I don't have the new XB7 but I have never found it necessary to proactively reboot my XB6 gateway to maintain stability. My XB6 has run for weeks or months without any issues whatsoever. On rare occasions, you might need to reboot to reset network connectivity if Rogers' overnight maintenance activities should ever cause problems for you in the morning, but that's about it. When I do reboot, I typically do it by power-cycling the XB6 gateway.
@help4me wrote:
Thank you for the reply. I see that you can also do a soft reset of the modem instead of doing a power on/off. Is doing the soft reset any value?
Power cycling also resets the hardware. If you are rebooting just for good luck, it probably does not make any difference.
I'm asking about reboots because I recently had a technician service call and a day later I happened to be speaking to Rogers Support on the phone and the rep told me the technician should have done a modem reboot at the end of his servicing (he didn't). I remember in "older days" doing a hardware reboot was a good thing to clear out issues.
I don't know why you were calling support or why the Rogers support tech felt that a reset should have been done. (I would have done a reboot after a new install just to make sure that everything still worked afterward, so I don't disagree with what you were told.)
I will give you a specific example of why I have had to reboot my gateway in the past: One morning, I noticed that channel changes did not occur instantaneously; they took a few seconds, which was rather unusual. I also had some IPv6 connectivity issues with other devices on my network. (What probably happened was that Rogers did some work in my corner of their network and their routers "forgot" the IPv6 prefix that they had delegated to me, and basically stopped routing my IPv6 packets back to my gateway which broke my IPv6 connectivity.)
With Digital TV, if your set-top box ever starts acting strangely, you reboot the STB and things (hopefully) go back to normal. With Ignite TV, the software in the set-top boxes is actually pretty stable. However, if your network connectivity ever gets broken, that can certainly cause problems for Ignite TV. Rebooting the Ignite set-top box won't fix the glitch if it is caused by a network connectivity problem. In this case you need to reboot the Ignite gateway just to get it to reconnect to the network and restore network connectivity, and you may need to reboot your set-top boxes if they do not reconnect to Wi-Fi. After that reboot, everything worked fine afterward, and continued to for months.
These sorts of issues only happen once in a blue moon, and you should not have to reboot equipment as a preventative measure, nor would rebooting have prevented that specific issue from happening.
If things are running fine, I would let them keep running fine until they don't. If it gives you inner peace to reboot your equipment on a regular basis, go for it. Really, the choice is yours... but it technically should not be necessary as a prescriptive or preventative measure.
More food for thought: This was an anomaly, but the XB6 once had a software bug where rebooting it, with bridge mode enabled, CAUSED problems; the Internet connection would start slowing down afterward. If you had left it alone, it would have continued to run fine. I'm only saying this just to support my point that is is not always helpful to reboot.
@help4me wrote:
The rep told me that the technician should have had me reboot the modem after the servicing but he didn't. This in turn made me wonder if rebooting the modem on some sort of ongoing basis is a good preventive measure.
Rogers probably made some provisioning changes that would have required a modem reboot to take effect.
You should not have to reboot a modem. It should run and remain stable and you shouldn't have think about a reboot. The real indicator of potential problems should be confirmed with ethernet connected pc's or laptops, with a pc being the first choice. Wifi is another issue altogether. I'm referring specifically to slow data rates and latency issues as seen with an ethernet connected device.
Now, having said that, I've always found that a reboot after a version update for the Hitron modems was usually a way to ensure that the modem performed as it should. There is a reboot scheduled into the version update, but, I've always found that another reboot was necessary. And if that didn't work, I'd run a factory reset. Remember, I'm referring specifically to the Hitron modems, not the Arris or Technicolor modems, although the XB6 (Arris TG-3482ER) is a Puma 7 modem, same as the Hitron CODA-4582 modem. Only real difference is the telephone capability built into the Arris version.
If you find that you're having to continually reboot the modem to get the performance back to where it should be, that implies one of two things:
1. That there is a memory leak in a process that the modem uses. End result, the modem eventually runs out of available memory. That should be caught in pre-release testing at the modem manufacturer. Operative word is "should".
2. You have an external cable and/or connector issue. This is more likely the cause of performance drop-off. A modem reboot will temporarily return the modem to its normal operating performance, unless of course the external cable/connectors is dead, or just about. Usually in a case like this, the downstream signal levels drop and the upstream levels increase in order to make up for the signal losses thru the external cable/connectors. That can be easily seen in the QAM downstream channels (1 to 32) and the 3 or 4 upstream channels.
The problem these days is that the newer modems are running Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiples (OFDM) channels in both directions, which are the main data carriers for the modems. This includes the Hitron CODA-4582, the XB6 and XB7 modems. The data presented to the user is just about non-existent for the OFDM (downstream) and OFDMA (upstream) channels, so, the user doesn't have enough information to determine the signal levels of the OFDM and OFDMA channels. The front line tech support staff only have rudimentary data for the OFDM and OFDMA channels, so, I question their ability to really determine if there is an issue with the OFDM or OFDMA channels which is caused by degraded external cabling or connectors. That puts the onus on the field techs to determine if the cable system is performing as it should, and, unfortunately, a good number of contractor techs are only interested in swapping a connector or two in order to finish the job and move onto the next appointment. Not trying to slag the techs, but, this seems to be a common practice. Swap the connectors without really looking at cable performance. End result, it takes multiple tech visits before the cable is finally swapped out and the system performance returns to where it should be. There is always the possibility of problems further upstream between the local tap (pedestal or utility pole mounted) and the neighbourhood node. Those types of problems are beyond the capability and responsibility of contractor techs, but, the problems should be identified and referred to Senior Techs (real Rogers Techs) or a maintenance crew.
Hope that provides some pertinent info. You shouldn't have to reboot the modem. But if you do, and you've already had a tech visit, then another tech visit is in order. Keep in mind what I pointed to at the top of this post, I'm referring to problems with slow data rates and latency issues as seen with an ethernet connected device, which you can usually identify thru a speed test and trace.
Also keep in mind, the pandemic loading on neighbourhood cable systems. Not trying to give Rogers a pass here, but, data loads have increased by large amount for all cable system operators. Rogers indicated a 50% increase in network traffic last year, so, that's going to be a continuing problem for the foreseeable future. The Comcast numbers in the second link are rather interesting to see:
http://www.broadbandworldnews.com/author.asp?section_id=472&doc_id=759088
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