Airport Extreme / Motorola Surfboard 6141 Disconnecting

My AEX/ac works fine with the Surfboard 6141.

I had some initial problems when I first connected to Oceanic, but they were not because of problems between the 6141 and the AEX.

The 6141 has a DHCP server that will set up IP addresses so you can log on to it (192.168.0.1). It will also provide an address to the AEX. This is where the "problem" is, or more correctly, appears to be. We all know what we have to have a global address on the Internet side of the AEX and when that address is in the 192... range, something is wrong.

Well, it turns out that "something wrong" is the CMTS. The first time the cable modem is discovered it can take a very long time to negotiate settings with the CMTS, like over 30 minutes. Why? I really don't know. But this configuration is downloaded to the 6141 and if there is a power failure or the modem reboots, the configuration will have been saved so it will take less than a minute to come up the next time.

So, I've had my 6141 for about 3 months and I am quite satisfied with it compared to the Ubee that Oceanic had assigned to me. (They left the Ubee in place for VOIP). I still have cable modem reboots because of T3/T4 timeouts, but I don't believe that is the modems problem. Rather it is in the oceanic cabling or the CMTS. I have >100M download and >6M upload.

My cable connection can be up for a week, and then for unknown reasons, reboot as often as 4 times in a 20 minute period.

Anyway, the 6141 works fine with the 6th gen AEX

I have Comcast Xfinity, and the ARRIS SURFboard SB6141 as my modem. The modem automatically handles DHCP in the 192.168.100 range. I have a 6th Gen AE express connected to this. I also have a second 6th Gen AEX hooked up via LAN in bridge mode mainly to extend the wireless network in my house. The AEX that is hooked right to the modem is in DHCP and NAT mode in the 10.0.1 range, and the network works find 99% of the time. I tried to put both AEX's in bridge mode but the internet drops right out.

The problem I have is that the internet will go offline for 3-4 mins about once a day. I have longer outtages every week. I put a line monitor on a hardwired iMac and I can see when the internet goes down, but I don't know what precisely dropped. Since this is not Comcasts equipment they have been less than helpful.

Hello Bob

I have been following your posts over the past few years regarding the SB6141 modems and Airport Extreme routers and I was wondering if you could give me feedback on a possibly solution for my issue.

I have a SB6141 connected to a 6gen Airport Extreme. I am a Time Warner customer. All devices in home are connected via WiFi.

iMac, Acer Laptop, 3 iPads, 2 iPhones, and directv clients.

I had no issues until 10 days ago.

Internet keeps resetting every few minutes.

But this only is a issue when the iMac is used.

My wife works from home on the Acer Laptop with no issues until I log on to the iMac and surf the net. I watch the Airport Utilities drop and reconnect internet. I turn off iMac and issue goes away.

I tried to hardwire modem to laptop with Ethernet with no issues. I tries modem to iMac and very slow connection.

Do you thinks its the SB6141. Show I replace the SB6141 with a Zoom modem or something else

I am at a loss.

Thanks

Lucas:

I don't have a solution, but I can assure you that the problem is not the modem.

I had lots of problems with my Oceanic (Time-Warner) cable. I wasn't getting the bandwidth I was paying for, or the connection would be unreliable. I kept bugging Oceanic and they came out about 8 times to my place in one year. I kept telling them that the problem was somewhere between their head-end and the connection to my cable. They finally sent someone competent enough to locate the substandard connection on the pole. (Still a hard rain will [may?] cause problems in the cable between my modem and the head-end.)

I so wish my electric co-op had installed fiber to manage their smart meters. Kick those cable companies in the ....

You might consider looking at your modem's log. If there are a lot of T3 and T4 timeouts and a lot of corrected (and uncorrected) words, the problem is not on your side. Heck, if there are just a lot of log entries, it isn't your problem. Just keep telling the cable company that.

I've had the 6121 for over a year without an issue.

Oceanic (TWC) finally fixed their problem with my 6141. It worked great for a couple of months. When it started having problems again, I immediately called Oceanic and they sent out a tech, who told me, "Yeah, we found the problem in our cable just yesterday". Sure enough, my 6141 was working just fine.

HOWEVER, I'm on a "bonus plan" to get 300M from Oceanic. Although the 6141 is advertised as capable of that speed, it is not compatible with the TWC protocols and so is limited to 100M. I now have an SB6183 (which Oceanic recommends). It has been installed for a week now and I still have the initial boot sequence in the log file. IOW, this modem is "rock solid". Since the initial boot there is only one cat3 log and the uncorrected words is still below 500 on all channels with some still under 100. That was not the experience with the 6141.

