Clubhouse Cable Modem Update

2015-03-20_2For over a month now, the cable modem at the SEMARA clubhouse has been unstable, providing intermittent service.  Comcast technical support had previously informed us that the current SMC brand modem was outdated and needed to be replaced.  Marty-KA1YFV offered to disconnect the modem and bring it to the service center in New Bedford a couple weeks ago.  Unfortunately because we have a business account, they told him that they could not exchange it and a technician visit to the club was necessary.

On Thursday afternoon, Jeff-N1ZZN and Rick-W1RJC of the Technical Committee waited at the clubhouse for the scheduled appointment.  Our modem swap was completed around 5:30pm for a new Cisco DPC3939B, including the removal of a 15db attenuator which had been added without our knowledge at the utility pole tap.  A loose connection to the club’s TV adapter box may have been causing ingress, where stray RF might have been feeding back to the Comcast node.

After the technician left, Jeff and Rick realized that the node on both the 2m and 900 MHz repeater was not always sending and/or receiving internet packets on certain ports.  The club pays for 5 IP addresses and the modem is supposed to pass all traffic without any sort of port blocking or filtering, however that is not the case.  After consulting Tony-N1XRS who is an Advanced Technical Support representative at Comcast and spending another 4 hours at the clubhouse, a solution could not be found at this time.

While the internet connection at the club is now stable, there will be some intermittent issues with certain data not passing at times until this is figured out.  This may cause connections via IRLP and EchoLink on the 147.000 repeater and the connection via IRLP to NEAR-900 on the 927.8375 repeater to sometimes fail.

For wireless (Wi-Fi) users at the clubhouse, the legacy 2.4 GHz network is now called “SEMARA-2.4” .  If your device is 5 GHz capable, you will now see “SEMARA-5” as an available network.  Connecting to this one will provide you with better performance and security, since the 5 GHz band is a lot less crowded.  The Wi-Fi password itself remains the same as it is posted on the wall at the SEMARA clubhouse.  Finally, if you are a Comcast Xfinity customer, you will also notice an “xfinitywifi” network now available at SEMARA.  You may also use this network instead if you have your Xfinity account password.

Please note that the Wi-Fi information above might be subject to change in the event that we must switch out the modem once again to fix the current problem we are experiencing.  Due to time constrants, it may take a few weeks to figure out.  As always, we will keep you posted on SEMARA.org with links via the Facebook and Twitter feed.