Teardown: A Dead Arris CM8200B NBN HFC DOCSIS 3.1 NTD

While I’m still living the 5G/LTE life myself, other remote family members still opt for the NBN. In the case of my aunt, she’s been on the NBN since October 2021, at the time suffering delays from migrating her connection across due to a COVID-induced chip shortage resulting in a shortfall of NBN HFC NTDs. This eventually resolved itself and she was connected using an Arris CM8200, the original HFC NTD, but the connection proved very problematic, going down once every month or more as the cable plant outside her house often succumbed to weather and the strain of adding more and more connections to it. Nevertheless, my patient aunt was happy to continue paying and receiving sub-par service. That was, until just before my business trip, when I noted that her HFC had gone down yet again, coinciding with an unexpected outage. After the outage was cleared by NBN, I did not see the connection come back up – not only for a few hours but for a day. I reached my aunt by mobile phone, asking…