I made another post I’ve been dealing with severe evening connection issues for weeks (gaming is basically unusable most nights).

A technician came out, replaced the drop cable, added an upstream filter, and confirmed the nodes in the area are overloaded. He said other techs have been requesting a fix and that nearby streets are having the same problem, but nothing has been done. He submitted a maintenance referral. The technician has been great.

Today I got an update and they basically said they closed the ticket and said the intermittent issues are caused by high bandwidth usage on the node that feeds my house. Because the node hasn’t been upgraded to mid-split or full-duplex equipment yet, the problem won’t be fixed until that upgrade happens. They have no timeline and no master list of when specific nodes will be done. I’ll only get notified once the upgrade is actually scheduled.

So the ticket is closed, they acknowledge it’s a capacity/design issue on their end, and there’s no ETA.

Has anyone else dealt with this and actually gotten a node upgrade scheduled, or is “waiting phase” just the permanent answer? I almost want to try to find another provider in the meantime.

Hey All, I'm a recrtuiter in Denver having trouble finding someone for a Network Engineer III position. The biggest hold up is the lack of DOCIS experience for most of the folks out here. I'm posting the job description and payrate - if anyone is interested or knows a someone who might be please let me know. This is a 6-12 month contract,, don't shoot the messenger.

Location: Greenwood Village, CO

Pay: 55/hr (can be flexible)

Position Summary

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Network Engineer with a strong background in DOCSIS and fiber networks to join our team. This role focuses on designing, building, and implementing network solutions, with an emphasis on testing and validation of Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) and backend systems. The ideal candidate will have hands-on experience with cable modems, wireless devices, and automation tools, along with a passion for working with innovative networking technologies.

Key Responsibilities

• Perform testing and validation of CPE devices and associated backend systems to ensure optimal performance and reliability.
• Develop and execute test plans, document results, and troubleshoot issues in field escalations.
• Understand and work with provisioning protocols such as DOCSIS, TR-069, DHCP, DNS, IPv4, IPv6, and Static RIP across residential and SMB networks.
• Assist in firmware certification by identifying bugs and issues before software releases reach customers.
• Support the implementation of advanced network features, including FTTH, voice services, IP routing, IP multicast, streaming video, and home networking.
• Collaborate on automation efforts to improve testing efficiency, with a current automation environment targeting 80% coverage with plans to reach 90%.
• Engage with cable modems, wireless routers, PON ONU devices, CMTS to CPE interoperability, and automation test cases.
• Maintain technical knowledge of evolving standards and industry best practices in network provisioning and testing.
• Demonstrate enthusiasm and willingness to work directly with CPE devices and network systems.

Required Qualifications

• Minimum of 3 years of hands-on network engineering experience, preferably within a cable MSO or ISP environment.
• Proven experience with DOCSIS cabling, cable modems, or fiber networks (including PON or ONU).
• Strong understanding of network provisioning, troubleshooting, and firmware certification processes.
• Skilled in scripting languages such as Python or Perl.
• Experience testing with protocols like TR-069, IPv6, DHCP, DNS, IPv4, Static RIP, and IP multicast.
• Knowledge of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), voice over IP, and home networking technologies.
• Ability to work independently and effectively within a team environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Certification as a DOCSIS engineer or equivalent industry certification.
• Background in wireless testing, including 802.11 standards, mobile networking, or related wireless technologies.
• Familiarity with automation tools, databases, and system administration tasks.
• Passion for working with CPE devices and contributing to the development of innovative networking solutions.

https://preview.redd.it/my7ihab3x6kh1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=381cfe9282d8a47f4344218937c6b7e397378736

If you know what this program is Im hoping you can help me.

We just started using Xpertrak and this picture is of an apartment complex using a DAA node, mid split amps and has one upstream OFDM carrier enabled.

Xpertrak indicates that every modem on this node has an upstream impairment on the OFDM carrier. Every modem!

But not just THIS node. ANY node where we have a DAA, mid split and an upstream OFDM is failing. I don't know anything about this software, but I do know that seems improbable for all DAA's to have a real problem.

Im thinking this is a configuration problem, but of course, I have no access to the administrative side of Xpertrak.

Any ideas what this is or what to do about it?

i was wondering whats some tips/"hacks" you OG's might have on surving jobs in the winter or keeping moral up when the sun goes down so early.

A few weeks back, an app appeared on our phones- "ok alone"

It appears to track movement.

Today, I received a text message saying my ok alone app was ready to activate.

Wtf?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Are we really doing this invasion of privacy crap, and carrying this shit in to our homes?

