Service Electric Cablevision/Service Electric Cable TV Discussion

Jed1 · 2025-01-18T18:38:30+00:00

Hi, I'm picking up where we left off at DSL Reports. This thread is for anything Service Electric related. I even added the other division so this thread will cover all the Service Electric divisions. SECV is Hazleton, Sunbury, and Birdsboro and SECTV is Allentown, Wilkes Barre, and Phillipsburg NJ. Hopefully everybody from the old site will find their way here.

cypherstream

Was on a drive today and it seems all of this area has fiber taps, and the further north theres spools of fiber by existing OM6000 nodes.

This was visible from around Oley through Huffs Church area.

cypherstream

Apparently there's a big TV and Phone outage across the entire network.

Social media is going crazy. I think it's just Tivo, not QAM but I'm not in a place where I can confirm at the moment. The Alianza voice platform is also out. Internet sems fine.

Website Message 3/6/2025.
TV and Home Phone Service Outage

Update 11:30 am: We continue to experience an unexpected TV and home phone service outage due to a server issue. Our technical team is still actively working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.

There's even a posting on Fire Alerts of Berks county showing an SECV down detector map with outages all over the area and a blurb about not able to call 911.

cypherstream

I noticed around March 6th ALL of my smokeping graphs went from pretty solid to all over the place. This was for the default gateway brd cmts 10.71.0.1, and all sites past, both IPv4 and IPv6, including DNS probes.

Since opnsense was just updated and freshly booted to 25.1.3, I rebooted the modem. The latency is now back to normal. Note, signal levels were the same before and after the reboot. It was not in partial mode. I had the full 25×5 bonded channels with good levels and SNR.

Don’t know why this happens.

Also Comcast just upgraded speeds and it’s pretty compelling. All speeds now have 150mbps upload. The 1100mbps package now has 300mbps upload like the 2100mbps tier. Keep in mind they overprovision by 20% so you’ll get even more than advertised. Their latency in our area is a solid 30ms. While over TWICE that of SECV, it’s always consistent, vs my experience above. I wish SECV would retaliate with faster uploads.

zeroskatr512

cypherstream Haven’t noticed that issue pop up with the rental modem. In fact, I think they may have adjusted something on the back end as the modem hasn’t dropped OFDM in the past 17 days. Previusly I was rebooting 1-2 times a week to get my upload back.

Also I have an appointment with a tech to come survey the fiber upgrade.
I don’t expect any issues as I have a CAT6 cable pulled from my router to the garage for the ONT along with a recepticle. (where all the existing CATV conduit pops out of the ground ). I assume they will pull the coax out and fiber through the same conduit.

cypherstream

zeroskatr512 keep us posted on the fiber. What system are you off of?

The rented modem is free on the 1gbps plan, but my 20% annual discount expired so I might have to downgrade to 500mbps plan. Worst case maybe take Comcast for 1 year and then come back (would make the most financial sense). I haven’t called or chatted with them about it yet.

I could maybe take their modem for a little bit, then bring my SB8200 to work and plug it into Comcast and let it soak and firmware update… then bring it back home and downgrade to 500mbps with it. Maybe newer firmware will be more stable. A shame SECV doesn’t want to upgrade it. I’ve seen some S33’s not even be able to use OFDMA on SECV unless they “soak” on a Comcast line for a few days to pull a firmware update.

zeroskatr512

cypherstream Will do.
I’m in the new SECV fiber build for Boyertown.
Annoyingly, I was given the full business day time window of 8AM-5PM for the tech to show up for the survey (getting flash backs to that south park episode about cable companies). The past couple of times I had to interface with techs I think it was more like a 3-4h window.

Also you can renew the 20% annual contract if you aren’t trying to jump ship. Mine was up at the beginning of the month so I just renewed for another year.

Yes my S33 would not take the wider upload so I moved to their included modem.

cypherstream

zeroskatr512 Ok yeah I’ll see if I can get back on the contract. They peer directly with a datacenter my company is in so I get ultra low pings to our servers on our VPN (10ms).

