Strange Messages from LL; Has Anyone Else Seen This?

I get those all the time on my Motorola cable modem. I usually get them when the cable co. changes their WAN address for my line (that always knocks me off of SL), and sometimes when they do routine maintenance checking on the lines. The ones from 1970 are actually ones that haven't happened yet; they're just placeholders for the error messages. Why they do it that way I don't know.

My cable company kept dumping me offline until I called them. They swore up and down that it was my computer (I could get cable on the TV but not the computer.) Turned out the original signal was so poor that it degraded in the 20 ft of cable that crossed the room; the cable company couldn't see my computer and vise versa. They had to come put an amplifier on the line, and now all is good. I never ran that diagnostics program that Ann did; would I have seen something close?

Here's my theory...

LL stores "inventory" across several databases (which speeds things up bunches).

They probably locked your account (and others) so they could do an emergency migration of residents from that inventory server onto another.

If you're online doing stuff while your Inventory data is moving between one server and another, you're not going to see anything... and are likely to lose any new inventory items you acquire. Better to have you locked out for a few minutes than risk that.

I suspect they used to do this only during the Wednesday downtimes, but they might not have had the option of waiting for the next downtime to move you. (Maybe they were splitting the # of users up... maybe the server was in danger of failing... who knows.)

Anyway, that's my guess.

(and to further confusal things... keep in mind that the inventory database doesn't actually store assets... it just stores proof of possession of assets, which are obviously stored in the asset server instead.)

Your cable modem like mine uses the unix time format for storing time. When the modem powers up (or reboots), the time is set to zero... which happens to be January 1, 1970. When it connects to the DHCP server it updates it's time, but first it has to negotiate a connection with the network.

The DHCP Warning is not a big deal, thats probably the log-server entry was excluded from the DHCP config message. I see that one all the time in my log.

Those other entries are a bad sign. Those messages are saying that critical steps in negotiating a connection to the network have failed. Does your modem have a page with signal and power level information?

What you should expect the cable guy to do:
* Check the power levels and frequencies available. There is a special handheld device they can screw into the line that will give them readouts.
* Check cable splitters you are using. Old ones can be not up to code or can go bad.
* Check cable grounding thingy, (no idea what the name is, just what it does) it may not be up to code. Most free standing building have them outside or where the cable comes into the building.
* Check external (outside the house) male and female cable ends to make sure they are sufficiently weather proof.

What you can do:
* Call the cable company, tell them your problem, then ask them how many other people on your node of the network are experiencing problems, ask them if they are located to the same street or building complex (then go door to door and find out which neighbors they are and have them call your cable company too). For comcast an outage is declared when 10% of customers can't connect. The cable company isn't stupid, just cheep.

Now I'm not an expert on this, there are some Cable Internet forums out there the specialize on the different ISPs, you will really be better suited getting on one of them.
Try:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/comcast

Could also try the official comcast forums. if you are using comcast that is.

@Oryx: If it was comcast you were dealing with, their diagnostic program is crap.