Visitor

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3 Messages

09/30/2026 11:02 AM

Systematic ~20-hour service interruptions with DOCSIS OFDM impairment — request modem firmware review and line inspection

I am reporting a chronic, highly regular service interruption pattern affecting my Comcast (AS7922) connection, documented over a 14-day monitoring window (September 16–30, 2026).

Equipment: Customer-owned ARRIS SURFboard S33 (retail-labeled S33v2), hardware version V1.0, firmware TB01.03.001.11_051722_212.S3 (dated May 17, 2022). DOCSIS 3.1, provisioned on the 312/20 Mbps tier.

Primary finding — periodic whole-connection outages every ~20.2 hours. Over 14 days, my independent monitoring recorded 15 whole-WAN outages (34 minutes cumulative downtime, 99.83% uptime). The interval between consecutive outages was 20.0–20.5 hours across thirteen consecutive occurrences — a periodicity too regular to be incidental line noise. Each event: (a) takes the connection fully dark, including the first Comcast hop (po-108-rur202.bluelight.tn.knox), (b) lasts 2–3 minutes, and (c) recovers with hops returning in sequence within roughly 30–90 seconds, consistent with a cable modem re-ranging and re-registering. My modem's event log and uptime confirm it re-initialized immediately before at least one of these events (September 29, 18:39). Because only the cable operator can update retail modem firmware, I request that you review the firmware currently provisioned for the S33 v2 and push any available update; the installed build is over four years old and has been associated in public reports with recurrent connection drops on this exact model and revision.

Secondary findings — sustained DOCSIS impairments:

  1. OFDM channel 193 uncorrectable codewords: approximately 111,000 per day sustained across the entire window, despite signal levels within specification (downstream SNR 40.7 dB, downstream power 3.8 dBmV, upstream power 44.3 dBmV). Modem CM-STATUS event log entries on channel 193 (types 16 and 24, OFDM profile transitions) coincide with outage recovery.
  2. Upstream ranging instability: eight T3 timeout events between 02:43 and 05:17 on September 30, coinciding with a monitored latency/jitter excursion on the local Comcast segment (po-108-rur201, jitter to 18 ms). This suggests upstream path or plant impairment rather than in-home wiring.
  3. Elevated baseline latency: 15.9 ms first-hop idle latency, above the normal range for DOCSIS, further suggesting upstream-path impairment.
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Official Employee

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2.4K Messages

23 days ago

 

user_drk083, good morning! I'm sorry to read about the ongoing interruptions. I know how must a brief interruption can cause trouble to my day. I would love to help get this corrected for us, so you don't have to continue dealing with this trouble. 
Considering the trouble and details you are reporting we will have to obtain your account details, but I see that you have already sent us a direct message. I will reply to your direct message to continue troubleshooting.
 
Please be reminded that sending unsolicited direct messages to the Xfinity Support handle or user of the Xfinity Community Forum, is a violation of Forum Guidelines.

 

Visitor

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3 Messages

My apologies for the unsolicited dm.

Expert

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122.4K Messages

23 days ago

@user_drk083 @XfinityPaula 

Please circle back here and post any possible solutions for the issue here in these open public forums so that all readers here may benefit from the exchange / info. This is in keeping with the spirit for which these public help forums were originally intended. Thank you.

Visitor

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3 Messages

The Xfinity/Comcast technician came out to our home. He replaced some connectors at the street as well as in our home. He also disconnected the Xfinity equipment within our home that was used when we had a TV plan so that the coax from outside the home went directly into the cable modem rather than first through the TV-related equipment. He also updated & tightened the grounding block for the cable coming into the house. Other than that he did not mention finding anything else. I ended up upgrading my old cable modem to one of Xfinity's XB7 units and the 500Mbps plan. It's been running a couple of days now. The internet outages have not stopped entirely and I'm still getting some uncorrectable codeword errors but not as many notices as before. I should also note that I'm running the XB7 in bridge mode in front of my Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra. Replacement of the Arris SB33 modem with the Xfinity XB7 also resulted in us getting a newly assigned IP address. Considering that the old internet address had been in place for many years perhaps the new IP assignment also helped. 

Official Employee

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2.8K Messages

 

user_drk083 Good morning! Thank you for the update. I'm glad to hear the visit went well, and for the most part your seeing any improvment to your connection and services with the repairs and new equipment set up. Are there any other concerns before we wrap things up? 

 

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