If you own or lease a Motorola/Arris SurfBoard 5100, 6121, or 6141 cable modem, security researchers have uncovered an annoying vulnerability that could expose you to a denial of service attack.

David Longenecker first discovered the flaw with the world’s most popular cable modem — the SB-6141, a highly recommended DOCSIS 3 model. The firmware does not password protect access to the cable modem’s configuration menu, accessible by visiting 192.168.100.1 in a web browser.

In addition to technical information about the modem and the cable system’s current cable broadband configuration, there are two user accessible reset buttons, one to reboot the modem and another to reset it to its original factory settings. Rebooting the modem will disrupt your Internet connection for under a minute, but doing a factory reset could bring the modem offline until someone reaches the cable company to request the modem be reauthorized. An individual with nefarious intent can repeatedly reset the modem, bringing the user offline again and again.

SB6141 is a DOCSIS 3 modem

The Houston Chronicle explains how this could become a widespread problem:

Included within this interface is the ability to reset the modem. A user can be tricked into clicking on a simple link that will reboot the SB6141, and you can see a proof of concept here. Note that if you have one of these modems with this flaw, and you click the link, your modem WILL reboot.

Normally, you’d have to be sitting at a computer on the same network as the modem to trigger a reboot. But the link above takes advantage of the fact that you can mask a local Web page address as an image file. As Longenecker describes it:

Did you know that a web browser doesn’t really care whether an “image” file is really an image? Causing a modem to reboot is as simple as including an “image” in any other webpage you might happen to open – which is exactly the approach taken on the RebootMyModem.net proof of concept:

<img src=”http://192.168.100.1/reset.htm”>

Of course it’s not a real image, but the web browser doesn’t know that until it requests the file from the modem IP address – which of course causes the modem to reboot. Imagine creating an advertisement with that line of code, and submitting it to a widely-used ad network…

Advanced users can go into their router’s configuration page and block access to the IP address 192.168.100.1 (the modem’s configuration page) for anyone inside their network. That step prevents you or anyone else on your network from accidentally clicking a link that tricks your modem into rebooting. But most users will probably wait until Arris has distributed firmware updates that cable operators will eventually apply to correct this vulnerability. The upgrade will occur in the background and most users will never notice it.

While Comcast, Cox, Suddenlink, and a handful of other cable companies play games with usage caps and expensive broadband, Germany is getting some massive broadband speed improvements with no data caps, speed throttling, or rate increases.

Unitymedia, owned by Liberty Global (related to Liberty Broadband, Charter’s largest single investor), is giving Germans a broadband upgrade you wish you had. Starting Feb. 1, 3.2 million cable homes in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia  will see their broadband speeds double to 400/20Mbps at prices starting at just $40 a month, which includes a flat-rate landline with unlimited free calls across the German landline network, and a free combination wireless/Wi-Fi router and cable modem.

Unitymedia’s current offer is for 200/10Mbps. Starting Feb. 1, those speeds will double.

Unitymedia, which also serves customers in the German states of Hesse and Baden-Württemberg, will still be using DOCSIS 3.0 technology for the speed upgrade. DOCSIS 3.1 is expected to bring even faster speeds and better service beginning later in 2016. The company also offers subscribers access to more than 1,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots across all three states, helping give DSL service serious competition.

While U.S. cable operators have dragged their feet on upgrades while raising broadband prices, Unitymedia CEO Lutz Schüler said his company would make the necessary investments to drive network upgrades forward without delay. Schüler may not have much choice. Telephone company Internet providers have benefited from increased speeds of up to 100Mbps that come from deployment of vectoring technology, which can dramatically boost DSL speeds.

The investment also intends to send a message to the telecommunications marketplace that hybrid fiber-coaxial cable systems can deliver dramatically faster and affordable broadband speeds than they often do today, all without usage caps or usage billing.

Next year’s upgrade to DOCSIS 3.1 will support cable broadband speeds up to one gigabit shortly after introduction.