Petty straight forward question. I’d appreciate answers. Trying to learn

Maybe it’s just my market and shop. But being ME I can “technically” work on anything that a van can work on. But these days it’s getting a little absurd. And I’m in a mid/large market.

Just feels like I’m a multitool. Esl comes in form cooperate, managed WiFi site down or having any random issue, Resi esl, epon cco (no one else can do it so I’m told), fdx (needs a CT5 so it seems). And metro e esl’s, but yet I’ve maybe installed 2 circuits in two months.

Haven’t hit my numbers in months because I don’t have enough actual non sro jobs to pad them.

I took the position because I wanted to do metro e, no raise and an Oncall week. Pretty dumb but ME is at least interesting and engaging. But in the past two months I’ve maybe installed two circuits. Used to be 5-10 a week. And now when an esl comes in for even a carrier acct, FTC doesn’t give two shits. Someone’s remote not having batteries trumps a carrier 10 gig being down bc TF’s. Used to get our routes cleared or at least tones down when one came in, good fucking luck now.

Now my life is every little thing that anyone higher up bitches about and I go. Or anything any tech says “they can’t do” (which is a load of shit, FDX is coax. It’s not special). But since I have all the fucking skill sets it’s me. And the jobs “can’t” move because other techs “can’t do it”.

I’m at my whit’s end with this shit. I’m sick of trying to get shit done, which sometimes takes a bit because engaging other departments is like pulling teeth, and then being told by FTC they can’t remove a Resi FDX because “no one has that skill set”. If you can run cable you got it. I’m trying to get engineering to do their job, it’s going to take a while. Or maybe I’m having to go blind into a VP esl that we don’t actually support because said VP doesn’t understand how the company works and spend 7 hours with a Eng from a different company yet it’s a company we own. And I still have a smb job that I’m 4 hours behind timeframe on cause FTC “can’t” move the job.

Sorry to rant and go on a bitch spree but either take me out of quota and negate my metrics, or route me like an actual tech, not some mutlitool you just send for anything “weird”. And don’t get me fucking started on FDX straight up killing mini’s and MDTA’s. Or really any advanced video. Q2IP’s have been the bane of my existence this year.

But is a this just me, or anyone else eating the shit sandwich?

I am not a cable tech, just a homeowner who has spent far too long staring at modem stats this week. I have Comcast gigabit service in a newly built townhome in Pennsylvania, and I am running my own Hitron CODA modem. What started all of this is packet loss in online games, which is what made me go looking at the modem in the first place. I have a technician scheduled for the 18th, and I would rather walk into that visit asking the right questions than waste it.

Here is the part I cannot make sense of. Everything below 460 MHz is completely clean, with ten consecutive channels sitting at exactly zero uncorrectables. Above that the errors start climbing, and they get ugly toward the top of the band.

393 through 459, ten channels: all zero

465: 926, 471: 908, 477: 61, 483: 345

489: 2,244, 495: 203, 507: 1,153

513: 6,227, 519: 14,259, 525: 3,685

531: 1,430, 537: 1,047, 543: 3,275

549: 12,042, 555: 39,378, 561: 56,764

567: 50,066, 573: 32,931, 579: 7,011

585: 1,480, 591: 5,574, 597: 7,000

OFDM, subcarrier 0 at 617.6: 1.23 million and still climbing

My levels look fine across the board. Downstream runs between -0.2 and -1.3 dBmV across all 32 channels, and SNR sits between 40.4 and 40.9 dB on every channel, including the badly damaged ones. Upstream is 37.8 to 38.5 dBmV across five ATDMA channels, and OFDMA upstream shows as disabled. The modem has been up for 24 hours. Before that it restarted on its own at around 6:15 PM on the 13th, which I confirmed from the uptime counter, and I did not power cycle it.

I should mention up front that I installed a forward path attenuator inline, because the drop was arriving at around +6 to +7 dBmV. The centered levels are therefore my doing rather than the line's. What I keep coming back to, though, is that the identical error pattern was present before I added that pad, when everything was running hot. Moving the level by 6 dB did nothing at all to how the errors are distributed.

Here is what I have already done. I replaced all of the interior coax, fittings and connectors, and I removed every splitter, so the modem now runs on a single home run to a sealed 3 GHz F-81 barrel at the wall. I have cleared the FEC counters several times and the errors always come back within the hour. I have also been polling the modem stats every 20 seconds, and right now the QAM channels have been completely quiet for three hours without a single new error, while the OFDM channel keeps accumulating them in bursts of anywhere from zero to about 900 per sample.

