Fred here welcome back to the gibb
session channel yeah I know I haven't
done a tech related video for quite a
while so I'm finally getting one out of
the can so in this episode we're going
to talk about cable modems now this
particular cable cable modem is an Aries
most of you practically have a motor
role of like a motor boat surfboard or
something like that
so hmm about I'd say about a year ago I
had a lot of problems with my cable
modem dropping out every time I was
trying to upload a video I would get
knocked offline the cable modem legs
would start blinking saying they got
disconnected and they may or may not get
connected again so in the process of
dealing with that issue with dealing
with the cable company I learned a
couple of things and I'd like to share
some of those with you in the hopes that
maybe it can solve any problem that you
might be having with dropped connections
now or in the future so here is my cable
modem it's kind of funny that they call
these cable modems because it's not
really a mode of modem stands for
modulation demodulation and that was
something that got carried over from the
old days when modems were attached to
phone lines I made that weird noise and
that noise was when it was modulating
the modulating but they sort of carried
over the name I guess to keep life
simple for folks so these are referred
to as cable modems now it really doesn't
do us any good to go over these specific
lights because different brands of cable
modems will have lights for different
things you know but I mean you'll
usually have a power light this has a
downstream and upstream light but it
could be like transmit and receive on
yours I don't know you know have an
online button or light and this is a
link light so it's let me know that it's
on my internal network of my rj45 going
to my router is good to go
this cable modem also does phones so you
know I have phone lines
phone service provided by the cable
company and batteries for those backup
batteries for the phone line so this
thing works when we have lost power
this is Aries it's made by touchstone
and soldered oxes to cable modem so what
we need to do is try to find out what
type of levels the cable company is
providing me you know what type of
upstream and downstream levels as far as
decibels and power and the only way to
do that is to know the secret IP and
guess what I'm going to tell you what it
is okay now this is a secret so don't
tell anybody
one ninety two dot one sixty eight dot
100.1 four ninety five percent of the
folks out there at the time of this
video taping this is the IP to get
inside your cable modem to take a look
and what I have here now if you have
like a Motorola surfboard or some other
cable modem you know of course it's
going to look different now this is the
diaries' status page which is what we're
concerned about with today in this video
and what we're really concerned about
are the RF parameters or levels that is
being provided to us by our cable
provider in my case it's Comcast so I'm
going to go ahead and zoom in to what I
want to discuss first let's talk about
the downstream number now as you can see
here it says frequency power and we're
not really too concerned about the
frequency that they're there feeding our
key load with well we're really
concerned about is the power and this
says it's a negative three decibel
millivolt really this one will avail you
don't need to be too concerned about day
just the number itself it's a minus
three normal operating range for this
number for your downlink power should be
anywhere between minus fifteen and
fifteen - fifteen - fifteen now the
sweet spot where your cable modem is
working really good you know up to the
so you get the maximum download kind of
speed optimum ly operating you want this
to be between minus five and five and
life will be good now the next thing is
this
to noise ratio and you see here it says
36 dB the number we want this to be is
30 DB above so we want this to this
number the signal noise the ratio to be
30 or above I'm 36 so life is good now
if this drops below 30 especially if it
gets down to like 25
you'll start experiencing sub drop-offs
loss of connection to your internet so
those are the two numbers you're
concerned about for your downstream next
is upstream really is only one that we
need to be concerned about and that is
your power here 47 DB millivolt decibel
millivolt and that number should always
be between 37 and 55 now if you're
talking about optimization you know best
speeds possible you want that number to
fall in the sweet spot which is between
48 and 52 I'm just barely out of that
Ridge at 47 now there are several
reasons why your levels could be way out
of whack and it might not necessarily be
the cable company's fault so before you
call them I like to ask yourself a
question do you have a lot of these
between where the cable comes in your
house over your cable modem is because
these could cause some serious issues
especially the cheap was this is a cable
splitter and I know that if you want to
add TVs into your house and you might
have installed one or two of these so go
ahead and split it off the good side is
you get to add more TVs to your cable
the downside is every time you split
your cable you're going to lose some dB
if I start losing a little bit of your
singl every time you split it as a
general rule I'm not saying not all of
these are created equally but as a
general rule a to a splitter like this
you're going to lose 3.5 DB so if you're
if you
a lot of these and you're out of spec
within a couple of DB and you're
experiencing some drop drop offs or all
of a sudden you lose a connection take
one of these out and see if it improves
things so this is just food for thought
you know to help you maybe resolve some
of your cable modem issues me this is
some lessons learned that I like to pass
on now my keep my cable company could
not get my cable modem within spec not
even close to in the acceptable ranges
so what they ended up having to do is
run a second cable line to my house and
that goes straight to my cable modem
with no splitters whatsoever and then I
have another one coming into my house I
does to my TVs and that was the only way
they think that they could get it in
range
unfortunately so you know they they did
what they could do to make it right
which they finally did it took about
three months of people coming out here
trying to fix the issues and think they
did finally get it and you know I'm a
Comcast customer and once they got that
issue solved I've been a pretty happy
gas customer because I have some crazy
fast speeds as a matter of fact if you
want to do a speed test I can show you a
neat site that you can test your speed
and when you do the speed test don't be
like downloading Netflix or some big
file while you're running the test
because that's gonna nullify the test so
let's uh put a website and I'll bring it
back in and I'm going to go ahead and
hit the start button there we go
now those of you who know what these
numbers mean or probably crapping in
their pants right now because that's
crazy fast that is crazy fast I'll get
at twenty five point two eight that's
just crazy at least here in the United
States that's a number where I'm
probably faster than 90% of the rest of
the country now there are other
countries that can top this easily but
here in the US that's a really good
number and my upload speed 4.32 is
another outstanding number so you go to
speed speed test net I'm sure you know
what your cable company promised you and
if you're not getting anything close to
that on a consistent basis you might
need to be giving them a call okay I'm
going to head off one more comment
because I did like no I'm going to get
this yeah I'm going to get someone that
says this is what DOCSIS means so I went
ahead and just googled it because I
can't remember all this stuff DOCSIS
which is uh you know how what different
cable modems are DOCSIS is an acronym
that means data over cable service
interface specification and right now in
taping as of taping this video it's up
to DOCSIS three is the fastest we have
that specific specification some of you
still might have DOCSIS twos if you do
and you capable to provider or your
cable provider actually has quicker
speeds that you're not getting it it
could be that maybe you have an old
access to cable modem and you need to
upgrade it and the cable modem company
or the label but the cable come in and
bother to ask you if you wanted one you
know maybe the reason why you have it's
low speeds is because you have an old
cable modem especially if you bought one
and you never changed it out when they
moved on to the docks s3 specification
so hopefully this can help you if you're
experiencing slow speeds on your
keyboard or
random drops or anything like that now
another uh one other quick thing I keep
I know I keep on any things and I make
it a stronger if you're slightly out of
spec and it's good most of the day and
then all of a sudden when it gets really
really hot then you start experiencing
drop outs which was my case again that's
because you're you're you're right on
the line as far as an acceptable range
on one of these levels and when it gets
hot really hot it can knock it out of
that range all together especially if
you have like a splitter in an attic
that gets really really hot and it's a
poor quality or maybe the cable is loose
on it and when it gets hot it just makes
it even worse and they'll knock it out
of spec and then you'll experience
dropouts so hopefully all this stuff can
help you out so thank you very much for
stopping by the ghee obsession channel
to get your gear gun and tech fix I
really appreciate it I hope you keep on
coming back great so let's talk
specifically about the downstream
numbers here now I'd like to talk about
the