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Juj229's avatar
Juj229
New Contributor II
2 years ago

3 Months of Multiple Daily Instances of Modem Self-Restarting

I am at a loss here. For the past 2-3 months, I've been having issues with my Panoramic Wifi modem issued by Cox, model CGM4331COM.

At least 2-3 times per day, it will restart itself. This has been an everyday occurrence since the issue started. Starts off with losing internet connection to all devices, then the modem will blink yellow, then blink green, then back to solid white. It only takes about 5 minutes to come back online, but the constant daily interruption has become very irritating. Tonight it did something new, which prompted me to create this post; we lost connection and the light turned solid red until I unplugged the power and plugged it back in.

We've had at least 5 techs come out to inspect outdoor lines, indoor lines, connection strength, ingress, the works. In the order in which steps have been taken to resolve the issue: A filter was installed on the outdoor connection. We had a pretty badly squirrel-chewed line that was replaced at the pole. There was an outdoor connection leading into our attic that was totally corroded that was replaced. The last tech that came mentioned that he removed a splitter in our attic so that we are directly wired from modem to pole now.

In between all of this, we have been advised to replace the modem, and we did (twice). I have tried the online and telephone help options several times. A couple of times, it has restarted itself while I was on the phone or chat with the agent, and their only advice was to restart it? We have had the modem plugged into both a surge protector and directly into an outlet, and it still restarts itself periodically. We have tried plugging it into a different outlet with the same results. It has restarted itself whether it is physically connected to any devices via ethernet or not. All connections are tight and secure.

I am not sure how to insert data into a table on here and make it legible, but I will occasionally look at the connection status screen under CM Error Codewords. Unerrored Codewords usually sit in the 50-100 million range. Correctable Codewords sit in the ~100k+ range. Uncorrectable Codewords will sit in the high 10-20k range. If need be, I can try to get better data from that section.

Before this gets to be a novel, I'll leave it at this. I believe I have covered most of what has been attempted during the long troubleshooting process, but the last agent I spoke to on the phone happened to mention that none of the previous techs have been documenting their findings, so everyone that helps me at this point will just have to trust that we have tried seemingly everything with no results.

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  • WiderMouthOpen's avatar
    WiderMouthOpen
    Esteemed Contributor
    2 years ago

    Seeing a picture of the signal levels would help. See here how to upload a image or use Imgur.

    PS. It would be nice if a moderator made that post a sticky.

    • Juj229's avatar
      Juj229
      New Contributor II
      2 years ago

      Thanks for the response. I hope this is what you meant.

      • WiderMouthOpen's avatar
        WiderMouthOpen
        Esteemed Contributor
        2 years ago

        Can't see all the downstream channels in that picture, but from what I do see, it looks good. Any downstream channels not locked or below -5dB or a SNR below 36?

        Also, I notice you only have 4 upstream channels. That must be because your either in a new area with upstream OFDM or on a old node like in Florida or Louisiana with only 4 QAM upstream. Do you see any other section for upstream OFDM/OFDMA AKA "other" modulation?

        What would be really nice to see is the event logs, but I don't think the gateway shows them. I believe some Tier 2 (CAG) reps. can see them though. What you would mostly be looking for is T3/T4 errors.

  • Marrey's avatar
    Marrey
    New Contributor
    2 years ago

    I have similar issues and just made a similar post. It is definitely the Cox router/modem. Cox is completely useless so I bet Cox will reply and tell you to reset the router/modem.  😂😂   Sorry as I understand the pain. 

  • FuriousGeorge's avatar
    FuriousGeorge
    New Contributor
    2 years ago

    We’re experiencing the exact same issue on a daily-basis for the past month or so, the gateway will automatically go offline at 10:15am and again ~ 2:30pm and Cox is unable to identify the cause nor can they offer a solution. We just installed a new gateway this week and it has not helped. 

    • Juj229's avatar
      Juj229
      New Contributor II
      2 years ago

      I'll let you know if anything specific gets figured out with our issue. However, ours does not seem to adhere to a schedule when it decides to restart.

  • Juj229's avatar
    Juj229
    New Contributor II
    2 years ago

    For anyone else having this issue, anyone interested in the "conclusion" of this issue, and anyone landing here from a google search in about 10 years, I have a small update.

    I did file an informal FCC complaint. Cox started up with more in-home visits at first, which turned up very little. One guy changed a line coming from our pole to our house when he found 4 splitters along our existing line. Another guy changed a fitting on side of our house that had been changed out previously.

    About halfway into the process (apparently they have 30 days to reach a resolution), outdoor line techs started to investigate lines in our neighborhood and around our specific node. From what I understood, a line that was important to our node was found to be loose and was refastened. There were also two customers disconnected for "excessive gaming" and causing about 20% of the total feedback for our node.

    Between the outdoor fitting being changed (again) and the outdoor team working to find faults in the lines, the issue seems to have calmed down. I've not been able to monitor the connection closely, but I did not experience a restart last night. We are at a stage now where I am trying to figure out how to monitor and see if the problem is resolved while not being home as much.

    I would say that you should save an FCC complaint as a last resort, and only for egregious service interruption. BUT, in my case, it got me out of the low-level support rut that I had been stuck in for about 3 months.

    I'll come back and update this again if it turns out the issue was not fixed. I just wish I could point to a more definite cause for future reference!