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Why two cable TV outages within 2 hours yesterday?
Cable TV outage twice yesterday (July16). The first time was just before 3:30 pm. A blank black screen all channels. A re-boot of the box was successful. About 2 hours later it went out again. This time it was static (snow) all channels. Had to re-boot again. A call to Spectrum said it was weather-related, but at the time there were no storms or even rain at my location. Also why a blank screen one time and static the other?
Answers
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There is a little thing about Spectrum that many people don't know about. That is overnight maintenance and service equipment updates, which generally occur anytime between 12:00am-6:00am. A time that for years, Spectrum (and other providers ) classify as the times with the lowest leadership. However, any day is fair game.
Spectrum will typically do these updates on Tuesday morning any time after midnight. Boxes, modems, and routers, may reboot automatically during the night. Possibly several times. Customers manually rebooting the equipment won't help, because these are system and network, maintenance updates. Next time you see this, during this time frame window, don't reboot anything, it could mess something up, especially if an update is going through to the equipment. More and more, the boxes, Internet services, and phone services are all interconnected with each other. Leave the equipment alone until say 6am the next day.
If there are issues after 6am, only than should you reboot. This brings up another issue, if you are going away for an extended period of time, like on vacation, don't unplug your equipment, especially the cable boxes. If a cable boxes misses too many security updates over say 30- 60 days, it will cease to function. This is why a small amount of power is always there even when a Smart TV/ cable box is off during the night. Updates are needed from time to time to maintain system and network performance.
Satch
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@deedleann824:
If you haven't already done this, log on and set up Service Notifications for your account here (scroll down the page) . "Manage how you receive important service-related messages like appointment reminders and outage alerts".
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I have signed up for service notifications, but sometimes I am not alerted. When I called, a recorded message did not indicate there was a upgrade in progress. It said there were outages due to weather conditions. I was questioning that if service was out, the box wouldn't have re-booted.
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I have signed up for service notifications, but sometimes I am not alerted. When I called, a recorded message did not indicate there was a upgrade in progress. It said there were outages due to weather conditions. I was questioning that if service was out, the box wouldn't have re-booted.
Note,
It takes three people in a node to contact Spectrum about an issue in order to escalate that issue. Six or more triggers automatic dispatch. This system is used as a protective measure so that people who are calling have not overlooked the basic troubleshooting steps. (Is TV plugged in? Have you rebooted equipment?)
There can be different levels of outage, Outages can mean that there is still power, but no connectivity. Or equipment can be totally shut down.
Outages and system upgrades will often result in automatic equipment reboots, which are needed to install the updates. Especially during Spectrum's 12:00am-6am maintenance window.
Satch
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