That has been my experience as well (only from the RF side) and I would believe this was a design choice. The ISP usually wants to keep control over the firmware versions of the CM for various technical/support reasons versus having consumers mess with the firmware. Paul On Wednesday, January 28, 2015 8:11 PM, A MEKKAOUI wrote:

Anyone knows how to upgrade Motorola SB6120 cable modem firmware other than going through the internet provider? Your help will be appreciated.

My employer managed a handful of small DOCSIS networks for a while where 99% of the modems were Motorola, and as far as I know, there is no way to push a firmware update to the modem from the ethernet side...only from the RF side.

Sam, The most common approach from the MSOs is to take one of two paths. Either simply not allow non-approved devices to come online, this is common from the larger MSOs, or to simply not try and update the firmware for unfamiliar devices, this is common for smaller operators. It's very unusual for a MSO to work with an unapproved vendor simply because they almost never have enough of their own customers using those devices to make the effort worthwhile *and *most of the direct to consumer vendors stop producing firmware updates on a much quicker pace than service provider gear vendors do. A direct to consumer device will often get <3 firmware updates total, while the devices sold to/through service providers are supported for much longer and I can commonly get firmware updates for devices that are 8+ years old. Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms -------------------------------- On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 9:56 PM, Sam Hayes Merritt, III <sam@themerritts.org

wrote:

That has been my experience as well (only from the RF side) and I would

...

believe this was a design choice. The ISP usually wants to keep control over the firmware versions of the CM for various technical/support reasons versus having consumers mess with the firmware.

Its a design choice but not one that always works out well.

Customers that bring their own modems that aren't on a "certified" list, end up with a device that the provider may not have ever seen. Then, if you run into an issue with the modem that can be fixed with a firmware issue (some vendors have issues that they cannot fix - rhymes with netgear) then the MSO has to work with the maker of that modem, even though they may have never had any interactions with them, get the certificate and firmware for that modem and upgrade customer owned devices - possibly turning them into bricks. I'd rather allow customers to turn their own modems into bricks.

sam

That brings back memories of some unidentified folks getting much higher speeds and other features they may errr umm not been paying for ;) I miss my LanCity cablemodem - it made a great spaceheater in the winters..... -----Original Message----- From: Rob Seastrom [mailto:rs@seastrom.com] Sent: Friday, January 30, 2015 6:49 AM To: Paul Stewart Cc: 'Nathan Anderson'; 'A MEKKAOUI'; nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: cable modem firmware upgrade "Paul Stewart" <paul@paulstewart.org> writes:

That has been my experience as well (only from the RF side) and I would believe this was a design choice. The ISP usually wants to keep control over the firmware versions of the CM for various technical/support reasons versus having consumers mess with the firmware.

15 years ago, in certain circles it was well-understood how to load one's own (possibly patched) software from the Ethernet side on the old LanCity (pre-DOCSIS) cablemodems. You can imagine what kind of hilarity ensued. -r