N450 with Time Warner Cable

I have been having similar issues with my N450 since about two months ago. Called Time Warner a couple times and was given the run around. They suggested it might have been wireless interference, and the second time they pushed a DOCSIS reset onto my modem, promising that would once and for all fixed all my issues. But it didn't. The real problem is everytime you call Time Warner, they waste more of your time without really solving any issue.

After eliminating all the possible wifi issues, I knew it was either a problem with the line coming into the house or it must be a problem with the modem itself -- I just didn't know which. So I bought a TP-Link cable modem and plugged it into the line. That worked perfectly fine. So the N450 was the problem. Did the modem just start misbehaviing after just a few months of service? Possible. Not likely though.

Because of the timing of this, I had a hunch it was related to Time Warner but I didn't know how. May be they changed their equipment with the Spectrum merge and that affected the interoperability of the N450 with their hardware. I tried to look for a firmware update for the N450 online. To my surprise, the Netgear forums all suggest that cable companies have the power to push firmware onto modems that are owned by their clients, which also means that I as a Time Warner customer cannot update the firmware in my N450.

Knowing it is must have been a bad firmware updat, I googled "Netgear N450 firmware time warner" and found this link , as well as a few others on the Netgear forum about the same issue. Finally, the recommended "hard reset" solutiion did finally my issues. Thanks to the community and everyone for raising this issue and providing a solution for it.

This issue has caused me I don't know how many hours of frustration in the last two months. I am a scientific programmer and have a tech background, but it still took me two months to finally stumble on this solution. What about the many other Time Warner customers who were not so lucky and are still stuck with this problem?

So here is my message to Time Warner (now Spectrum):  (1) If this is a known problem with this particular modem after Time Warner pushed a firmware update onto a modem that I own, why can't they be competent enough to idenfity this issue when I called instead of wasting everyone's time chasing down a known problem, (2) Will Time Warner leave all those other clients who have the same modem but either don't have the means or don't know where to find the solution out in the cold, by not disclosing this issue and the fix?  I don't know how many Time Warner customers have a N450, but that looks like it could be the basis of a class action law suit.