I have been reading through older threads here and on the Xfinity forums to see how people with similar numbers ended up resolving things, and a few patterns stood out. When the affected channels showed a power dip, it usually turned out to be something physical on the drop, such as water intrusion or a damaged cable. When the levels stayed flat and in spec, the way mine are, the resolutions I found more often pointed at the plant itself, including one case where the fix was an amplifier that had been running with its AGC turned off. I also saw several people describe ingress through a shield defect, along with the explanation that shielding effectiveness falls off as frequency rises. That would fit the fact that my clean and dirty boundary lands right about where UHF television starts. I have no idea whether any of that actually applies to my situation, which is exactly why I am asking here.

One other thing I noticed, and I genuinely do not know whether it is meaningful or whether I am just seeing shapes in the numbers. My modem reports subcarrier 0 of the OFDM channel at 617.6 MHz, which if I am reading it right means the channel starts there and runs upward from that point. That puts it directly on top of the 600 MHz LTE downlink band, which begins at 617 MHz. Meanwhile the QAM channels that took damage sit roughly between 465 and 597 MHz, which is UHF television territory. So the two regions getting hit both happen to line up with things that are broadcasting over the air, and the region sitting at zero does not.

A few things I am hoping for input on.

1. If this were your call, where would you start? With the levels sitting this flat, I genuinely do not know whether I should be looking at the drop, the tap, or something further back than that.
2. Does it mean anything that at the moment only the OFDM channel is taking hits, while all 32 QAM channels have sat at zero for three hours straight? Given that the OFDM channel appears to sit right on the 600 MHz LTE downlink, is that the kind of thing you would actually chase, or is it a coincidence people get too excited about?
3. Is there anything worth testing in the next four days, before he arrives? I am planning to run the modem straight off the ground block so I can rule out my interior wiring completely, but I am open to anything else that would genuinely narrow this down.
4. When he is actually here, what should I make sure he checks before he leaves, and how do I ask without overstepping? I am also curious what actually needs to happen for something like this to get written up for maintenance rather than closed out, because I would rather make that easy for him than argue about it on the day.

If there is something obvious in these numbers that I am walking straight past, please just tell me.

https://preview.redd.it/qebxz8ybrejh1.png?width=1576&format=png&auto=webp&s=4aba33e7a1d923ef96fba9f850caa6bda3a75f15

https://preview.redd.it/jcvv09ncrejh1.png?width=1598&format=png&auto=webp&s=086f8f8f2dbe25b4dffbca1d4e395fb34ae4af20

General question if nodes, amps, and line extenders generate heat? I was assuming they did as all of them have fins on the cases.

I was also wondering if there is any failure rates with them. Especially during the extreme heat we have been having?

Hello fellow Spectrum field friends!

I'm looking to transfer into Field Operations in the future and was hoping to get a head start on the NCTI material if possible.

I've made friends in both Field and Maintenance, and a few people have told me that, before they even transferred into Maintenance as FT, they were able to start the NCTI coursework right away and begin working toward their progression. I've also heard that some people start working through Field Tech NCTI material while they're still in the training class so they're already prepared for the next progression.

Since I'm currently a non-field employee, I'm wondering if I'm able to start the Field Technician NCTI coursework before actually applying/transferring into the position.

I was told by friends that I be able to access and work through the course material, but I wouldn't be able to take the official exam until I'm actually in the Field position. I was also told that I would just need to keep requesting extensions through the NCTI chat if necessary.

Does that sound correct? And no policy prohibited me from doing that..(Hopefully)

I'm mainly curious if anyone who transferred into Field from another Spectrum department has done something similar or anything related

I'd really appreciate any information or advice. Thanks!

I’ve been dealing with this for a long time (20 months) on Armstrong cable (1000/20 plan, currently measuring ~25 Mbps up). New dedicated drop and Hitron CODA-57 modem were installed July 25, 2026. Problems continued on the new line, so this should be past the house.

Main symptoms

• Intermittent ping spikes, jitter, and “network error” messages in multiple online games, during prime time 6-1am on weekends it gets the worse, here is an example screenshot, i literally have hundreds of these for evidence. The graph is just showing the first hop which is Armstrongs network

https://preview.redd.it/jmt1b2artzih1.png?width=2568&format=png&auto=webp&s=7503bac417198a09bb55d1eaa20ac991cbe95fd6

• I can make clear rhythmic latency spikes appear on demand by putting a steady 6–8 Mbps upstream load on the connection (OBS stream). This is only ~30-40% of available upload.

https://preview.redd.it/9jfw3htopzih1.png?width=427&format=png&auto=webp&s=ec8517fd83f04e3d61bdd3f1d4927530b6208ce1

• Same bitrate was fine for years on Armstrong (even on lower upload tiers) until these modem symptoms started