Get a 6183.

I've a Motorola SB6121 that recently had wireless connection problems w/ my 2013 Time Capsule(tall version) which I can't explain-nothing in my configuration changed. I even swapped out my Motorola for my old Cisco modem, still the same problem. The wireless network was at full strength and I was able to join it, but Safari couldn't load pages. A spot in another thread(as well as other websites) solved this problem for me(so far): go to system preferences/network/advanced/TCP-IP/ then make sure configure IPv6 is set to link-local only. Then go to finder/applications/utilities/airport utility.app. Then click on the Time Capsule icon/edit/internet/internet options/then make sure IPv6 is set to link-local only. It's still working for me the last 48hrs. Hope this helps...

I have latest AirPort Express (running ver 7.7.3). Two weeks ago I would show my Internet connection was dropping. LAN was fine. Green light on AE. Apple replaced my AE under warranty and the problem continued. Thus far the only thing that is showing promise is turning OFF the 5GHz network. Connection has remained solid for a few hours at this point. Give it a try and post results.

Might be better to try the solution I posted first, becuz if it works he can keep his 5.8ghz network.

I reverted to 5GHz network ON and changed IPv6 settings to link-local in both locations. Within 5 minutes WAN connection dropped out for me. Going back to 5GHz OFF and will post again either when it drops or after a few days of solid activity.

I've been using a Motorola ARRIS 6141 on Cox with an old, flat 2011 Airport Extreme (APX) and haven't had a single problem in the five years I've used them together... until two weeks ago.

So recently, some of our devices started losing internet access. The light on the AirPort was green, the modem showed everything was online, and the laptops would continue working just fine – but AppleTV, iPhones, iPads, et al. would just suddenly not have internet access (even though Wifi was perfectly fine).

If I check Airport Utility on a device with internet access, it will show that the APX has internet (green light), but on devices that have lost internet access, the Airport Utility reported that the APX does NOT have internet access. Oddly, they are all still able to change settings, reboot, or otherwise interact with the APX. Even after a factory reset, the problems persisted and could only be fixed with a router restart.

Fed up with it, I assumed that the APX had just reached it's EOL and I ordered a brand new current-gen APX Time Capsule. Lo and behold, it's already having the same problem!

So whatever the problem is, it's not the Airport that's at fault. The thing that boggles my mind is how I could have gone so long without this problem popping up, only to have it come out of nowhere recently.

The solution I posted 2 months ago:

go to system preferences/network/advanced/TCP-IP/ then make sure configure IPv6 is set to link-local only. Then go to finder/applications/utilities/airport utility.app. Then click on the Time Capsule icon/edit/internet/internet options/then make sure IPv6 is set to link-local only. It's still working for me the last 2 months. Hope this helps...

Thanks, @semi-new, I'll give that a shot. Not sure how the first half of your instructions will help all the non-computer devices (TV, iPhone, iPad, et al) that don't have advanced network options, though.

For the record, I replaced the modem as well as with a new Netgear CM600 and it didn't make a bit of difference. Certain devices (usually the non-computers) lose internet access multiple times a day, all at once, until the Time Capsule is restarted. The only variables remaining are my ISP (Cox) and the fact that I'm still using an Apple router (albeit a very different one than my 2011 APX). The fact that this is a problem at all is absurd.

It's not anything w/ you, it's Cox, and they're well aware of it. If you search the forums, you'll see that it has to do w/ IPv6 rollout and Cox. It's all over the Cox forums as well. They're having a compatibility w/ Apple products/IPv6. I had the same problems(having to reboot Time capsule twice daily).

I have an airport extreme and a Motorola 6121 modem connected to Cox... I was having similar problems as everyone else and then lost all wireless internet access; although still had local network access. All the indicator lights on the devices checked out. After reading through this thread, I found something that worked for me. Using the Airport utility (accessed via iPad), I selected the airport extreme (Internet had a yellow dot to indicate non-connection) and then "Edit." Next, "Advanced." Then, "IPv6." On this window I changed the IPv6 mode to Tunnel. So, the top three options read: Configure IPv6: Automatically; IPv6 Mode: Tunnel; Block incoming IPv6 connections: toggle on. On the bottom, Allow Teredo tunnels: toggle off; Allow incoming IPSec authentication: toggle on. This produced an error status message that I selected ignore. Internet and network have been both rock solid and faster.