UPC pushing to 'upgrade' modem?

Pete67

Hi folks,

Over the last week or so I've received a letter and two phone calls from UPC encouraging me to upgrade my existing Scientific Atlanta modem to a Cisco EPC 3925 free of charge. I'm on the 30mb service. The sales guy was quite pushy. However he was unable to confirm that the Cisco was bridgeable so I could continue to use my own Vigor router. From what I've read it is bridgeable by design but UPC have elected to disable this function, therefore no public IP address will be available from the new modem. Anyone know why they are pushing this so called upgrade? I've no interest in moving to a faster service for the moment at least. I currently get up to three IP addresses from UPC, one for voip, one for general internet traffic, and one for a VPN tunnel I use occasionally for work. Is this what they are trying to prevent?

vibe666

i have a feeling they might be pushing everyone to use docsis 3 compatible hardware as there seems to be a lot of similar threads around at the moment.

it may well be a precursor to shutting down old equipment (akin to when the analogue mobile masts were turned off and digital tv etc. which is just around the corner).

it's in their interest to get everyone upgraded so they don't have anyone using the old kit when they decide to switch over.

i have the thompson router but i only use it as a modem. there's no bridging on it, but it does have a DMZ so i just have my linksys router in the DMZ and that's more or less the same as far as port forwarding etc. are concerned.

it's been working fine like that anyway ever since the 100mbps was launched.

ArthurG

Same as above - using the Thomson's DMZ with a Linksys E4200, and have been from day 1. Pretty much just forget the UPC modem is there.

Pete67

Thanks, does the Linksys get a public IP address in the DMZ, or is everything NAT'd to an internal address?

vibe666

it's still nat'd, but everything gets passed straight through to the nat address of your own router in the DMZ, so you don't really notice and port forwards etc. will effectively work as normal.

i'm not much of an online gamer so i can't comment on that front tho, maybe someone else can?

bk

It makes sense, it means the 20/25/30 customers can be spread more evenly across the 4 channels on DOCSIS 3 modems rather then just one channel on DOCSIS 2. This would reduce conked ruin and allow people to get the full speed more consistently.

Also it allows UPC to easily upgrade the speeds in future.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they do, putting a little distance between themselves and "upto" 24mb dsl and 3G products

vibe666

there was rumours that the 100mbps would be getting bumped to 200mbps at some stage this year as well, so if that is the case, it would make sense to have everything in place to upgrade everyone else to higher than docsis 2 speeds when the time comes as well.

who knows though really? although they have been putting a lot of effort into upgrading all their hardware to support docsis 3 and make the 100mbps available to any upc customer who wants it.

Pete67

I can understand the point of upgrading all the CPE to docsis 3, but why deliberately disable bridging? Come to think of it, why not offer a plain docsis 3 modem with gigabit ethernet to those who want it - without router, wifi etc?

jimmycrackcorm

Pete67 wrote: »

I can understand the point of upgrading all the CPE to docsis 3, but why deliberately disable bridging? Come to think of it, why not offer a plain docsis 3 modem with gigabit ethernet to those who want it - without router, wifi etc?

Because, from a business perspective it makes sense to restrict what you have to support.

Kensington

This is worrying
I'm on 25Mb and frankly, all I want UPC to provide me with is a single global IP and an ethernet bridge - let me do all my internal routing and WiFi-ing myself. One of the reasons stopping me considering upping the speed is the fact a new modem is needed.

@vibe666: How do you find the Thomson? Is it quite happy to stay up weeks on end for you or does it need to be power-cycled regularly?

Sponge Bob

Dana Strong is the CEO, write and get a proper Docsis 3 box off her not one of the cheapo crippled Cisco units.

vibe666

Kensington wrote: »

@vibe666: How do you find the Thomson? Is it quite happy to stay up weeks on end for you or does it need to be power-cycled regularly?

i haven't touched it (or my own router) since i plugged them in when we moved into the house in December last year.

that said, it says it has an uptime of 5 days odd, so it's possible upc have upgraded the firmware and restarted it at some stage recently, or something like that. maybe it just measures connection uptime, not the time it has been powered on?

ArthurG

Same, I haven't touched it since it was plugged in, back in September last year IIRC.

As for online gaming, I play a lot of MMOs (although been on something of a hiatus for the last few months for various reasons) and never had any problems - pings always very very good, and downloading WOW updates was always super fast (Rift used to max out the connection). Will let you know how things go when GW2 is released (for the love of GOD please hurry up with it )

Jonathan

Kensington wrote: »

This is worrying
I'm on 25Mb and frankly, all I want UPC to provide me with is a single global IP and an ethernet bridge - let me do all my internal routing and WiFi-ing myself. One of the reasons stopping me considering upping the speed is the fact a new modem is needed.

Still rockin' 25Mbps here too because I don't want to lose the Scientific Atlanta's bridge functionality...

