Modem question... From the Desk of Scott Fiore

Hi, I own a Motorola Surfboard 5220 modem (about 1 1/2 years old) that I connect to my Airport Express. I received a call from my internet provider this morning notifying me that because this modem is being discontinued by Motorola, it will soon stop working and I will need to buy or rent a new modem. Does this sound right? I don't see why a modem would just stop working because the manufacturer discontinues the model. Any ideas? Thanks!

-Scott Fiore PowerMacG5

1.8 GHz
Reply to
Scott Fiore
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And your internet provider is ??? Sigh. Running RDNS against your IP of 24.117.111.40 yields cableone.net. Is that correct?

I'm really impressed that Cable One would call you on the telephone to inform you that the end of the world is near. Normally, such things are gone by email, notices on their web site, or via USPS snail mail. It's also not exactly standard practice to swap out modems with almost zero notice. Perhaps you've been ignoring email and mail from your ISP?

The SBV5220 modem has already been discontinued:

From the FAQ at CableOne:

What does ?End of Life? mean? A cable modem that is specified as ?End of Life? was once a recommended Cable One cable modem. Due to the discontinued production, manufacturer support changes, or other technical issues, these cable modems are no longer recommended. At present, these modems will continue to operate normally on our network and are permitted to complete the Cable One registration process. No dates have been specified to retire these modems from our network at this time. We suggest that at some point in the near future subscribers replace these cable modems with Cable One Certified cable modems @

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CableOne does have a support web site:

The SBV5220 isn't listed on this supported modems list:

However, the SBV5220 is listed as a "certified" modem on this page:

Toss a coin? Perhaps a call to your ISP (cableone) support department might be useful to untangle the muddle.

I do. If if your unspecified ISP is switching to DOCSIS 3.0, you will need a compatible modem. The SBV5220 is only usable with DOCSIS 2.0 and below. It may also be a the result of a security issue with the modem, where the manufactory does not want to fix the firmware and the ISP does not want to live with the problem. It may also be the result of a high modem failure rate, where replacements are not easily available.

Incidentally, this has nothing to do with wireless internet. Please find a more appropriate usenet newsgroup, forum, or mailing list to ask your support questions.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Interesting point about the underlying encoding or delivery technology driving what "modems" will continue to work on a given ISP. Same could maybe be said for DSL at some point.

But all the smart folks hang out here - and we learn so much together :)

Reply to
ps56k

That's already happening with AT&T DSL. The new and improved setup script tends to only work on DSL modems that have the PPPoE login and password stored in the DSL modem or in the computah, but not where it's stored in an "unsupported" router. I ranted on the topic recently in ba.internet. Short version... some older Speedstream/Siemens 5100 modems don't quite work for initial setup or reconfiguration.

Fortunately, I have a partially tested workaround. If you want to try the above URL, be sure to have the computah audio turned on for the full multimedia installation experience.

There are also issues with ancient DSL modems such as the Alcatel

1000. There's no way for the DSLAM to query this modem for statistics and quality info. Same problem when the ISP uses AT&T line tools. These modems are justifiably banned.

Legacy modems are a more serious problem in cable modems. With DSL, there's no real security in the transport system. DSL has a dedicated line to the DSLAM at the CO. Short of wiretap protection, there's no security needed. However, cable is mostly a bus or ring topology, where everyone is on shared connections. Security is paramount and is imbedded in the modem with BPI+. The modem also needs to be remotely managed. This is available for DSL modems with SNMP, but the various DSL ISP's seem reluctant to use it. In general, when there's an upgrade to the cable service, there's also an upgrade to the privacy and management features, making maintaining legacy modems a problem.

I'm not very smart. However, I'm very sneaky and sometimes evil. I'm also into Learn By Destroying.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Jeff I hope you can share your question and answer with the group at "unlockingmodems-com"

Reply to
Jeff

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