DOCSIS and Cox

[Michael Lodman]

I recently purchased a Com21 Doxport 1110, a DOCSIS certified, @Home
level-2 approved modem. It was a very good buy.

Tonight I find out that this modem cannot be used on the San Diego Cox@Home
system particularly, as it is not on Cox's approved modem list even though
it is @Home approved.

This situation is unacceptable. Cox is a member of Cablelabs. If there is a
problem with DOCSIS certification, it should be addressed by Cox. @Home is
the network provider. If there is a problem with @Home Level-2 that should
be addressed.

In reality, you are choosing to allow an EXTREMELY small subset of the
available DOCSIS certified modems be used on the Cox San Diego network.
This is in direct contradiction with the purpose of DOCSIS and CableLabs to
begin with, namely, that a person who owns a modem in, say Atlanta, can
take that modem and use it in San Diego. The DOCSIS certification SERVES NO
OTHER PURPOSE. IF DOCSIS is pointless, why are people spending thousands to
get certified? Or is this merely another facade as in OpenCable?

Now, I want a GOOD reason as to why you are not supporting modems that have
been put through two rounds of certification directly for YOUR network, and
before you try to blow smoke at me, I have been designing cable modem chips
since 1993, and know the management at Terayon, Correlant, and Com21
personally.

I want to know why we have the farce of DOCSIS certification, and the
additional farce of @Home approval, if I still can't buy a compliant modem
at will.

http://www.com21.com/products/cable_modems/doxport/doxport1110.html

[Brian]

There is no technical reason for them not to authorize any brand of Docsis
modem; on their list or not. I work for Charter and we will provision any
Docsis modem a customer buys in our system. So far haven't got any types that
we have a problem with. I would ask to speal with an internet management person
there and find out why that policy is there. If you find out, let the rest of
us know. I'd be interested to hear it.

[Rick Spanbauer]

We will also provision any DOCSIS modem at Optimum Online. I want to point
out one logistics problem with thinking of DOCSIS as a commodity though. I
recently ran across a case where a customer came in with an
uncommon (only 2 of them on our system) modem that apparently was
interpreting our DOCSIS config file erroneously. The modem was effectively
off line, customer asking "what happened", and us left with the problem
of trying to contact the modem manufacturer for a fix. Of course, since
we "own" the firmware upgrade problem, in effect we're forced into
establishing multiple relationships with sometimes intransigent
manufacturers. So my advice to anyone, OOL customer or otherwise, is
to find out what modems your MSO is prepared to support, use one of those
units, ie if DOCSIS modems are in fact a commoditized products, you need
to consider other factors in selection, of which the support
relationship between your ISP/MSO and the modem manufacturer is one
of them. Rick Spanbauer (OOL)

Brian <bswi...@charter.net> wrote in news:3BB403CD...@charter.net: