Some chip makers have hidden latency and jitter issues from common tests

tl;dr: The Intel Puma 6 and Puma 7 chipsets have a performance issue in a part of the packet processing that is specific to TCP/IP, which went undetected for awhile because "ping" packets are not TCP/IP. Modems that use the affected chipset will have high jitter under load (especially load consisting of many short connections), and will suffer denial of service when sent traffic with many different port numbers. Additionally, under a previous firmware (but according to a commenter on https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/7fjvvt/hundreds_of_mi... not on the most recent firmware), a timed process would briefly block throughput every 2 seconds, adding to jitter issues. DSLReports has created a tool which checks for this at http://www.dslreports.com/tools/puma6 .

Judging by the picture on the main page, I thought it would be about them overheating and catching fire...

Until Intel released its Puma 6 chip Broadcom dominated the modem chip market. The Broadcom chip does not have latency or jitter issues.

As much as I hate them, Broadcom dominates the market because (as long as you don't ask for source code or Linux or datasheets...) their modems and other networking devices generally work. I'm guessing the cause of this jitter is because Intel is trying to do more in software vs. the dedicated hardware Broadcom uses.

The DoS on the "Security Issues" page is even more unusual, unless these modems are actually more than just modems and include a router/NAT too?

This is a bit of a rant, and a bit of an open question of "is there really nothing more I can do."

I'm more than a little furious that after being sold a product that explicitly fails under load, the best we have in terms of consumer protections is a class action that, if my history of class actions holds true, will accomplish little to nothing to either punish intel or compensate the consumers.

For the last year I've been putting up with network issues that I thought were a result of the house I moved into, when now I find out that the sb6190 I spent a silly amount of money on has been degrading an equally not-cheap internet plan for the entire time. And now my best approach is "deal with it, spend 200$ more."

Here's hoping consumers in the EU are more protected, for us in the US I don't have my fingers crossed.

Apparently this is about DOCSIS modems.

Not surprised to see a modem/router from Australia's biggest Telco on the list.

Australia's internet is in such a confusing state. At the moment a house could potentially get internet via one of ADSL1/2/2+, VDSL2+, HFC, Fiber, Wireless or satellite and on top of that most telcos are shipping woefully bad modems/router hardware with equally bad, gimped, and undersupported firmware to consumers.

That site does also have a forum topic discussing alternatives to the SB6190: http://badmodems.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5

would this show up under an IPERF3 test? I would think so but just curious if someone with one of these modems can check. Also curious if this shows up testing between switch ports on the modem or if it's just IP outside the NAT.

I’ll admit that I was initially confused by the link going to a picture of a burning modem, instead of an article. Stupid me. Just follow the navigation links on the left.

If anyone doesn't know, always avoid Motorola/Arris Modems. I remember a few years ago Arris tried to update my modem to add ipv6 support. Ended up having 2 months of constant issues where incoming connections to ports forwarded would cause the router to drop all outgoing packets until the incoming connection closed... 2 months later Comcast rolled back the update.