Dodge DeBoulet
Regular Contributor
tldr; Actiontec ECB6200s make noise on neighborhood cable, POE filter no help. Comcast no like, install other filter make cable modem sad. Want happy cable modem. Want comcast calm down.
I've had some issues with internet connectivity over the last 3 weeks. Mostly it would work fine during the day, but early morning and late afternoon would see some interruptions. I asked Comcast to check things on their end and they did not see any problems in my area. My modem (until this morning a Motorola SB6141) would lose sync and cycle through downlink/uplink/transport (or whatever the "globe" icon means) multiple times and eventually connect. The status page at http://192.168.100.1 showed 8 downstream channels bonded and 1 upstream bonded, with the other 3 timing out.
Repeated calls to Comcast eventually resulted in a theory (by a Comcast rep) that it was either a Comcast external cabling issue or my modem. They agreed to roll a truck which came today. In the meantime, I took the proactive measure of replacing the SB6141 modem with a NetGear CM1000v2. That seemed to improve reliability; 32 channels down bonded, but only 4 out of 8 up. Similar timeouts appeared in the cable modem's log.
When the technician arrived, he started off by saying that my problem was most likely triggered by noise generated by my coax infrastructure; Comcast discovered the noise on the local "leg" a while back and apparently installed a low-pass filter of some sort that stripped out the upper channels that would normally have been available to my modem for uplink bonding. It didn't completely fix the problem for them, but it helped.
He used a signal/spectrum analyzer to look at all of my coax connections, and came to the conclusion that the noise was generated by one or more of my four Actiontec ECB6200 MoCA2 adapters, which provide connectivity to equipment at both ends of my house PLUS a garage/apartment outbuilding that my father-in-law lives in. He saw both bursty electrical noise and AM/FM band interference. This was apparently being soaked up somehow by my coax and pushed to Comcast's neighborhood infrastructure. The technician told me that it was unlikely that I would be able to continue to use the Actiontec solution, which has been rock-solid for the last 3+ years and quite fast enough for my purposes.
A bit of background on the cable topology ... Comcast service enters the basement and is connected to a distribution amp through a POE MoCA filter. Coax is run to most every room in the house (large house, ~ 4000sf on 2 floors) with a 225ft leg underground to my father-in-law's apartment. One leg of the distribution amp runs to the cable modem near to the primary house router, and an ethernet run goes to an ECB6200 near the distribution amp. The ECB6200 is connected via a short length to the distribution amp. There are 3 other ECB6200s; one in the media room at one end of the house, another in the living room at the other end of the house, and the last one in my FiL's apartment. And as I said, It's all been working great for over 3 years.
Now Comcast is saying that I need to stop injecting crap into their network and they're blaming it on the ECB6200s according to the analysis done by the tech. I can't deny that they're the problem; he showed me what was happening. Since we don't use most of the coax for cable TV, I'm considering a topology change that would isolate the MoCA network from Comcast's service connection.
Any other options? Has anyone else experienced this with the Actiontec hardware?
I've had some issues with internet connectivity over the last 3 weeks. Mostly it would work fine during the day, but early morning and late afternoon would see some interruptions. I asked Comcast to check things on their end and they did not see any problems in my area. My modem (until this morning a Motorola SB6141) would lose sync and cycle through downlink/uplink/transport (or whatever the "globe" icon means) multiple times and eventually connect. The status page at http://192.168.100.1 showed 8 downstream channels bonded and 1 upstream bonded, with the other 3 timing out.
Repeated calls to Comcast eventually resulted in a theory (by a Comcast rep) that it was either a Comcast external cabling issue or my modem. They agreed to roll a truck which came today. In the meantime, I took the proactive measure of replacing the SB6141 modem with a NetGear CM1000v2. That seemed to improve reliability; 32 channels down bonded, but only 4 out of 8 up. Similar timeouts appeared in the cable modem's log.
When the technician arrived, he started off by saying that my problem was most likely triggered by noise generated by my coax infrastructure; Comcast discovered the noise on the local "leg" a while back and apparently installed a low-pass filter of some sort that stripped out the upper channels that would normally have been available to my modem for uplink bonding. It didn't completely fix the problem for them, but it helped.
He used a signal/spectrum analyzer to look at all of my coax connections, and came to the conclusion that the noise was generated by one or more of my four Actiontec ECB6200 MoCA2 adapters, which provide connectivity to equipment at both ends of my house PLUS a garage/apartment outbuilding that my father-in-law lives in. He saw both bursty electrical noise and AM/FM band interference. This was apparently being soaked up somehow by my coax and pushed to Comcast's neighborhood infrastructure. The technician told me that it was unlikely that I would be able to continue to use the Actiontec solution, which has been rock-solid for the last 3+ years and quite fast enough for my purposes.
A bit of background on the cable topology ... Comcast service enters the basement and is connected to a distribution amp through a POE MoCA filter. Coax is run to most every room in the house (large house, ~ 4000sf on 2 floors) with a 225ft leg underground to my father-in-law's apartment. One leg of the distribution amp runs to the cable modem near to the primary house router, and an ethernet run goes to an ECB6200 near the distribution amp. The ECB6200 is connected via a short length to the distribution amp. There are 3 other ECB6200s; one in the media room at one end of the house, another in the living room at the other end of the house, and the last one in my FiL's apartment. And as I said, It's all been working great for over 3 years.
Now Comcast is saying that I need to stop injecting crap into their network and they're blaming it on the ECB6200s according to the analysis done by the tech. I can't deny that they're the problem; he showed me what was happening. Since we don't use most of the coax for cable TV, I'm considering a topology change that would isolate the MoCA network from Comcast's service connection.
Any other options? Has anyone else experienced this with the Actiontec hardware?
