television

Sunday, July 8 2012

Comcast Installation
[17:59:56] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.dementia We just transferred Comcast to a new address. Initially, we scheduled a move of an existing account, and they configured us for a self-installation, and when we called to explain there wasn't actually a coaxial connection coming into the house they got confused and it proved quicker and possibly cheaper to just cancel and schedule a new service.

After some initial issues scheduling the service, we got a weekday afternoon scheduled installation, and had Internet and television, for two hours or so. After this, the Internet dropped-out. Calling Comcast, the scheduled someone to come out the next day (Saturday), which was actually very convenient.

Apparently, the most economical option was the Comcast Tripple Play, which included Television, Internet, and Telephony hook-ups. This cost the same as just Television, but had the discounted rate for a full year; our Comcast representative woudn't sell us Television and Internet without the Telephony. The issue we appeared to be having, as explained when the service agent came out Saturday, is that the contracted installer who came on Friday hadn't completed the telephony set-up which confused (either the Comcast system or) the provided modem, and reset the service.

Following this correction, I had some issues with the Arris Touchstone DOCIS 2.0 modem. Apparently, after several minutes of running (somewhere between fifteen minutes and ninety minutes) the Arris modem will refuse to respond to DHCP offer requests (it might actually be that it'll only do this once per session, even when the same device requests a renewal). This has caused my Internet connection to routinely drop until I restart the modem. I've fixed this by adding static routes to the gateway device based on the initial response from the modem so that it won't try to renew and drop the connection because the modem doesn't respond.

Another thing I noted is that Comcast provided a DOCIS 2.0 modem. This was surprising on two levels, a) they were supposed to use my provided modem: the installer who came on Saturday said that they would have to charge me a *higher* tariff to use my own modem; and b) the modem they provided was a DOCIS 2.0 modem ("Our best modem!" said the Saturday installer), although this should be sufficient for the maximal bandwidth in the plan sold to me, 30Mbps down. It turns out it's definitely able to handle the 10Mbps down, 2Mbps up that I'm actually seeing between Comcast-based hosts.