slickplaid

Alright, so this has been pretty eye opening ordeal. Just to recap: Ordered two routers to test. SB6141 and CM500-100NAS. I currently had the SB6183. SB6183 Old test with SB6183 for comparison: SB6141 Now, I had them activate the SB6141. I didn't say anything about the type of router or anything, they just asked for the MAC address and it was activated 2-3 minutes later. Here are the results: I asked them about it downgrading me, and the lady had no idea what I was talking about. She said my plan was correct and that router "just can't do the speed you have available". I didn't press any further because I'm sure what the outcome would have been unless I could trick one of them to accidentally enable the speeds it wasn't "rated" for in their system. CM500-100NAS I had them activate the new router and my first result was this: Nice! That's what I'm talking about. The lady said she had to do a few more things to my account to clean up, so she put me on hold again. I ran a few more speed tests after a minute or two: Wat. I asked her if she did anything and she said she was just doing some clean up operations of my account and tested my connection one more time. What the heck? Almost identical now to what the SB6183 was doing before. Long story short: Stayed on the phone for several hours tweaking things, even got a few other support members on the phone. All said everything looked good. Never got back to those initial results. They are sending someone out to look at the actual lines and diagnose it from my end Friday. I'll report back with more findings then. Anyone have any thoughts to how that could have happened?

So I've ordered the SB6141 and spoke with Time Warner about it after doing so. They've told me that when I switch to the SB6141, their system will not allow me to use the 300/20mbps "Ultimate" speed provisioning and I will be reverted down to the old 100/10mbps speeds and they will not be allowed to modify that to use the theoretical 300+mbps speed rated on the packaging. Something to do about network saturation and the amount of bonded channels (8 down instead of the needed 16). The guy was pretty nice and he seemed to know what he was talking about (3rd person I spoke to, I assume he was a higher level tech support than the norm). So, with that information, I've also purchased the CM500-100NAS, which despite it's product ID, does not contain a NAS controller or do anything but route those sweet packets down the cable. Once I receive the SB6141, I will hook it up and test what the person I spoke to said, and see what kind of speeds I get. If it does indeed bump me back down to 100/10, I'll switch it back until I receive the CM500-100NAS to test it as well. I'll report back when I have some of my findings once the mail gets delivered.

Okay, you've sold me. I just purchased it and I'll report back tomorrow after work with a side-by-side comparison.

@CA3LE, in your experience, will the SB6141 work with the 300/20 speed of DOCSIS 3.0? On Time Warner's site, the SB6141 is listed as being able to reach speeds "up to 100Mbps" (obviously from your post above, that isn't completely true). Would it be able to reach 300mbps download or should I look at some of the other rated 300mbps routers listed on their "approved list" of routers? The following are their approved list of ~300mbps approved routers: C6300 - $200 CM500-100NAS - $100 D3CM1604 - $100

Excellent response, thank you! I will see about getting the 6141 to see if it fixes the issue and report back. I've recently done a complete overhaul of my home office networking equipment because a Mikrotik router was giving me some huge problems (sub 10mbit speeds on 1gbps link negotiation) and just bought what I assumed was the best cable router available. Everything has been much better, but as always I'm looking for "best" not just "better", which prompted this query. I almost wonder if this is by design given how it ramps back when nearing the end of the file. I'll have to test it with a high speed VPN or something to see if the same traffic shaping pattern emerges when it can't detect the start and end of a transfer. Unfortuantely, I bought it on Amazon about 4 months ago, so I doubt any return method is viable for me at this point. I'll eat the cost

Does anyone have an explanation of what is going on with my speed tests? I've been noticing this lately that I have a high middle variance, and hitting my maximum speed takes a good 3-5 seconds, then it quickly drops back off after hitting it when it nears the end of the test. Is this considered a "good" test? Notice the "Middle" value is 100+mbps different from my final result, and the "maximum" speed is 180+mbps different. My question is: What causes this and is there anything on my end I can do differently to correct it? From TWC's own speed test: Locally on my office network, transferring between nodes instantly hits a max speed (1gbps minus TCP latency overhead, before anyone suggests that I expect to receive that kind of speed or latency remotely on these tests, I understand this relationship well and don't need to be reminded). Is there some sort of traffic shaping going on to slowly ramp up speeds on TWC's end or could there be something wrong on my end? Is it simply a router in my path to the source server seeing a longer connection and prioritizing it, outside of my control? Does anyone have good explanations for this if it's the norm? This even happens on TWC's own speed test, as it slowly ramps up to ~200-250mbps speeds over about 10-15 seconds. The drop off at the end is what is most interesting to me, although the slow "ramp up" to appreciable speeds is what I am affected by most. Smaller filesize downloads never even reach close to my max speed, I only hit them with the 200mb test file size. (ex. 100mb, 50mb, 25mb - Links to test results) My local network path looks like this: D-Link DGS-1024D 1gbps Switch Ubiquity EdgeRouter Lite Motorola SB6183 to Time Warner Cable 300/20 mpbs Cable Internet Thoughts? Suggestions? As far as I can tell my connection is good to TWC: