Getting "US profile assignment change" constantly causing random disconnects.

joeldjohnston,

If you're dropping connection at the modem it could be signal or network related (which would be outside of the community's ability to help with). To be sure I'd like to take a look at your connection. Please email us at cox.help@cox.com with your name, street address and the details of the trouble you're having with a link to this forum post.

Yes, I had this problem, and yes I seem to no longer have this problem.  Here is a short list of what I know:

1. The recurring brief outages were "real" (actual packet loss, not just a monitoring problem, and very regular--exactly one hour apart, almost every hour, with a pfFsense graph of monitoring data to proove it.
2. These outages corrolate exactly to the channel reconfiguration events logged in the modem's event log.
3. I contacted Cox.Help@cox.com when invited by a moderator here.  Interestingly, these outages stopped at exactly the time I received a reply.  The reply indicated that they did not see a problem, but that they could schedule a tech visit.  A subsequent reply to my inquiry of "What did you do to fix this?" said that they did nothing, and in fact have a very limited number of things they could do (such as resetting the modem, which had already been done repeatedly.
4. For good measure, I replaced my modem (Motorola MB8600) with an Arris S22).  Since the problem stopped prior to the modem swap, I am not sure that the modem swap was part of the solution.
5. Now the channel reconfigurations are far less frequent / are not happening hourly...maybe 3-6 times a day, but without causing outages.  I think (but cannot conculsively prove) that channel reconfigurations were continuing to happen frequently on the old modem even after the problem was "fixed". 

My suspicions:

1. The channel reconfigurations are sort of normal-ish, and are done to try to get more bandwith out of a channel, and/or to fall back to attempting less bandwidth on the channel when there are problems.  Constant re-configuration seems indicative of bad firmware or software...either in the modem or in the node.  (In other words:  even if there were a physical connection problem, something should give up and stop trying to constantly reconfigure the channel.)
2. I think that the MB8600 began struggling to cope with the channel reconfigurations--meaning that the modem would drop the connection at these times, even though the modem should not have to do so.  This seems like a firmware issue in the modem...perhaps due to faulty firmware that Cox recently pushed out.
3. One user on the forums here replied that the MB8600 were "known" to have this kind of problem.  I'm not sure the basis of that.  The new Arris S22 has not shown any problems.
4. There are at least two different factors involved:  a) why / how to decrease the channel reconfigurations (which could be interference or bad equipment on either end of the cable connection), and b) how well does the modem handle the channel reconfigurations when they do occur.
5. Improving the quality of the connection is a bit of a mysterious black art:  a) physical connection (i.e. cable, connectors, etc.) at the house, the street, or the neighborhood, b) hardware at the house (i.e. modem), c) hardware at the node or a particular port at the node, d) firmware (i.e. at the modem, controlled by Cox), e) provisioning or configuration of  frequency / channel settings (controlled by Cox)...these could all cause a sub-par connection, and fixing or resetting any one of these could improve things.  And, Cox is never forthcoming about either ongoing issues or steps that were taken to resolve an issue.
6. The last time I had connection problems (a few months ago) was due to Cox provisioning changes in the neighborhood as they were adding additional upstream channels.  In that episode the tech got someone at Cox to make provisioning changes on the fly...that ultimately resulted in things working properly.  At that time the tech affirmed that my old Motorola MB8600 was fine, and was preferable to the Arris SB8200 (new-in-box that I had as a spare)...which he had trouble with when he tried to witch to that device.  I am not saying that the two problems are related:  I am only saying that Cox configuration in their equipment can cause or fix problems...not just physical connections at your house or street.
7. It is unfortunate that Cox is less than transparent about this stuff.  Their policy is to force everyone through level-1 tech support.  In a better world their level-2 team or management would be desirous of gathering actual data in the field, and would also have insights into open issues at all levels of their network.  For example, in my previous episode there were know "known outages"...but it turned out that there were definitely "known configuration changes" being made in the neighborhood.  Cox should have wanted to know that the configuration changes were causing problems (rather than overwhelming their level-1 support with volume and questions that they truly were unable to help with and had no way of knowing what was going on.)
8. Those of us that actually know anything about network connectivity (such as someone running pfSense instead of just a black box Panoramic WiFi setup from Cox) are such a small percentage of users that Cox doesn't really need to take us too seriously.  I was happy to learn from this latest episode that Cox moderators are actually active here, and that the Cox.Help@cox.com (at least when invited--not sure about other times, as a followup message I sent there bounced) actually does provide valuable assistance.
9. I pay extra for "unlimited bandwith".  I would also entertain paying a modest upcharge for "business-class support".  Yes, I know this is a residential service.  But in these days of work-from-home and the like, professional quality internet service ought to be achievable.