WARNING - do not buy Arris SB6190 or any Intel Puma 6 modems

timeshifter

timeshifter

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Amazon sold me another open box product. This time it was a cable modem. In the process of complaining about it on another forum someone mentioned this:

https://www.dslreports.com/shownews...-Puma-6-Chipset-Have-Some-Major-Issues-138411

tldr - SB6190 uses Intel chipset called Puma 6 (SB6183 uses Broadcom). There are latency flaws that slow down DNS lookups and have been shown to cause issues. Also a firmware bug that can be exploited. So far the best I can tell is that there is no true fix for the latency issue, even with new firmware. There is also a class action lawsuit.
 
That appears to be from 2016, is this still an issue with these 2 years later?

I can see how the latency could be a nonfixable issue, but that sounds like it's more a question of channel bonding, etc. rather than specific chipset. Question is, are there any other comparable modems that don't have the same kind of latency issues?
 
fencepost said:
That appears to be from 2016, is this still an issue with these 2 years later?
Click to expand...
Apparently a fix has been issued but I don't know how to tell if a particular modem has the fix. Only the ISP can do the update. There have been several serious exploitable bugs with this chipset too apparently.

Here's the latency tests:

ea1058b34755e25d7ad9e9840a9c4a8f.gif
 
fencepost said:
From the thread it seemed like the solution was pretty much "Stick with Broadcom"
Click to expand...
Yep. Except I just installed an SB6190 last week for a customer. It's too late for me to return it as I bought it at Best Buy several months ago. I think I'll return the SB6190 I just got and get an SB6183 that uses Broadcom.
 
I have the SB6190 and these are my results:

upload_2019-4-2_15-46-29.png

I have a 250Mbps pipe, but this was via WIFI so it's slower. Oh, this is also through an Untangle box running PIA VPN.
 
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