Major failure of quantum firmware update pushed out on Sept 11, 2014.
Sanskrit2
Enthusiast - Level 2

Problem began about 2 days later. We have 2 VMS boxes and 3 client boxes. Nothing in our network has changed since we installed the upgraded boxes 2 weeks ago. I learned from tech support that a firmware update had been pushed out last week. The problem started when the boxes, clients and one of the two VMS boxes began to repeatedly try to reinitiatlize. One of our VMS boxes for some reason, seemed to remain ok. I spent over 3.5 hour of my personal time on a Sunday trying to help Verizon sort out this issue. Do you guys test this stuff before you push out firmware updates? It's shockingly offensive how your client consideration is approached.

What's worse is that Verizon tech assumes every client is a **bleep** and they start with the assumption that the client did something wrong. Maybe this is generally the case, i dont know. I am not a home networking novice and i very politely set out to explain that when I started with Alfred in Tech Support in Dallas. After about an hour of trying to send his own commands to my VMS box he started to tell me that i have a lot of things on my network and maybe its causing bandwidth loss. Of course i insisted this wasnt the case (it wasnt - i have 20+ devices on the network but all cat 6, a 75mb pipe and only the 5 devices -- the set top boxes -- connected on the coax network). So after i got tired of them telling me it was my network i literally unplugged everything from the router. All 20 devices remove. Nothing but the STBs. Alfred still couldnt do anything so he transfered me to PAID TECHNICAL SUPPORT! outrageous.

After explaning that this was NOT a client side issue, i was dumped back into Fios Tech Support, this time with Lisa in Rhode Island. Lisa was pleasant enough though of course we had to start all over. We tried the auto cold start (if you need to do this, btw, push the MENU button repeatedly on your remote while you plug in your boxes power. It will boot up and keep pushing MENU until you see the word RUN. Then use your down arrow to scroll to COLD. Then hit ok). We did this a series of time and finally, exasperated that they couldnt send any commands to the boxes (they have one higher level initialize command they can send from their end) they gave up and gave us a support on site scheduled today.

But subsequent to my time on the support call yesterday, i had the idea that maybe the clients were interfering with the VMS. so i completely removed all the clients and rebooted from COLD the second VMS. all on my own. Guess what? it worked. So fingers crossed i tried to install a client. Interestingly when the client booted, it actually caused the VMS (the one i had just set up on the network succcessfully - the one that VZ tech support wasnt able to do) to start to reboot. So i tried the reverse. I removed the second VMS from the network and it installed ok. Then i attempted to install the second VMS (this is contrary to the setup instructions i first received when installing these) and it too caused the client to start rebooting. So ultimately i figured out that the clients on my network seems to be causing an issue with the installation of the (second) VMS.

I have one theory, and i hope to god that someone in the verizon engineering dept is reading this... i noticed that even after a cold restart, the client boxes retained some of their settings. This seemed odd to me and makes me think they are getting some of their memory data from the other VMS. included in that data may be a connection to the IP address of one of the VMS boxes. Our clients were divided up among the 2 VMSs during initial setup. So now i think that somewhere deep in the memory of the client is a connection to the VMS that is causing a problem with a second VMS is isntalled or booted with the new firmware. It's a tenuous suggestion but best i can do under the circumstance.

In any event, i look forward to their level 2 tech supposedly coming here today to fix this. My guess - all new boxes.

As for Verizon, they should reimburse me for my time an aggravation. What are the odds that will happen?

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Re: Major failure of quantum firmware update pushed out on Sept 11, 2014.
eiVaL
Enthusiast - Level 3

if you're using a 3rd party router make sure your VMS and IPboxes have a higher QoS than your 20 other devices

my boxes wouldnt get past the 25% marke when i did the cold boot to force the 2.18 behind my own router (i have no idea why since they both have 600mhz signal and no issue any other time) but when putting them behind just the Actiontec it worked, then i promptly went back to my normal configuration of the Actiontec merely relaying data to the boxes

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Re: Major failure of quantum firmware update pushed out on Sept 11, 2014.
CRobGauth
Community Leader
Community Leader

Did they show up?

Did they get the issue resolved?

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Re: Major failure of quantum firmware update pushed out on Sept 11, 2014.
Telcoguru
Master - Level 1

The servers get their signal over the coax using RF. The clients use Moca 2.0 using the coax to communicate to the servers. Each server can support upto 4 clients each. My guess is something is wrong at one of the servers. It is either the STB itself or the signal or connection to the box.

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