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Replaced Arris Modem and SW Download Failure

  • 2 September 2022
  • 5 replies
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nhraj700
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First off, sorry for the length of this post. I posted the question below on the Charter Spectrum Community a couple of days ago and two different Spectrum employees responded. At the bottom is Charter Spectrum’s response that I contact Arris. Hoping someone can help with the error messages.

Question to Charter Spectrum Community. 

Last Wednesday August 24, I replaced our outdated Arris SB6141 with a Arris SB6183. Our service has went from 100 Mbps to 200 Mbps over the last 4 months. The old SB6141 handled that upgrade fine. But then the announcement from Spectrum stating our service got 50% faster by an immediate 300 Mbps upgrade. The old "unsupported" SB6141 did not handle that, hence the upgrade of our modem to the Spectrum supported SB6183. This modem was also recommended by a Charter Spectrum technician last June. I used the activate[dot]Spectrum[dot]net page and all was successful. We now have 330 Mbps speeds.

My question is that on the Friday after our upgrade we are repeatedly seeing this message in the event logs. It happens once every day.

Fri Aug 26 02:32:02 2022 Error (4) SW Upgrade Failed Before Download - Server not Present

Fri Aug 26 02:31:31 2022 Notice (6) SW Download INIT - Via NMS

Response from Charter Spectrum

I did some digging around with info I obtained from your registration credentials and discovered your Arris SB6183 modem is a docsis 3.0 modem. It is a third party modem so I can't get into it but the software issue may be it trying to upgrade to docsis 3.1 (our new minimum for a while now) and not being able to do so. Or some sort of download the modem needs to function. We have been actively replacing docsis 3.0 modems everywhere we can and no longer have them as an install option. At some point they will stop working if they cannot upgrade to 3.1 or higher.

So next suggested steps would be to talk with the manufacturer of your modem to see if it will upgrade to docsis 3.1. I have a feeling that may be the cause of the message you are seeing. If not, Arris' customer support should be able to enlighten more on what is happening.

 

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Best answer by plemans 2 September 2022, 15:55

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5 replies

plemans
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Userlevel 6
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docsis 3.1 is a hardware change. A firmware update won’t upgrade it from docsis 3.0 to 3.1. Sorry. 

Is it causing issues? or are you just wondering what the error is about?

They do get firmware upgrades but it usually fixes vulnerabilities. If you’re worried about it, you could always try factory resetting the modem and reinstalling it. Maybe it’d update at that time.

Current setup: Netgear CM3000-->Netgear RBE973S-->2.5gig tp-link switch, Xfinity 1.4gig/240mbps
nhraj700
Rank

Is it causing issues? or are you just wondering what the error is about?

If you’re worried about it, you could always try factory resetting the modem and reinstalling it. Maybe it’d update at that time.

It isn’t causing any issues that I am aware of.  I am getting the new 300 Mbps baseline speed as advertised.  I am just wondering if that SW Download Failure is causing any issues like unpatched vulnerabilities or missing out on some sort of under-the-hood enhancements.

I took your suggestion and did a factory reset and I’ll see if it changes the SW Download tomorrow morning at 0200. At least the download time is fairly consistent.  Within 20 minutes of 0200 usually.

Thanks!

nhraj700
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Unfortunately @plemans the factory reset didn’t resolve the issue as shown below. I’ve searched for these event messages and there isn’t any information on them that I could find.  I wished someone had documented it somewhere. Does Arris monitor this community or give any help? Is there a way to contact them without some sort of support subscription? TIA

Sat Sep 03 01:48:21 2022 Error (4) SW Upgrade Failed Before Download - Server not Present
Sat Sep 03 01:47:50 2022 Notice (6) SW Download INIT - Via NMS
S
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Userlevel 5
Badge +41

Hello nhraj700,

 

First of all, thanks for bringing this to our attention. We really appreciate your feedback and questions that you may have. 

 

Plemans’ answer was very accurate, usually the event log are used by service providers to check if there’s any errors with the signal going to the device. I’d say that as long as your service is not interrupted and you get the right speed, there’s nothing wrong with both the service or the device itself. 

 

Regarding your question about the support, if your device is within warranty, you will get free support over the phone. As a reminder, our devices will have a 2 year warranty included. 

 

If you have more questions, please let us know.

 

 

SURFboard Community Moderator Team
nhraj700
Rank

Kind of between a rock and a hard place as Spectrum doesn’t want to help with this as it is a customer purchased cable modem. I tried to use Arris Customer/Technical support and that was a very frustrating experience as they didn’t know anything about that message.  They were just reading from a cue card. Thank you @arris.leadscr for the response.  I’ll just consider this matter closed with your answer.  As I said earlier, I just wanted to make sure a brand new device on my account is not missing out on some patch or something.  Thanks again.

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