The Arris SB6190 Modem & Puma 6 Chipset Have Some Major Issues An electrical engineer and Cox broadband subscriber in our forums recently purchased the Arris SB6190, thinking it would be a notable upgrade from the Arris SB6183 and prepare him for the likely future launch of Cox gigabit broadband service in Arizona. The device, which features the Intel Puma 6 chipset, supports 32 x 8 channel bonding and is supposed to be relatively cutting edge -- at least among DOCSIS 3.0 devices.

Unfortunately for xymox1 , he discovered that this supposed upgrade is in fact a downgrade; one that results in notable connectivity issues and consistently severe latency spikes. The user, who has been charting home network performance for the better part of eight years, documented (left) just how well this new device performs. As in: it doesn't. "The problem is extreme and, frankly, horrific," notes the user. "Arris and Intel Puma6/MaxLinear traded off speed for latency thinking no one would notice. They tossed latency out the window to get 32 bonded channels of speed. They tossed users under the bus as no user is really gonna use 1 Gbps, but they will feel the latency and latency jitter in DNS lookups." In fact, the new modem appears to have doubled his latency before the first packet even leaves his house. The user contacted Cox, but even after ensuring the modem was running the latest firmware the problem persisted. Curious as to why this problem exists at all, the user opened the device and discovered that Arris appears to have replaced the Broadcom chipset common to the more recent Surfboard modems, with an Intel Puma 6 chipset. There appear to have been more than a few complaints about this particular chipset floating around the internet across North America, most of them regarding the same severe latency and jitter issues xymox1 has so carefully documented. Curiously, only some reviewers appear to have even noticed the device's performance issues. It's unclear why such a problem wasn't caught earlier by CableLabs during product certification. Whatever the cause, posts to our forum appear to indicate that Arris is aware of the problem and currently working on a firmware update. When that updated firmware will arrive in the wild isn't clear. There's plenty of additional detail in the There's plenty of additional detail in the full thread in our forums . We've reached out to Arris for comment and will post any additional insight we receive.







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Most recommended from 86 comments



xymox1

Premium Member

join:2008-05-20

Phoenix, AZ ARRIS SB8200

MikroTik CCR1036-8G-2S+

3 edits 12 recommendations xymox1 Premium Member Oopsie



First of all. Netdog, im sorry for the personal difficulties this has caused you. I cant imagine the intensity going on right now for you. Im truly personally sorry for causing this havoc. See my more in-depth post on the main thread. This also applies to all of Arris and Intel. I do want a fix, but lets not cause more harm and havoc to everybody involved.



I have 3 phone calls into Cablelabs in the last 2 days. They wont take my call. Im just leaving messages. I wont be specific about who ive emailed or called. Thats not fair to post specific people. Also they DO decide on what standards to create as a standards body I believe and i have read papers saying they think this is a issue worth testing for so I think Cablelabs is already on this. I think this story and more press to come will prompt them a bit more to get this done and into the 3.1 spec.



Arris. Arris makes exceptional products. From a engineering standpoint their boards and engineering are just flat impressive. Im a EE, I know what good board manufacturing and engineering look like. Arris is doing a stellar job. Look at the SB6183. For me its just wow. So im going to disagree with anyone that Arris is a bad company or has issues. Thats just simply BS. Look at Netdog here dealing with this havoc. Thats impressive that he is here. Put yourself in his shoes and think about how hard that must be at a time like this.



I think what happened leaves NO ONE to blame. I think NO ONE was testing for this. No one thought to. High temporal rate jitter testing ? Thats a test ? I might have kinda made it up myself. Its not normal. So maybe NO ONE knew. ? Now its a desperate scramble to fix a Issue no one had seen before.



So lets not just jump and start blaming people. Lets work the issue and move on to happy DOCSIS.



