[ale] An unnecessary outage

[Jim Kinney]

So storm took out your cable box? Spike down the  cable line burned the
internals which then spewed noise over the LAN.

Matt R is quite right that you will _HAVE_ to use the provided router due to
connection "secret handshake" stuff.

On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 11:01 AM, Michael B. Trausch <mike at trausch.us>wrote:

> So I just had a nearly 24 hour outage on my cable services.  The root
> cause?  Defective hardware: a condition existed on my home network that
> triggered the mandatory SMC network appliance (cable modem/router
> combination) to fail fantastically.  Something caused my Linksys
> wireless access point to go wonky.  This caused the SMC cable
> modem/router combination to just stop working.
>
> This tells me three things.
>
> #1, something is very wrong with the design of the SMC box.  It does not
> isolate trouble to a single port as it should.  Anything that does not
> comply with the Ethernet standard, or anything that is not functioning
> properly according to the Ethernet standard, should _not_ cause the box
> to lock up, drop its DOCSIS connections, and do nothing.
>
> #2, the internal switch on the device must be bridging the four external
> Ethernet ports together with an Ethernet port (virtual or otherwise)
> internal to the device that represents the DOCSIS side of the modem.
> This is probably why the failure of _ONE_ device on my network caused
> the whole thing to go "tango uniform".  I'd be willing to bet that the
> switch treats the USB port on the device as another Ethernet port, too,
> but that's neither here nor there.
>
> #3, the multiport bridge on the inside of the device, or the software
> that drives it, or some combination of both, are very poorly designed
> and/or buggy.  If I wanted troubles to propagate through my network I'd
> use a bloody stupid hub!
>
> I want this thing off my network.  I want it off my network five years ago.
>
> Does someone here know a great deal about the cable network?  I want to
> replace this.
>
> But in order to do so I need to understand a little more about how it
> works and how it gets my /28 to me.  Is it possible to do something like
> use wireshark with a dongle of some sort that attaches to the coax, and
> can look at the traffic on the coax?  Is it possible to buy a DOCSIS 3
> cable modem and clone the MAC address of another modem on the DOCSIS
> interface so that the cable company thinks that I'm still using the
> modem they gave me and won't just refuse to talk to my new cable modem
> (because AFAICT, "authentication" on the cable network consists of
> having the right MAC address).
>
> And why again is it that nobody seems to make DOCSIS 3 internal cable
> modems?  Why do I have to have yet another AC→DC converter brick just to
> power a stupid external one?  I really can't see an internal cable modem
> requiring more power than, say, a video card or maybe a couple of
> standard Ethernet cards.
>
>        --- Mike
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>



-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
I would rather stumble along in freedom than walk effortlessly in chains.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20110413/54227614/attachment.html