SG Broadband Community

Hello
Any insight on what might be causing this greatly appreciated. We have a marginal connection with Time-Warner Cable. We are paying for 20 mbps down/ 1mbps up and generally DO have that bandwidth - the problem is that nearly every single night right around midnight (it's what prompted me to write this) , my Surfboard modem drops the TWC "signal" and stops getting a routable IP from Time-Warner.

Usually - I can re-boot the modem and it will be OK again.
Sometimes - I can get the same result by releasing the lease and renewing it (from my router) - without having to re-boot the router.

There are other times (not at midnight daily) that we get extended outages... Time-Warner says 'no such thing - no outage in your area.
Signal strength at the modem is typically-2 dBmV to -2dbmV. A local TWC guys tells me "that's terrible" while another one tells me "that's within spec".

Honestly - I'm a TCP/IP networking guy - but I know very little about cable modems and broadband services and the like. I know how to analyze typical network issues on a TCP/IP LAN.
I can't even figure out how to to tweak anything in the Modem - there must be a way in that does not include an HTTP connection - because the "Surfboard" pages are read-only. They're all showing me the settings/performance, but there's mo way to edit anything from there.

Any insight appreciated. I'm getting sick and tired of the nightly outages, It's right around "bed time" and so I wind up listening to "Coast to Coast AM" all night using my cellular data, because my TWC connex is typically out when it comes on.
Many thanks in advance!
Moucon (Mountain Consulting)

Generally, cable modem signal level should be between -15db and +15 db for it to work at all... -8db to +8db is better. The closer it is to zero, the better it is.

Could it be your router that's locking up and the reason for dropped connections ? You may want to try bypassing it for a day or two to test. I would also keep the modem and router a couple of feet apart, and away from any possible sources of EMI (most of them are not shielded well, you'd be amazed at the difference sometimes). It is normal for modems to have read-only status information, as they get their firmware/setup from the headend, it's part of the whole technology.

As for the midnight drops... You should probably do some testing when the connection goes down:

Can you ping the modem's internal IP (192.168.100.1 is typical for Surfboards) ? What about the IP of the router ? What about a traceroute to an IP (not a hostname) past that on the internet ?

Strange issue indeed. What time does the dhcp lease from time warner expire? Is it around midnight?