And can everybody please press the up-vote and get this comment up towards the top please Im sorry. I did not know the news story had comments going on.First of all. Netdog, im sorry for the personal difficulties this has caused you. I cant imagine the intensity going on right now for you. Im truly personally sorry for causing this havoc. See my more in-depth post on the main thread. This also applies to all of Arris and Intel. I do want a fix, but lets not cause more harm and havoc to everybody involved.I have 3 phone calls into Cablelabs in the last 2 days. They wont take my call. Im just leaving messages. I wont be specific about who ive emailed or called. Thats not fair to post specific people. Also they DO decide on what standards to create as a standards body I believe and i have read papers saying they think this is a issue worth testing for so I think Cablelabs is already on this. I think this story and more press to come will prompt them a bit more to get this done and into the 3.1 spec.Arris. Arris makes exceptional products. From a engineering standpoint their boards and engineering are just flat impressive. Im a EE, I know what good board manufacturing and engineering look like. Arris is doing a stellar job. Look at the SB6183. For me its just wow. So im going to disagree with anyone that Arris is a bad company or has issues. Thats just simply BS. Look at Netdog here dealing with this havoc. Thats impressive that he is here. Put yourself in his shoes and think about how hard that must be at a time like this.I think what happened leaves NO ONE to blame. I think NO ONE was testing for this. No one thought to. High temporal rate jitter testing ? Thats a test ? I might have kinda made it up myself. Its not normal. So maybe NO ONE knew. ? Now its a desperate scramble to fix a Issue no one had seen before.So lets not just jump and start blaming people. Lets work the issue and move on to happy DOCSIS.And can everybody please press the up-vote and get this comment up towards the top please

jbob

Reach Out and Touch Someone

Premium Member

join:2004-04-26

Little Rock, AR 12 recommendations jbob Premium Member CableLabs? It is interesting that Cablelabs themselves seem to have missed/overlooked this issue. Something that has not come up in the many discussions of the 6190 modem.

tshirt

Premium Member

join:2004-07-11

Snohomish, WA 5 recommendations tshirt Premium Member In a post in the Comcast Forum, NetDog said....

NetDog

When and what it will cost (in terms of blocked features or any lost processing power) has yet to be seen. ..."ARRIS\Intel is currently working on this issue, in the past is has been hard to reproduce but we have seem to have potentially captured the issue and working on a firmware fix ASAP"...NetDog formerly Comcast engineer, now with Arris and a longtime DSLR member is currently limited in what he can publicly say, but often being able to reproduce an issue/understanding the cause is half the journey to a fix.When and what it will cost (in terms of blocked features or any lost processing power) has yet to be seen. FlatWorld

join:2016-07-11

US 5 recommendations FlatWorld Member Intel Poor Performance Does Intel just produce horrible modem chipsets? The GSM iPhone 7/7 Plus utilize the Intel Modem and have worse performance than the Qualcomm counterpart.

maartena

Elmo

Premium Member

join:2002-05-10

Orange, CA 4 recommendations maartena Premium Member Arris lost its edge....



No, its not AS bad as the exploding Note7, but still.... When Arris was still Motorola they made quality modems. Then Arris bought Motorola's cable division in 2013.... The SB6183 and DB6190 are among the first modems that were completely designed by Arris without the Motorola legacy. And it's those two modems which have been having problems..... the 6183 with IPv6 not working right, it took em almost a year to get a working firmware and in the mean time IPv6 was just disabled, and now the 6190 which seems to have its own set of problems as described above....No, its not AS bad as the exploding Note7, but still....

Selenia

Gentoo Convert

Premium Member

join:2006-09-22

Fort Smith, AR 2 recommendations Selenia Premium Member Thank you DSLR I caught some of you guys posting about it on the forums well before this article appeared. The posts were very detailed about the problem and saved me a huge headache by making me reverse my decision of getting an SB6190 weeks ago to futureproof myself and optimize performance as I doubt my cable provider will have DOCSIS 3.1 anytime soon. They do however seem to be using 24 channels according to reports I've seen. Not sure if they intend to use 32. I have decided to stick with my SB6141 for a while. It still performs very well and exceeds the top speed of my internet package.