Telephone companies relying on traditional ADSL service to power their broadband offering will likely face a renewed competitive assault in 2016 that will further reduce their already-challenged market share in areas where cable companies compete.

Cable operators are hungry for profitable broadband customers and the best place to find new prospects is at the phone company, where DSL is still a common technology to deliver Internet access. But while cable Internet speeds have risen, significant DSL speed hikes have proven more modest in the residential market.

In 2016, the cable industry intends to poach some of the remaining price-sensitive holdouts still clinging to DSL with revised broadband offers promising more speed for the dollar.

Cable broadband has already proven itself a runaway success when matched against telephone company DSL service. Over the last year, Strategy Analytics found Comcast and Time Warner Cable alone signed up a combined 71 percent of the three million new broadband customers in the U.S.

“Cable operators continue to increase market share in U.S. broadband,” said Jason Blackwell, a director at Strategy Analytics. “Over the past twelve months, Comcast has accounted for 42 percent of new subscribers among the operators that we track.  Fiber growth is still strong, but the telco operators haven’t been able to shake off the losses of DSL subscribers.  In 2016, we expect to see a real battle in broadband, as cable operators begin to roll out DOCSIS 3.1 for even higher speed offers, placing additional pressure on telcos.”

That battle will come in the form of upgraded economy broadband plans, many arriving shortly after providers upgrade to the DOCSIS 3.1 cable broadband platform. Currently those plans offer speeds ranging from 2-6Mbps. Starting next year, customers can expect economy plan prices to stay generally comparable to DSL, with promises of faster and more consistent speeds. A source tells Stop the Cap! at least two significant cable operators are considering 10Mbps to be an appropriate entry-level broadband speed for 2016, in keeping with FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler’s dislike of Internet speeds below 10Mbps.

Just a few years earlier, most providers wouldn’t think of offering discounted 10Mbps service, fearing it would cannibalize revenue as customers downgraded to get lower priced service. Increasing demands on bandwidth from online video and multiple in-home users have gradually raised consumer expectations, and their need for speed.

Unfortunately for many phone companies that have neglected significant investment in their aging wireline networks, the costs to keep up with cable will become unmanageable unless investors are willing to tolerate significant growth in capital expenses to pay for network upgrades. Frontier Communications still claims most of their customers are satisfied with 6Mbps DSL, neglecting to mention many of those customers live in areas where cable competition (or faster service from Frontier) is not available.

Where competition does exist, it’s especially bad news for phone companies that still rely on DSL. Earlier this year, Frontier’s former CEO Maggie Wilderotter admitted Frontier’s share of the residential broadband market had dropped to less than 25% in 26 of the 27 states where it provides service. In Connecticut, the one state where Frontier was doing better, its acquired AT&T U-verse system has enabled the phone company to deliver broadband speeds up to 100Mbps. But even those speeds do not satisfy state officials who are seeking proposals from providers to build a gigabit fiber network in a public-private partnership.

DSL speed upgrades have been spotty and more modest.

Frontier’s recent experiments with fiber to the home service in a small part of Durham, N.C., and the unintentional revelation of a gigabit broadband inquiry page on Frontier’s website suggests the company may be exploring at least a limited rollout of gigabit fiber service in the state. But company officials have also repeatedly stressed in quarterly results conference calls there were no significant plans to embark on a major spending program to deliver major upgrades across their service areas.

Some phone companies may have little choice except to offer upgrades where cable operators are continuing to rob them of customers. In the northeast, where Frontier has a substantial presence, cable operators including Charter, Comcast and Time Warner Cable are committing to additional speed upgrades. Time Warner Cable’s current standard speed of 15Mbps will rise to 50-60Mbps in 2016, up to ten times faster than Frontier’s most popular “up to” 6Mbps DSL plan.

Most of the broadband customer gains won by Comcast and Time Warner Cable come as a result of DSL disconnects. AT&T said goodbye to 106,000 customers during the third quarter. Verizon managed to pick up 2,000 new subscribers overall, almost all signing up for FiOS fiber to the home service. No cable operator lost broadband market share, reported analyst firm Evercore. Leichtman Research offered additional insight, finding AT&T and Verizon were successful adding 305,000 U-verse and FiOS broadband customers, while losing 432,000 DSL customers during the same quarter.

The message to phone companies couldn’t be clearer: upgrade your networks or else.

Phillip Dampier: A cable trade publication is lecturing its readership on better broadband the industry spent years claiming nobody wanted or needed.

Remember the good old days when cable and phone companies told you there was no demand for faster Internet speeds when 6Mbps from the phone company was all you and your family really needed?

Those days are apparently over.

Multichannel News, the largest trade publication for cable industry executives, warns cable companies gigabit broadband speeds are right around the corner and the technological transformation that will unleash has been constrained for far too long.

Say what?

Proving our theory that those loudest about dismissing the need for faster Internet speeds are the least equipped to deliver them, the forthcoming arrival of DOCSIS 3.1 technology and decreasing costs to deploy fiber optics will allow cable providers to partially meet the gigabit speed challenge, at least on the downstream. Before DOCSIS 3.1, consumers didn’t “need those speeds.” Now companies like Comcast claim it isn’t important what consumers need today — it’s where the world is headed tomorrow.

Comcast 2013:

Comcast executive vice president David L. Cohen writes that the allure of Google Fiber’s gigabit service doesn’t match the needs or capabilities of online Americans.

“For some, the discussion about the broadband Internet seems to begin and end on the issue of ‘gigabit’ access,” Cohen says, in a nod to Google Fiber. “The issue with such speed is really more about demand than supply. Our business customers can already order 10-gig connections. Most websites can’t deliver content as fast as current networks move, and most U.S. homes have routers that can’t support the speed already available to the home.” Essentially, Cohen argues that even if Comcast were to deliver web service as fast as Google Fiber’s 1,000Mbps downloads and uploads, most customers wouldn’t be able to get those speeds because they’ve got the wrong equipment at home.

Comcast 2015:

“We’ve consistently offered the most speeds to the most homes, but with the current pace of tech innovation, sometimes you need to go to where the world is headed and not focus on where it is today.”

“The next great Internet innovation is only an idea away, and we want to help customers push the boundaries of what the Internet can do and do our part to inspire developers to think about what’s possible in a multi-gigabit future.  So, next month we will introduce Gigabit Pro, a new residential Internet service that offers symmetrical, 2-Gigabits-per-second (Gbps) speeds over fiber – at least double what anyone else provides.”

Nelson (Image: Multichannel News)

Rich Nelson’s guest column in Multichannel News makes it clear American broadband is behind the times. The senior vice president of marketing, broadband & connectivity at Broadcom Corporation says the average U.S. Internet connection of 11.5Mbps “is no longer enough” to support multiple family members streaming over-the-top video content, cloud storage, sharing high-resolution images, interactive online gaming and more.

Nelson credits Google Fiber with lighting a fire under providers to reconsider broadband speeds.

“Google’s Fiber program may have been the spark to light the fuse — Gigabit services have fostered healthy competition among Internet and telecommunications providers, who are now in a position to consider not ‘if’ but ‘when and how’ to deploy Gigabit broadband in order to meet consumer’s perceived ‘need for speed’ and maintain their competitive edge,” Nelson wrote.

But the greatest bottleneck to speed advances is spending money to pay for them. Verizon FiOS was one of the most extravagant network upgrades in years among large American telecom companies and the company was savaged by Wall Street for doing it. Although AT&T got less heat because its U-verse development costs were lower, most analysts still instinctively frown when a company proposes spending billions on network upgrades.

Customer demand for faster broadband is apparent as providers boost Internet speeds.

The advent of DOCSIS 3.1 — the next generation of cable broadband technology — suggests a win-win-win for Wall Street, cable operators, and consumers. No streets will have to be torn up, no new fiber cables will have to be laid. Most providers will be able to exponentially boost Internet speeds by reallocating bandwidth formerly reserved for analog cable television channels to broadband. The more available bandwidth reserved for broadband, the faster the speeds a company can offer.

Many industry observers predict the cable line will eventually be 100% devoted to broadband, over which telephone, television and Internet access can be delivered just as Verizon does today with FiOS and AT&T manages with its U-verse service.

The benefits of gigabit speeds are not limited to faster Internet browsing however.

Nelson notes communities and municipalities are now using gigabit broadband speeds as a competitive tool selling homes and attracting new businesses to an area. According to a study from the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Council, communities with widely available gigabit access have experienced a positive impact on economic activity — to the tune of more than $1.4 billion in GDP growth. Those bypassed or stuck in a broadband backwater are now at risk of losing digital economy jobs as businesses and entrepreneurs look elsewhere.

The gigabit broadband gap will increasingly impact the local economies of communities left behind with inadequate Internet speeds as app developers, content producers, and other innovative startups leverage gigabit broadband to market new products and services.

The Pew Research Center envisioned what the next generation of gigabit killer apps might look like. Those communities stuck on the slow lane will likely not have access to an entire generation of applications that simply will never work over DSL.

But before celebrating the fact your local cable company promises to deliver the speed the new apps will need, there is a skunk that threatens to ruin your ultra high speed future: usage-based pricing and caps.

At the same time DOCSIS 3.1 will save the cable industry billions on infrastructure upgrade costs, the price for moving data across the next generation of super high-capacity broadband networks will be lower than ever before. But cable operators are not planning to pass their savings on to you. In fact, broadband prices are rising, along with efforts to apply arbitrary usage limits or charge usage-based pricing. Both are counter-intuitive and unjustified. It would be like charging for a bag of sand in the Sahara Desert or handing a ration book to shoreline residents with coupons allowing them one glass of water each from Lake Ontario.

Cox plans to limit its gigabit customers to 2TB of usage a month. AT&T U-verse with GigaPower has a (currently unenforced) limit of 1TB a month, while Suddenlink thinks 550GB is more than enough for its gigabit customers. Comcast is market testing 300GB usage caps in several cities but strangely has no usage cap on its usage-gobbling gigabit plan. Why cap the customers least-equipped to run up usage into the ionosphere while giving gigabit customers a free pass? It doesn’t make much sense.

But then usage caps have never made sense or been justified on wired broadband networks and are questionable on some wireless ones as well.

Stop the Cap! began fighting against usage caps and usage pricing in the summer of 2008 when Frontier Communications proposed to limit its DSL customers to an ‘ample’ 5GB of usage per month. That’s right — 5GB. We predicted then that usage caps would become a growing problem in the United States. With a comfortable duopoly, providers could easily ration Internet access with the flimsiest of excuses to boost profits. Here is what we told the Associated Press seven years ago:

“This isn’t really an issue that’s just going to be about Frontier,” said Phillip Dampier, a Rochester-based technology writer who is campaigning to get Frontier to back off its plans. “Virtually every broadband provider has been suddenly discovering that there’s this so-called ‘bandwidth crisis’ going on in the United States.”

That year, Frontier claimed most of its 559,300 broadband subscribers consumed less than 1.5 gigabytes per month, so 5GB was generous. Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter trotted out the same excuses companies like Cox and Suddenlink are still using today to justify these pricing schemes: “The growth of traffic means the company has to invest millions in its network and infrastructure, threatening its profitability.”

Just one year later, Frontier spent $5.3 billion to acquire Verizon landline customers in around two dozen states, so apparently Internet usage growth did not hurt them financially after all. Frankly, usage growth never does. As we told the AP in 2008, the costs of network equipment and connecting to the wider Internet are falling. It still is.

“If they continue to make the necessary investments … there’s no reason they can’t keep up” with increasing customer traffic, we said at the time.

We are happy to report we won our battle with Frontier Communications and today the company even markets the fact their broadband service comes without usage caps. In many of Frontier’s rural service areas, they are the only Internet Service Provider available. Imagine the impact a 5GB usage cap would have had on customers trying to run a home-based business, have kids using the Internet to complete homework assignments, or rely on the Internet for video entertainment.

So why do some providers still try to ration Internet usage? To make more money of course. When the public believes the phony tales of network costs and traffic growth, the duped masses open their wallets and pay even more for what is already overpriced broadband service. Just check this chart produced by the BBC, based on data from the Organization for Economic Co‑operation and Development. Value for money is an alien concept to U.S. providers:

The usual method of combating pricing excess is robust competition. With a chasm-sized gap between fat profits and the real cost of the service, competitors usually lower the price to attract more customers. But the fewer competitors, the bigger the chance the marketplace will gravitate towards comfort-level pricing and avoid rocking the boat with a ruinous price war. It is one of the first principles of capitalism — charging what the market will bear. We’ve seen how well that works in the past 100+ years. Back in 2010, we found an uncomfortable similarity between broadband prices of today with the railroad pricing schemes of the 1800s. A handful of executives and shareholders reap the rewards of monopolistic pricing and pillage not only consumers but threaten local economies as well.

The abuses were so bad, Congress finally stepped in and authorized regulators to break up the railroad monopolies and regulate abusive pricing. We may be headed in the same direction with broadband. We do not advocate regulation for the sake of regulation. Competition is a much more efficient way to check abusive business practices. But where an effective monopoly or duopoly exists, competition alone will not help. Without consumer-conscious oversight, the forthcoming gigabit broadband revolution will be stalled by speed bumps and toll booths for the benefit of a few giant telecommunications corporations. That will allow other countries to once again leap ahead of the United States and Canada, just as they have done with Internet speeds, delivering superior service at a lower price.

China now ranks first in the world in terms of the total number of fiber to the home broadband subscribers. So far, it isn’t even close to the fastest broadband country because much of China still gets access to the Internet over DSL. The Chinese government considers that unacceptable. It sees the economic opportunities of widespread fiber broadband and has targeted the scrapping of every DSL Internet connection in favor of fiber optics by the end of 2017. As a result, with more than 200 million likely fiber customers, China will become the global leader in fiber infrastructure, fiber technology, and fiber development. What country will lose the most from that transition? The United States. Today, Corning produces 40% of the world’s optical fiber.

Global optical fiber capacity amounted to 13,000 tons in 2014, mainly concentrated in the United States, Japan and China (totaling as much as 85.2% of the world’s total), of which China already ranked first with a share of 39.8%. Besides a big producer of optical fiber, China is also a large consumer, demanding 6,639 tons in 2014, 60.9% of global demand. The figure is expected to increase to 7,144 tons in 2015. Before 2010, over 70% of China’s optical fiber was imported, primarily from the United States. This year, 72.6% of China’s optical fiber will be produced by Chinese companies, which are also exporting a growing amount of fiber around the world.

John Lively, principal analyst at LightCounting Market Research, predicts China could conquer the fiber market in just a few short years and become a global broadband leader, “exporting their broadband networking expertise and technology, just like it does with its energy and transportation programs.”

Meanwhile in the United States, customers will be arguing with Comcast about the accuracy of their usage meter in light of a 300GB usage cap and Frontier’s DSL customers will still be fighting to get speeds better than the 3-6Mbps they get today.

The “New and Improved” Don’t Care Bears

Rob Frieden has two words for Comcast customers getting scary letters and phone calls threatening to turn their legacy cable modems into paperweights: caveat emptor.

Frieden, author of Winning the Silicon Sweepstakes: Can the United States Compete in Global Telecommunications? knows enough to fend off the misinformation used to upsell customers away from the modems they own free and clear into Comcast’s rented $10/month alternative.

“Despite its commitment to improving its customer service, Comcast keeps writing and robocalling me with an offer I can refuse,” Frieden writes on his blog. “In a rather alarmist tone, Comcast wants subscribers to infer that their modem soon will no longer work.”

At issue are customers still using legacy DOCSIS 2.0 cable modems — one generation behind the current DOCSIS 3.0 modems Comcast wants customers to use. Frieden knows one day Comcast may decide to stop supporting DOCSIS 2.0, an older, less-capable cable broadband standard. Although that day is nowhere in view yet, it hasn’t stopped aggressive Comcast telemarketers from warning customers they “need upgraded equipment” that comes with a never-ending $10 a month rental fee.

“My Motorola DOCSIS 2.0 compliant modem works just fine and it cost me a princely $5 at a garage sale,” Frieden writes.

Frieden

As soon as Comcast finds out you are using an older modem you own, Frieden writes they may try to dissuade you from using it and push you towards their alternative.

“Comcast does not want you to know that the new rented modem will not provide any faster service unless you subscriber to a triple digit, high-end service tier,” Frieden adds.

Comcast’s official position is that DOCSIS 2.0 modems will work just fine with all Comcast Internet plans at speeds below 50Mbps. But they infer if you are not using a DOCSIS 3.0 modem (preferably theirs), “you won’t experience the blistering fast speeds now available.” That implies all Comcast customers with DOCSIS 2.0 modems will get less robust performance across the board, but in fact Comcast’s statement refers to the limitation DOCSIS 2.0 customers have upgrading to speeds they may never need.

After Comcast’s telemarketing machine has you convinced you need to upgrade to their perpetually profitable rented modem, they will also ask why not upgrade your router as well? Comcast suggests customers upgrade to at least a 802.11n model because older 802.11g routers only support up to 20Mbps.

“If you lease your modem, router, or gateway device from us, we’ll upgrade it at no extra charge,” Comcast claims, inferring the upgrade will come free. Except it isn’t. It just won’t cost you more than the $10 a month you are probably already paying.

Stop the Cap! readers regularly tell us Comcast often cuts corners and simply bills customers modem rental fees even for customer-owned equipment. Our reader Amanda is the latest victim and she is about fed up:

I took a look at my bill and for no reason Comcast suddenly started charging me $10 a month for a voice/data modem rental that I don’t have. Beware and check your bill thoroughly. Comcast sneaks charges on for services you don’t have. Absolutely hate this company. On top of the bogus $10 they raised all the rates so my bill went from $186 a month to $219 a month. I would never recommend Comcast to anyone. Horribly deceptive company. Oh and then there is the junk equipment that Comcast uses. I have had three X1 boxes replaced in a year. I’m thinking about going with U-Verse for TV and staying with Comcast for Internet.

Comcast’s “new and improved” customer service becomes especially hostile when customers like Amanda catch the company cheating, forcing her and others into lengthy investigations and appeals to get the bogus fees removed and earlier charges refunded:

So I talked with Comcast today and got nowhere. They basically don’t want my business after 18 years and are giving me a hard time about refunding me the charge for the modem. They said it will take at least 14 days for them to look into the issue with the modem being mine and not being leased from Comcast. I told them I want to cancel and they transferred me to a recording telling me how to send in my equipment via UPS. 18 years and they will not budge on changing my pricing without signing a two year contract! So after 40 minutes on the phone with them I am extremely mad and frustrated. Now I have to waste my time filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the attorney general. And even more time switching my services to another provider. It seems that Comcast has changed its tactics and now instead of trying to retain their customers they are saying go ahead and leave. And can only imagine the nightmare of returning all the equipment.

If you can’t prove your cable modem doesn’t belong to Comcast, they may conveniently bill you an unreturned equipment charge of $70, like one customer experienced in 2014.