my house, but I'm seeing this phenomenon from my desktop, which is wired.

@BrianS - Yes, you understand correctly.

As far as the Cisco modem still hanging off the network somewhere, that's not possible.  All of the networking equipment is located at my desk where my desktop is - the modem (Motorola SB61410 and the router (Netgear Nighthawk R7000).

One of the reasons I thought it might be Cox is because I had a tech scheduled to come out this past Tuesday.  The day before another tech comes with a work order to install TV and Phone (I'm a data only customer)...which I did not order, and in the case of phone service had never had.  The tech was annoyed and showed me the work order.  He then told me that Cox had me on a seasonal plan which I don't and have never had, and that it could cause my outages.  He got on the phone with Cox sales and was all over the place trying to straighten everything out.

This makes me think that maybe something got messed up in Cox's system, and when the tech had support take the tv and phone off my account it removed my latest modem as well.  Strange thing is, I had connectivity - albeit slower - when I get the Cisco stats page, so Cox has the right MAC provisioned, whatever modem they think I have.

What happened with the Cisco modem?  Did you give it to a friend/neighbor, or is it sitting there powered off?

On whatever WiFi device you have, you could load InSSIDer (version 3, as version 4 costs money) or WiFi Analyzer (or anything else that will tell you router vendor information), then take a look around and see if you see any unsecured WiFi networks that are Cisco or Cisco-Linksys that are in range.  Even a signal as low as -70dB might be enough to allow you to connect to it.

Guys, with all due respect, I'm on a CAT5 wire, not wireless.  My Motorola SB6141 is wired into the WAN port on my R7000.  I'm currently into a LAN port on my router, but I've seen the descibed behavior with my desktop wired straight into the modem while I was troubleshooting.

@Chris - Some of my posts ( including my last) were made at work, which is also on a COX network, and that connection DOES have a Cisco modem.  This current post was made at home, on my Motorola modem.  I hear you on the firmware not working on the completely wrong modem, I wouldn't have believed it either if I hadn't seen it.  I won't say that the firmware made it all the way on, I've only seen the stats page.  It's completely different from the Motorola modem page though, and you can't miss it.  I don't know for sure that the firmware thing, it was just a theory, based on the Cisco logo and model number on the stats page.

Strange thing that it slows down when the stat page says it's the Cisco modem.  It always goes back to the Motorola page on reboot, and the speed always picks back up.

Again, I am not on Wifi, I'm hard wired.  And for the record, I'm System & Network Admin, so I'm not a total noob. ;-)

If I email cox.help@cox.com, what info do I need to provide?

I got ya.   Sometimes I feel there is too much reliance by Cox on a Level 1 script and they often skim the post from the person asking for help and don't ask enough questions (sorry Chris, but it's how I feel), but Chris had/has a partially valid question about the WiFi though. 

Now that I've read further about your work environment, is there any possibility that you were on a VPN connection, like through Cisco AnyConnect when you saw what you saw?

Nope, not possible.  I do connect to work via VPN on occasion, but I just use the built in MS client for that, and I was not connected at that time anyway.  I don't leave it connected all the time, just when I'm actually using it.  

I haven't had the issue yesterday or today so far, so maybe something got straightened out.

@ChrisL - It may be that you're right and the behavior I was seeing was caused by...me.

As an experiment I opened my modem stats page @ 192.168.100.1 and verified that I was seeing the correct Motorola page.  I ran a couple of speed tests and verified that my speed was what I'd expect.

Next  I initiated my work VPN connection and repeated the process, and lo and behold I saw the Cisco modem stats page and my speed dropped down to ~20Mbps.  I disconnected my the VPN and reran  my tests, and everything was right again.

I would've sworn that I hadn't been connected to the VPN the other times that I was seeing the issue, but I must've been.  I had been having so many connectivity problems and experienced such weirdness on my account and with the first tech I had over that I was ready to assume it was a Cox issue.  Maybe not.

In any event, I haven't had the issue for going on 3 days now.  Thanks to all who responded, sorry I apparently wasted everyone's time.

Sunburst...

It's ok.  The information about the work network and thus the possibility of the VPN immediately raised that as a possibility for me, because I have seen that happen myself.

You might try to ask for an upgraded business connection now though...