Forum Discussion

jesmith's avatar
jesmith
New Contributor
4 years ago

CAX80

Has anyone had issues with dropped connections with the Netgear CAX80?

I purchased my first CAX80 in mid-August--Netgear sent me a replacement a month later when their tech support could not figure out why my Cox ISP connection was dropping multiple times a day. Here are all the solutions I have attempted, in consultation with Netgear technical support during 10+ phone calls & emails:

  1. Two vists to my house by Cox to replace and re-test the cable line
  2. Asking Cox to reprovision the modem multiple times
  3. Performing a hard reset multiple times
  4. For 2.4ghz wireless network, change the channel from auto to 11.
  5. For 5ghz wireless network, change the channel from auto to 128.
  6. Disable AX band
  7. Enable Beamforming, MU-MIMO, and Airtime Fairness.

None of these improved the disconnects. Yesterday, Cox came back & installed a 6 dB attenuator which raised my upstream power levels back in range.

Strangely, before the Cox tech installed the attenuator, the Cox tech noticed that the upstream power levels that my router is reporting to Cox are higher than what the router logs were showing--he said he's never seen that in 7 years, and could only explain that as being an early adopter of a new modem.

I have not had a disconnect since the attenuator was put on the device 19 hours ago, which is the longest I've gone without a disconnect since August.

I'm sharing these details so others don't have to go through the stress the CAX80 has caused me for two months, As you will also see throughout this forum, there are multiple people (especially on Cox) expericing the exact same problem with this combo modem/router--with no acknowledgement from Netgear.

3 Replies

  • jesmith's avatar
    jesmith
    New Contributor

    Update:

    I've been working directly with the Netgear engineering team on this, and have a couple of updates for those who are following:

    1) I changed from a 6DB to a 10DB attenuator and that reduced the number of disconnects, but did not eliminate them.

    2) This morning Netgear sent me a beta firmware release (v2.1.0.4). In their words, "Cox’s CMTS frequently performs load balancing which is not common and it may affect CAX80. I have a new firmware that have a newer codebase that may help."

    As soon as I installed the new firmware, my upstream power levels went up 3-6 points beyond the boost they got from the attenuator. And I haven't had an error or a disconnect in 48 hours.

    • gorditopro's avatar
      gorditopro
      New Contributor

      Are you able to share the firmware version or should cox have it available?

    • ChesapeakeChris's avatar
      ChesapeakeChris
      New Contributor III

      I turned in my Cox Technicolor CGM4141 and bought an Arris/Surfboard SBG8300 DOCSIS 3.1 Dual Band. Perfect ever since...