Linksys Cable Modem Upgrade

I called my cable operator a short time back to change my bundled plan and discovered – much to my surprise – that I could move from 10MB download to 20 MB for less money. After thinking long and hard on this for all of half a second, I told the cable operator to ahead and provision my account for the new service.

After getting off the phone, I reset my cable modem – a Linksys BEFCMU10 – and restarted the network interface, ready to download at a blindingly fast 20 MB. I got on my favorite bandwidth testing site and found that I still topped out at 7.8 MB. I recycled and tried again with the same results.

I called the cable operator and asked whether or not the provisioning was completed. Oh yes, they assured me. So I checked the supported modem list and found that my Linksys was no longer supported. I asked if the DOCSYS version might be causing the problem, as my modem was 1.2 and upgradeable to 2.0, and they thought it might be – so I decided to contact Linksys for a new ROM.

First I checked their website for a ROM – nothing was available or even indicated I could update the ROM, even though the box and manual indicated it was upgradeable. So I sent an email to Linksys support asking for the instructions and got an immediate response. It indicated Linksys was not responding to support emails any longer, but did refer me to an online chat link – among other channels.

So I fired up Firefox on my Linux machine and pulled up the link – I got a blank screen area where the Java applet would have uploaded if I was running the 32 bit version of the OS that runs the proper JVM. I decided to call on a phone instead, and you’d probably guess at this point that the phone service in their support organization was on par with the email support – you’d be right.

So now I’m getting a little irritable and am checking the newsgroups and googling for upgrade experiences. Apparently, nobody has had a successful upgrade experience, they have only experienced severe frustration in their attempts to do so. If anything, Linksys has been consistent in their refusal to provide the firmware upgrades their packaging and literature imply to be available. Have these guys even heard of “Bring Your Own Modem” service? Who do they think is responsible for those modems?

So I decided to hunt down a windows machine and give the support group another chance on IE. What followed was a very painful discussion where the call center employee didn’t understand the difference between firmware (the software on the modem) and the driver (the software interfacing to the OS kernel. They ultimately refused to support the upgrade channel they documented in the user guide and continually insisted that the cable company was responsible for upgrading the firmware on the cable modem I purchased at Best Buy.

Linksys Support Call Log

They terminated the chat session without providing any viable options to upgrade the ROM or any hint of concern for providing customer service and I terminated my relationship with Linksys as they had pretty much proven to me that they do not stand behind the claims they put in their product literature. It was incredibly disappointing, considering some of the positive experiences I’ve had upgrading my Linksys wireless router’s firmware, which was very straightforward.

So back to Best Buy I went, reward certificates in hand, to get myself any cable modem that did NOT have the Linksys brand associated with it. I found a nice little Motorola cable modem for $5 more than the cost of the Linksys sitting next to it on the store shelf, but I figure “What the heck, support is worth the extra money if I can postpone a hardware upgrade a few more years.” When I got home, I called my cable company and switched the provisioning to the new DOCSYS 2.0 modem. I restarted the network and tried the bandwidth test again – 7.8 MB. Okay, this was not a DOCSYS issue.

When I had called the cable company earlier to provision the Linksys modem, they had suggested that I connect it to the computer through an ethernet port rather than through the USB port – but I refused as I wanted to keep the ethernet ports open for home networking. So I checked it out – I freed up an ethernet port and connected the cable modem through it. On running the test again I was happy to see that it was now 18.2 MB! On further investigation, I found that the cdc-ether driver for the kernel only supported uhci, which limited the bandwidth on the USB to 12 Mb as opposed to an ehci connection which would have allowed 480 Mb.

So now I’m running short an ethernet port, but 12 MB higher on Internet bandwidth – an acceptable compromise. Still, I am incredibly disappointed in Linksys and will never purchase a product from them again.