Worst case I try their modem and plug my SB8200 to Comcast line at work for a week to soak and let it take in upgraded firmware.

I know Earl Twp was one of the first areas next to Oley where FTTH was deployed.

cypherstream

zeroskatr512 Ok I got back on 20% off 1gig plan. Wow they are just so nice there. What a complete 180 vs. Comcast. I deal with Comcast from time to time for work and its night and day. I know the Comcast introductory plans are really appealing, but I’d rather pay a little more for predictable (and lower) latency, local people/support and know as a paying customer my money isn’t just getting service, its being invested towards the FTTH rollout.

zeroskatr512

Initial survey is good and the tech sent notes back to dispatch to green light the install.
Basically they wanted to see how far away I was from the terminal on the pole, marked which port it would be, checked that the coax was free (I have underground from the pole), and I showed them where I want the fiber to come through to the garage. They said it should be a very easy install compared to some others they have visited.
Kind of a shame they couldn’t do it now, both guys had boom trucks but I guess this team was just handling surveys today.
Got an install appointment scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

cypherstream

zeroskatr512 Where they official SECV employees or a third party contractor working for them?

Looking forward to your review when you get lit up.

My whole neighborhood is underground utilities so its going to be a bit of work to get it run here. Not sure if they can reuse the conduit that the coax cable is in. In the aprons they have flush hand holes where the fiber is. In the yard is where the green pedestal is. The taller light green has the SECV tap and the shorter dark green has the Comcast tap. Inside both it looks like the coaxal feeder lines come out of conduit in the ground. Hope they can blow fiber through that same duct.

zeroskatr512

cypherstream These were SECV guys. One I had actually met before at my work when he was troubleshooting a cable modem issue there.
They are going to reuse the conduit my coax currently runs through. The one guy grabbed the cable out by the pole and made sure he could shake it back and forth all the way to the junction box at the house to confirm it wasn’t collapsed. Only have about 70ft of underground conduit so a pretty easy pull. I didn’t ask why they do for long runs like a development.

zeroskatr512

Fiber upgrade is complete. 1000 symmetric speed plan for $72/month w/ 12 month contract.
Just one guy today to do the install. He was a third party contractor for SECV so I guess they may be short staffed on techs trained up on fiber.
I didn’t shadow him the entire time as I had work emails to attent do, but I don’t believe he had to do any hot splicing. (I could be wrong). He pulled corning cable (kinda flat looking) from the pole to the new Deploy Reel box he mounted where the old coax box was. He split the black insulation on that about 18″ exposing the inner white core and that terminates into a SC connector (I think) at the bottom. Then he installed a 50ft pre terminate fiber reel in the box which you unwind as needed then lock into place. He fished routed that along the wall to where I wanted it to enter the garage and brought it into the wall box where I have my existing CAT6 terminated. I just need find an SC quick port coupler that fits my leviton wall plate.

At the inside wall box, he connected a 4-5ft SC patch cable, if you will, which then goes into the back of the ONT - Nokia XS-010X-Q. So I suppose I could get a longer patch cable and put the ONT wherever if I wanted.

Ping times:
1.1.1.1 - 5ms
8.8.8.8 - 12ms
9.9.9.9 - 8ms
broadbandbulletin.com - 18 ms

Here is a link to the deploy reel box. Pretty slick. [

cypherstream

That’s awesome! Great ping times, cool new way to manage the fiber slack at the side of the house.

Hope it’s super stable. I guess the Nokia just goes into your router of choice then? Nothing really to manage on the Nokia, in terms of settings, statistics, etc… just a signal converter? That’s XGS-PON with an ethernet port auto sensing up to 10gig. I know there was a press release saying they chose Nokia 25GPON, I wonder if that’s a phase 2 thing, or if it’s backwards comparable and only used for future speeds.

Edit: from google AI

Yes, XGS-PON is designed to be backward compatible with 25G PON, meaning they can co-exist on the same fiber infrastructure, facilitating smooth upgrades and incremental network capacity increases.
Here’s a more detailed explanation:
Coexistence and Compatibility:
XGS-PON and 25G PON can operate on the same optical distribution network (ODN) without requiring a complete overhaul of existing infrastructure.
Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM):
WDM allows different PON technologies to share the same fiber, enabling XGS-PON and 25G PON to coexist.
Simplified Upgrades:
The backward compatibility of XGS-PON with 25G PON allows for a smoother migration path, as operators can gradually upgrade their network capacity without needing to replace all the existing equipment.
Future-Proofing:
25G PON is designed to be a stepping stone towards future technologies like 50G PON, making it a valuable investment for operators looking to future-proof their networks.
25G PON can coexist with GPON and XGS-PON

Thanks for sharing, that was a quick install!

zeroskatr512

cypherstream I’m unsure how to access the webgui of the ONT. I didn’t dig very long into it, but the default 192.168.100.1 yields nothing. The cutsheet on the unit says it supports local webgui, but maybe SECV has it disabled or its a different IP. So right now its a mystery box with Power, PON, Alarm, & Data leds. The data led goes amber when it negotiates 2.5G connection (vs green with 1G). As long as it doesn’t give me issues, I guess i’m ok with that. Would be cool to see what kind of info it tracks, probably light signal levels. Wonder if the fiber side of the unit negotiates a full 10G connection regardless of the tier you are on.

I have a fanless “protectli clone” running proxmox virtualizing pfsense and an ubuntu server for various docker containers. I adjusted my limiters in pfsense to 960/960 which yields about +7 ms of ping under load. Going to try that for a while. I haven’t tried running a terminal ping from another client at the same time to check for packet loss. If I turn off the limiters, the ping does go up 40-60 ms under load.

Not sure if there are any cons of having an XGS-PON device for 10Gb or lower tiers. I think the tech said commercial accounts may get a different ONT. I guess I will find out when they upgrade the service at work. I see on the website they show 5 & 8Gb plans comming soon but nothing on the fiber rate card yet for pricing. That would be getting into some pricy networking equipment to take advantage of those speeds. [https://www.secv.com/ftth/]

cypherstream

I just saw in an ad for FastBridge fiber, the tech in the picture was mounting that exact same house box for the fiber slack reel.

fmd

zeroskatr512 Wonder if the fiber side of the unit negotiates a full 10G connection regardless of the tier you are on.

It does. There is only one signal rate, which all the ONTs must use, regardless of speed tier.

cypherstream

zeroskatr512 wow they updated the page. Blue Ridge cable offers 5 and 8 gig plans in their fiber areas. PTD.net powers them as well so makes sense.

That will be a one up on Comcast for sure. There’s no signs of docsis 4.0 nodes and amps in any of their new builds here so they can’t even touch 5 gig.

I have a Dell Optiplex 5070 running Proxmox with 32GB ram. Opnsense is my router on there with pci pass through to its own nic, and then I have some containers for other things like home assistant, speedtests, UniFi controller, smokeping, Imgur phone media backup, etc.

It’s a nice setup.

cypherstream

zeroskatr512 ohi forgot to ask, do you have ipv6 working?

On the docsis side in the last few months they finally got ipv6 up and running. LAN is set to track interface WAN and WAN is set to DHCPv6.

zeroskatr512

cypherstream I don’t have ipv6 working. I don’t beleive it was working on DOCSIS either. I thought it may be some complicated configuration I need to fix in proxmox, but I had tried connecting my desktop directly to the ONT but all I see what I believe is only a link local fe80:: address which I think is like the 169.254### on ipv4. Though I am completely unfamiliar with ipv6 and how to firewall that correctly. The whole proxmox/pfsense setup was more for fun and learn a little bit.

cypherstream

zeroskatr512 It was pretty recent ipv6 began working. It’s possible by the time they get to Exeter township where I live (could be years away yet), ipv6 will be fully working on the fiber side as well.

« Previous Page Next Page »