<rant>
That is a bunch of BS. They changed their list probably just because
nobody really uses the older ones but are 100% DOCSIS 1.0/1.1
compatible which RCN uses AND fully supports. I used to use my
Motorola SB3100 with them which is basically the same as the currently
approved (as of 04-13-2008)
What's funny is, the SB4200 is a really hackable modem as well as most
of them.. In fact I've even given them different model #s when signing
up and they don't even know. The only way they'd know is if the
checked the model via SNMP (provided you don't block it with your
"customized modem") Their management and trouble ticketing system,
call takers (the ones from India are the most helpful! They will bend
over backwards to help you and are very intelligent about the system
and how to diagnose or escalate a problem most likely resulting in a
visit from a tech every time.) One call taker actually troubleshot me
reading off a piece of paper and I know because of several reasons. 1)
I used to work as the highest level tier ("engineering") for a huge
satellite internet provider. 2) I'm a Network Engineer. So anyway, she
proceeds to trouble shoot me by having me "power cycle" which I did
all of the possible troubleshooting short of climbing the pole and
messing with drop and tap. Side-note, I have a dedicated drop that
bypasses the box on the side of the house increasing signal. There is
no customer cable involved so they can't blame me for that. The drop
goes directly in my house with their wiring and directly into the
cable modem. And still off track, I'm in my 1st month of dealing with
trouble shooting my internet with them cause they refuse to admit it's
their fault. I had to call my counties cable commission. I've already
had literally at least 7 techs out which just take readings which to
them are "fine". Unfort. from an engineering viewpoint that means
nothing. I'm getting ranging errors and my modem reboots all the time
and cuts out. It's not just the signal that counts. It's the quality
of data coming over it that a meter can't see. So I get them to run a
"flap test" that runs on their headend (CMTS). look it up.., which
monitors my modem every time it flaps or has the ranging error etc
which means that every something seconds the modem requests to the
CMTS to negotiate the upstream power. what happens with me is it gets
to the point where it times out all the time and shuts down. They must
have spent 100s of dollars sending techs out when they could have sent
2 or 3 and escalated it to the point where all a network engineer does
is login to the cisco cmts and type in a command remotely! It will
keep track of all that stuff. Then they were supposed to get back to
me.... still waiting.. calling the cable commission again.
In closing, it has become clear to me that due to their negligence and
time wasted thus far, they'd rather drop a customer who signed up from
day 1 than proper escalation to the proper tech/engineer to resolve
the problem in a timely fashion saving them money and keeping a happy
customer (funny story I had major probs and they sent a network
engineer to my home..). What was even more infuriating was during the
time I was working with them to fix it I got a call from the "Customer
Loyalty Department" offering me a 2 year contract at a lower rate with
more speed (wait a min.. I cant even get MY service working as is!.)
So I called them back and they never returned the call. How's that for
Loyalty. I guess RCN called Merriam-Webster and redefined loyalty.
Followed by that I received 3-4 other automated sales msgs.
So yeah RCN is great if things are working but if something goes
wrong.. good luck and "thank you for being an RCN customer"
jerks
(above post is my experience and my opinion only.. yours may vary. if
it works for you, great! =)
</rant>
On Mar 1 2004, 7:54 pm, w_tom <w_t...@hotmail.com> wrote:
