I recently found out that my normally cost-conscious father has been renting his modems from his ISP for like 25 years and for Christmas I want to give him the gift of not having to pay $15 a month to Comcast anymore, but I was hoping for some guidance.
He’s currently paying for 800mb/s and they have him Arris TG3482G wireless gateway.
He lives in a ~1700 sf one story (plus basement) housee. All three bedrooms (and maybe the kitchen?) are wired with with ethernet jacks if that matters. Both he and my mom have said the signal in their bedroom can occasionally get spotty (in the rough sketch of their house below, the router is in the basement roughly on the X, room with occasional coverage issues is red square). That initially made me think maybe I should look into a mesh network, but then I realized it could just be that the signal on those modem/router combos really is that bad and a decent traditional modem could suffice.
Their internet usage typically consists of your run of the mill web surfing and occasional streaming. My dad also works from home over the wired connection.
They recently moved their landline over to Xfinity, so the modem requires voice. The modems xfinity lists as compatible with their plan:
- NetgearCM2050V
- Motorola MT8733
- Arris T25
- Netgear CM1150V
- Arris SBV3202
- Netgear C7100V
- Motorola MT7711
- Arris SVG2482AC
- Arris SBV2402
Any thoughts on which modem and router would best fit their situation and needs? Obviously the CM2050V appears to be the superior modem on the list, but also seems like a overkill given their plan and usage habits (unless it’d be a good idea for a bit of future proofing in case their plan ever gets upgraded?).
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check to see if you will get unlimited bw or get stuck at 1.2 tb a month.
This. They’ve made it a wash with Xfinity with the Xfi Complete package - you pay for the modem but you get unlimited data. 1.2TB is nothing with a family of five, all gamers, streaming TV, etc.
Comcast still allows you to put the modem in bridge mode, at least for now. I run everything else on my own gear.
Depends on where you are. In northern New England they don’t have the cap because there’s competition here, but you do need their modem for the higher speed uploads (I’m stuck at 30mbit right now).
Can’t wait to get fiber installed next week.
Consolidated?
There are a ton of little fiber providers up here covering different areas. Just in my area are VTel, ECFiber, Lyme Fiber, Hub66, Fidium (Consolidated, as you mentioned), Burlington Fiber… it depends on where you are, but they’re being given money by the states to build out fiber lines since Comcast won’t get their shit together and just took the money and ran last time.
Honestly unless you’re prepared to be his on-call tech support for the rest of your life don’t do this.
I have the CM1150V and have my eye on the CM2050V. These devices are modems only. There is no WiFi. You would need to get your father a separate WiFi router to go along with either device. Additionally, the 2050 has only 1 Ethernet port.
I have always owned my own modems and routers. Never had an issue. Now using eero+ mesh routers. Great service throughout my house and even detached garage.
Not super into network stuff but if you want phone and docsis 3.1 why not check out the fritz!box?
Check with the isp for compatibility. I’ve had very good luck with the Netgear CM1100. Modem only. I run a separate mesh router system which allows me to change internet providers or upgrade my modem without having to mess with any smart home devices.
Just make sure you check their supported modems first, then buy from that list.
That’s very sweet, but you are turning all of the future troubleshooting into a you problem. Are you sure that’s worth saving your dad $15/month?
This. My mom has fiber data/voice and they charge a $10 equipment fee for the router and ONT. We could save that, but then they can’t do remote support so that $120 a year is worth it for me. Plus, they’ll update it when it needs it.
Only thing I’d disagree with is they’ll update it when it needs it. They may never update the firmware on their equipment at your place even if has major security flaws. They’ll also have no problem upgrading your plan to 500mb speed meanwhile your decade old modem/router only has a 100mb NIC. They’ll for sure do the least they can, but that may still be more than certain customers are capable of.
They meant hardware, software updates will happen occasionally but not often as they see fit.
Hardware probably won’t be touched for a while but depending what they use it might not matter.
If it’s that new it might be XGS which is 10gbps unlike 2.5gbps GPON And that’s fine
Well in her case, she has Consolidated Communications as the ISP which is a smaller regional phone company that only provided painfully slow DSL until 3 years ago. When her contract was up this year I tried to see if they could give us the same discount she had before since in the past, that was something they would do (I guess because they knew they only had DSL and could only compete on price), but they said no and the only promotion they had was if she upgraded her 50/50 service (which for her is plenty given that all the cameras I have there upload more than she downloads) to gigabit but it would require them to change the equipment and bring in a mesh router and move on to their “Fidium Service” which is I guess the new branding they have for fiber.
Even discounted, it would cost more than what she’s paying now and I didn’t want to go deal with the installer again so we’re sticking with what we have for now, but the writing is on the wall that they’re going to be changing people over to the new service one of these days anyway so at least this way I don’t have to keep buying new equipment or have compatibility issues for which my equipment gets blamed.
That’s 180 dollars a year though! And my dad loves saving money. He’s pretty good with tech compared to other people his age, and I don’t mind troubleshooting if it comes up. But I’ll mention that to them in case they hadn’t considered that aspect.
Just to make sure, I recommend calling their ISP provider to know exactly what you are giving up in terms of support, how much TS they can do to a cx owned modem, in which situations they will need to pay a technician appointment for an issue by having their own modem and the cost of the technician appointment
ISP agents know very well the leased modems but they may not know all the tricks on a owned modem, so always have their owned modem manual available, the manufacturers contact number, and most likely agents will not provide any assistance related to login to the modem settings and handle their wifi network, ports, etc, which your dad may be able to as you mentioned he understands technology.
But yes my advice as tech support agent of another ISP is to call them an know the policy they have regarding owned modem, and before going to their owned modem make sure everything on their network is working on point while having the leased equipment
I had Charter briefly and they refused to troubleshoot if I didn’t rent their modem. If you call them for an issue with your service their base assumption was that the problem was your equipment. They would not perform any troubleshooting until you had replaced your modem with their modem. We never even got past installation because I told the installer to take it all and cancel my order and go home because the bill was way more than they had advertised. It was supposed to be $55 a month plus normal taxes and fees with a 6-month discount that would have made it like 25 bucks a month for a bit. But in addition to the $10 month modem rental there was also a $15 fee that made no sense. When I asked I was told it was a fee because I didn’t get a bundle. Now they advertised their internet service by itself for $55 a month. You of course got discounts if you bundled in phone or television. But they also advertised each service on its own for a specific price. Apparently if you chose to buy that service from them or the price they advertised it as they charged you a $15 a month fee for buying the product at the price advertised without buying another product to go with it. I was already ticked off about the $10 a month modem rental fee but I wasn’t going to pay an extra $15 a month on top of that for crummy basic cable internet.
Well yeah each service provider is only going to troubleshoot to the end of the equipment they are responsible for. For water that means your water meter, for for power your power meter, for ISP it means the outside line demarcation point where it turns into your equipment.
If they own the ONT modem/router they can troubleshoot to that point. If you provide your own all they can do is send a tech to make sure their signal is active and if it is they’ll charge you. If you use their equipment they’ll troubleshoot it and assume that the issue isn’t a simple layer 1 issue, and if it is will.sometimes eat the cost on a quick repair if it means keeping you subscribed and happily paying equipment fees each month.
What I’m saying is they would not check the line. If you reported a service outage they would tell you it was probably your modem going bad since you weren’t renting a modem from them. In order for them to check the signal and check the lines you would have to replace your modem with their modem. $120 a year for a piece of equipment that you can buy for 60 bucks it’s just so ridiculous.
If they have no outages reported in the area and you’re the only one down they will send a tech to test the fiber or copper line that feeds your home. If they find the line is good then the rest of it is on you and they’ll likely charge for the techs time that did the test. They should provide a certified result of their fiber or copper line test though.
We have to deal with this all the time at our data centers. Even with in house techs that can test and tell us the fiber is down likely due to a line being cut by the construction crew 100ft away, the ISP will still send their tech to find the exact same results before they send out a repair crew.
As someone who has dealt with Comcast tech support a LOT, I would not believe anything they say about this.
Arris S33 works pretty well
Are you sure they’re charging you for the modem and not the gateway/wifi features it comes on the device?, I’m almost certain they will lend you the modem at no cost of your internet plan and you can add your own router, their routers should have the capabilities of handling the internet speeds they sell, but generally speaking as all other comments says docsis 3.1 is the bare minimum any any with this compatbility will offer you speeds, WiFi and accessibility of managing your network would be best from a router vs modem tbh
make sure you go with him to alter his plan accordingly. when i got my own modem and told them to drop the monthly fee, they ditched my unlimited plan for another one that basically kept me paying the same amount. if he can afford it, its almost worth it to keep the Xfinity modem because when it acts up you can just go swap it out for a new one and be up and running pretty quickly. after years of helping older folks with tech issues, ive found this is really the easiest.
I’d go with the arris s33 and get your own router if they don’t use a landline.
I stopped reading after rentals for whatever reason and my mind jumped to renting movies. People likely exist that still do that constantly without really thinking about it.
My wife and I have older Boomer parents who aren’t local. I’ve intentionally let then stay on rented Xfinity modems, so that when they have a service issue, the provider owns the service, soup to nuts, and it’s their problem to solve.
OP. If you replace the modem, you are going to be the person providing tech support for your dad’s internet connection 24/7
Get a Motorola with DOCIS 3.1. Motorola makes great modems! You’ll also need to arrange to return the Comcast equipment to the company or else they’ll keep charging your dad the $15 a month.