Pingplotter graphs of what it looks like when streaming, all graphs showing first hop

https://preview.redd.it/54pqxlwpqzih1.png?width=1898&format=png&auto=webp&s=0b2bd8f51be14de150af94639b528c3cab42ef0f

https://preview.redd.it/q6y3ps9rqzih1.png?width=1898&format=png&auto=webp&s=eee8a6945f22016868430f01cc6d1267b44d876f

Modem evidence (still present)

• Persistent deep spectrum void at 555–575 MHz (power drops to –45 to –60 dBmV). Confirmed with both wide scans and the 6 MHz spans the local supervisor requested (centers at 560/565/570/575).

span 200

• Notches / spikes in the ~700 MHz region that line up with channels 22 & 23 (705 & 711 MHz)

https://preview.redd.it/037gp0iqlzih1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=bbdb84cfedcf078db1803af400dcf4ce740c8625

https://preview.redd.it/93dowiaslzih1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=e3dd96c3494c3b9ce325d44679a9e156cb389b21

• Channels 22 & 23 accumilating thousands of uncorrectables while every other channel stayed at zero

https://preview.redd.it/nlhp6al3nzih1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=b2607307889f90ff776737bef70c40902bcaa260

• Upstream power sitting in the low-to-mid 50s (Port 2 currently ~51–52 dBmV) with a history of climbing and multiple RNG-RSP power warnings

https://preview.redd.it/29j5kdd5nzih1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=2543f0e26fe191ab68edc61b36e2be2d83eff1bf

• Clusters of T3 timeouts and “Unicast Maintenance Ranging attempted – No response – Retries exhausted” events (notable cluster on Aug 9)

https://preview.redd.it/k77xduo7nzih1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=cbf43c0a47e86e00a0cc138cf1590e77b378e4bb

https://preview.redd.it/twjtcwt8nzih1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=bff449a691bb08bb0fdb6074a89480d399cc1c24

What Armstrong has done / said

• New drop + dedicated modem installed (my pc is directly wired into modem)
• Local supervisor and NOC have repeatedly said remote checks and pings to the modem look clean
• They dismissed upstream power >48 dBmV as normal for this modem model
• They have done general level / CLI checks but have not (that I can confirm) done frequency-specific measurements on the void or the 705/711 region
• A “drive-by” / physical inspection of the tap and plant was supposed to happen; still waiting on actual results

The lead supervisor for local office says he has never looked at a modem log and was debating me on every evidence point. (channel 22 being secondary, spectrum void not valid because the span was set to 200 and 30 instead of 6mhz? power level is not that high, t3 timeouts "nothing to worry about") etc. checked the ping to modem while i was streaming and said it looks "perfect" so hes not seeing the spikes? Keeps insinuating the issues is on my end but we have done everything to rule out if the issue is in my home (4 different cables, 4 seperate modems, brand new drop line ran, tested on 3 different pc's, different power strips, even monitored my voltage on my pc incase power fluctuations) Im recording everything for evidence if i have to report to FCC. Here is the most recent call transcript i had with my local supervisor and what was said, used ai to transcribe so there will be errors https://pastebin.com/VYbqMG9v

My question to techs

Does this pattern (persistent spectrum void + notches on specific frequencies, history of channel-specific uncorrectables, elevated/climbing upstream power with warnings, T3s, and clear load-dependent upstream spikes that survive a new drop) look like a classic plant impairment that needs a real line sweep / frequency-specific check and physical inspection of the tap and plant past it? Or is there something else I should be looking at? I have been using AI to help me diagnose this issue and what to say to support and my local supervisor to get them to fix it. Can any tech here tell me what you suggest saying or doing to get this fixed?

Happy to provide more screenshots or clarify anything i have TONS of pingplotter graphs showing peak hours when not even streaming with very bad ping jitter and packet loss. Thanks for any insight.

*edit more info

They have been out here A TON before a tech installed a new separate drop line into the same tap. So right now i have this new line and new modem that is separate from other line and modem my family uses. We have swapped different modems on the other line my family uses multiple times but i think it was just back and forth between the ARRIS CM8200A and hitron coda-57 not sure if they have any other modems they carry, so right now im on the HITRON coda-57 and my family modem is an ARRIS CM8200A, both modems show identical errors (at least that's what AI said) Here is screenshots i took of that modem 2 weeks ago, it has a really long uptime compared to the other modem, i think there are a bunch of uncorrectables because of an outage (should i reset counter and see what i get after?) Here are the screenshots of that modem https://imgur.com/a/HaC83JR

Also they said they found some corrosion somewhere on the line and fixed it like over a month ago so i assume they inspected it all and just found that corrosion on the plant side. They inspected the wires for the old modem and redid some of that as well so im assuming they "fixed" all the obvious problems they found, so they either missed something when they did all that or the problem is further down the line on the plant side of things? All of the inspection has been more than a month ago.

