Jacedeuce's profile

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Intermittent connection problems

Hi. I am attempting to troubleshoot some intermittent connection issues I've had for several months on my SB6121, I have 50 mbps service and a few times a week my connection would drop out completely in between periods of extremely slow service, measured ~2mbps on www.speedtest.net. This will persist for a minute or two and then my speed will boost back up to the expected 50 mbps. The connection issues usually repeat every 5 minutes or so for up to an hour and then everything will go back to normal. I got a lot of error messages in the modem log indicating dropped connections when this owuld happen.


This issue has gone on for several months now and we've had a technician out twice trying to adjust the signal strength. I believe one time the technician replaced an amp or a splitter in the outside box, but that didn't really make a difference. Last week, looking at the signal on the modem I noticed that the downstream power level was at +12 dBmV so I installed an additional -7 db splitter which causes my downstream power to read 2-3 dBmV. My signal to noise ratio stays consistent at 36-37 dB and my upstream power is 42-44 dBmV. I'm bonded on 4 channels. After installing the second splitter, my speed will drop as measured on www.speedtest.net down as low as 2 mbps but the modem no longer is dropping the connection as before. The pattern of the behavior pretty much remains the same. I am no longer getting any error messages in the log.

I am on firmware version SB_KOMODO-1.0.6.14-SCM01-NOSH on a motorola SB6121. I've called on the phone 4 times now to complain but after two technician visits I don't have much faith in the tech support people on the phone. Usually they just tell me to power cycle the equipment and make sure it's plugged in correctly.

Anyone have any idea what might be causing the issues and what I could do to fix them?

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Hello Jacedeuce,

I'd like to take a closer look at what's going on with your connection.  You mentioned a second splitter, was this a replacement or do you have 2 splitters on the lines?  Please send an email to cox.help@cox.com with your account information I will look into this for you.  -Derrick

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I currently have two splitters on the line:

Wall outlet

two-way splitter

digital cable box

three way splitter

SB6121(cable modem)

I've tested just having the cable modem plugged directly to the wall and swapped several different two-way splitters onto the line. After adding the three way splitter, my downstream power levels have dropped from +13 to +3 and my upstream power levels have jumped from 33 to 43. The modem no longer drops the connection after I added the three way splitter. Intermittently the speed now slows to 1-10 mbps. I haven't been able to isolate a pattern, but there are periods when my connection is great and periods when it slows for a minute or two and then speeds back up.

I've emailed my account number to cox.help@cox.com with a link to this post.

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Jacedeuce said:
After adding the three way splitter, my downstream power levels have dropped from +13 to +3

That's actually a GOOD thing, it works the opposite of what you're probably thinking. You want the downstream power to be as close to 0 as possible, anything from -10 to 10 is considered acceptable though.