Solair

I'd definitely say it's because they want to get rid of the older gear and move everyone over to EuroDOCSIS 3.0.

It makes sense from their point of view.

People should lobby them to provide whatever bridging capability is needed as there are perfectly good modems out there that should do it no problem.

bealtine

Solair wrote: »

I'd definitely say it's because they want to get rid of the older gear and move everyone over to EuroDOCSIS 3.0.

It makes sense from their point of view.

People should lobby them to provide whatever bridging capability is needed as there are perfectly good modems out there that should do it no problem.

It might make sense from their perspective but those modems they are supplying are crap from the customers perspective...

I had the early Cisco router and had to get a 2203 modem from them as the bug count with the modem was enormous so I for one am loathe to give up my 2203:) From what I've seen so far nothing much has changed

Ken bryan

Stick with the Alanta
I have have an the same a S Alanta .
I wont be changing as I get 19.7 down load on wi fi and 2mb up load on wi fi using a netgear router
I would get 100 meg but I dont want to change for a combo box .
My view is . If the are happy with the one you currently have why change it .
imo .

vibe666

I had the scientific atlanta modem and my own linksys e3000 router on the 30mbps and i upgraded to the 100mbps when it came out and they swapped out my old modem for the thompson router.

i disabled everything on the thompson and put my e3000 in the DMZ on it and everything has continued to work for me just the same as it did with my old scientific atlanta modem, with the only difference being that i now have 100mbps down and 7mbps up.

i was happy with the 30mbps, but now i have 100mbps for the same price and i'm a lot happier, so my view would be why wouldn't you upgrade?

dub45

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

Because, from a business perspective it makes sense to restrict what you have to support.

But to judge from the number of queries here they must get a significant number of queries about bridging? Many people have their own routers surely and wish to continue using them.

And not everyone knows about boards.ie!

giuseppeurso

Kensington wrote: »

This is worrying
I'm on 25Mb and frankly, all I want UPC to provide me with is a single global IP and an ethernet bridge - let me do all my internal routing and WiFi-ing myself. One of the reasons stopping me considering upping the speed is the fact a new modem is needed.

@vibe666: How do you find the Thomson? Is it quite happy to stay up weeks on end for you or does it need to be power-cycled regularly?

You can do this in a DIY way: just follow these instructions: How to enable bridged mode for epc3925 with hidden menu

ED E

The EPC is shocking, dont do it OP.

giuseppeurso

ED E wrote: »

The EPC is shocking, dont do it OP.

What do you mean? Is there something i should know?

rebeve

giuseppeurso wrote: »

What do you mean? Is there something i should know?

The Cisco 3925 is a piece of junk .No amount of changes to the settings will

improve the wifi signal .Bridging is not a problem .But you will not get a decent

wifi signal beyond 15 feet .You will have to buy a router ,because no amount

of CS calls will fix the piece of junk .You have been warned .:)

giuseppeurso

rebeve wrote: »

The Cisco 3925 is a piece of junk .No amount of changes to the settings will

improve the wifi signal .Bridging is not a problem .But you will not get a decent

wifi signal beyond 15 feet .You will have to buy a router ,because no amount

of CS calls will fix the piece of junk .You have been warned .:)

Well this is fine, it's just the default modem for new customers here. Any suggested replacement wich can actually use dd-wrt? i'm new here and to the "cable" technology (where i come from they use Asincronous Digital Subrsciber Lines a.k.a. ADSL vulgaris).

RangeR

giuseppeurso wrote: »

Well this is fine, it's just the default modem for new customers here. Any suggested replacement wich can actually use dd-wrt? i'm new here and to the "cable" technology (where i come from they use Asincronous Digital Subrsciber Lines a.k.a. ADSL vulgaris).

Fan Foopin Tabulous. Built to be modified [software].

ED E

Its wifi antenna is piss poor.

It likes to hold up packets when busy(if you have a few simultaneous connections http requests can be held back, doesnt QOS like it should).

Bridging is now allowed, but I'm not 100% sure that isnt related to problems myself and a few others are having.


OP keep what you have for now, when they cop that they should supply better gear, get that.

DECEiFER

(A bit of an old thread from last May dug up today, but in case this applies to anyone else currently, here's my two cents)

ED E is right. You could be lucky, like me, as I'm bridging my EPC3925 perfectly with a WNDR3700v1 without any hassles. But lots of people are lately reporting issues with the EPC3925 and it might be a coincidence and it might not be, but it received a firmware update around about the time the issues were being reported on a larger scale. Again, for whatever reason, I haven't been affected, but that doesn't mean you won't be.

So, if you're happy with your current modem, even though it's DOCSIS 2.0, and if it's giving you the speed you want, don't change and wait until UPC cop on and either fix the EPC3925's issues or move on to a better device.