Cable Modems

[Anthony de Boer]

Mike Kallies wrote:
> Hypothetical Question.
> 
> I have this "friend" who is a subscriber to an alternative cable
> provider for Internet access.
> 
> About 10 months ago, this cable provider told him that his recent
> Internet problems were because his Motorola Surfboard modem was no
> longer supported.  Not only this, they added that it was likely the
> *cause* of his problem and they couldn't help him unless he replaced
> it.
> 
> The next day, the modem began working just fine, and he thought it
> would be the end of the story.
> 
> 10 months later, with strange upstream packet loss problems, and not
> wanting to shell out full price for a "supported" modem, which would
> probably make no difference, he grabbed an SMC modem with DOCSIS 3.0
> off Craigslist.
> 
> Plugging it in... he found that his Internet connection was a lot faster...
> 
> ... 4-8x faster than he paid for.
> ... and from a different ISP!

Almost certainly the modem was still configured to the seller's account
with his ISP.  Depending on whether a second connection knocks off the
other one he may already be opening a ticket.

> 
> This raises a few questions:
> 1.  How is the modem linked to the ISP?

Modem's ID and/or account info programmed into it.

They may still own it, depending on the contract between them and the
seller.  So it might even be stolen goods.

> 2.  Why is he getting free-ish Internet from this third party provider?

Seller's account.

> 3.  Does the seemingly repaired packet loss issue with the SMC modem
> mean that the cable problem *was* the modem?

Could be, but the multiple providers have their own connections between
the cable infrastructure and the Internet, and it's quite possible the
old ISP was saturated there.  It's happened before.

-- 
Anthony de Boer
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