I had construction renovation done on a house, siding redone on the house that had coax cable into it. It had an old rotted PVC holding up the coax from the pole. I don’t want to reattach it and want to replace with something less obvious like a metal hangar I have seen cable/fiber companies use on new services. Anyone know where I can get the hangars?

I'm hoping the community can help me. Residential DOCSIS 3.1 (Hitron CODA-57), self-hosted monitoring polling the modem's status page every 5 min into a time-series DB, so I've got a week's worth of channel-level data to look at. Mid-Atlantic US, humid subtropical climate and its been HOT if that's relevant. I've had this provider about 2 years and reliability has been mediocre — a couple times a week I have to power-cycle the modem to get throughput back to normal (~1.5 Gbps down / 50 Mbps up on this tier). When I call tech support, they would just have me power cycle, which led me to this effort to determine what was actually happening. Previous provider was rock-solid over several years — don't recall ever needing to power cycle — but cost roughly double for less bandwidth.

The pattern: downstream power drops uniformly across all 32 channels (OFDM + QAM) roughly noon–2PM local every single day, then recovers by evening. Checked against 7 days of hourly temperature data from the nearest airport station — it tracks almost exactly: power bottoms out within an hour of the daily temp peak, recovers as it cools. Swing is about +0.5 dBmV (early morning, coolest part of day) down to about -3.3 dBmV (afternoon peak heat). Reads like textbook coax thermal attenuation to me, and it's uniform across every channel, not isolated to one — so my working assumption is it's an outdoor plant effect, not a bad channel/connector on its own.

Outside Temp (Degree F) vs Cable Modem Downstream Power (dBmW)

Update: Here's a graphic that shows the correlation between temp and power. The blank spots are where the management interface crashed.

What's making me second-guess "just normal thermal drift":

- SNR barely moves during the same window (~39.2dB down to ~38.5dB) — nowhere near a spec floor.

- Downstream power itself never gets remotely close to spec limits even at the daily low point.

- Upstream power rises in the same window (~45.2 to ~46.4 dBmV) — so the modem's own power-control loop is clearly reacting to something real on the whole path, not just a downstream quirk.

This isn't purely academic — some of these T3 clusters have coincided with real throughput/packet-loss degradation, and the management interface has crashed outright a few times, neither recovering without a manual power cycle.

Raw event log examples (MACs redacted):

- T3 timeout — dominant type, 71 of 81 critical entries over 10 days: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:02;CMTS-MAC=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:22;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1;

- T4 timeout — only 1 occurrence in the whole 10-day window (2026-08-09 02:22:42 UTC): Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Unicast Maintenance opportunities received - T4 time out;CM-MAC=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:02;CMTS-MAC=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:22;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1;

- Short-form T3 (no MAC suffix) — 4 occurrences, all clustered ~05:56 local on 2026-08-07, right after that night's reboot — likely a logging artifact from the modem not yet having repopulated CM-MAC/CMTS-MAC post-reboot, not 4 independent events: No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out

So: 88% of critical events are T3 (no ranging response from the CMTS), essentially none are T4. Absolute downstream signal levels look healthy at every snapshot, but something isn't tolerating the transition well. When I pulled 10 days of critical events (72 matched against 5-min power data) and compared them against the modem's rate-of-change in power at that moment vs. a full-dataset baseline: 78% of critical events happened while power was actively changing (either direction) above the median rate-of-change, vs. 50% you'd expect if it were unrelated. That's a moderate, repeatable skew (P≈0.63 that a random event-moment has higher volatility than a random baseline moment) — real, but not absolute; roughly a fifth of events still happen during stable stretches, so I'm treating this as a contributing factor, not a proven mechanism.

My best guess is either (a) a connector/splice/amp somewhere in the drop or upstream return path with slightly degraded contact or reflection behavior that only shows up during temperature-driven mechanical movement, or (b) the modem's own ranging/equalization being sluggish specifically while conditions are actively moving, rather than at any fixed level.

Anyone seen this specific signature before — power/SNR fine in isolation, almost all T3 rather than T4, but fault rate tracking rate-of-change rather than absolute level? What would you check first in the field (F-connectors, ground block, a specific amp stage, the return path specifically given the T3-heavy pattern), and is this worth pushing on with the ISP, or does it sound more like a modem swap is the right first move to rule that variable out?