The UNIX equipment that is defaulting the date to 1969 is the modem itself. When it is not online it can't get the Time of Day(ToD) signal from Cox to set it's virtual clock. Since the modem has no internal clock, it defaults to the UNIX birthday. The problem isn't the lost of date but the loss of connection that causes the loss of date. If you want to troubleshoot that, look at what the event logs are saying before the connection loss. T3/T4 errors?
you beat me to it!
It's not a race. The more the merrier I always say.
I was wondering how exactly the ToD system works. Does it use some kind of local NTP server at the headend?
