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Comment by manyxcxi | Hacker News Reader

The best thing anyone can do is swap out the junky cable modem + WiFi router combos they rent to you. They're horrible under standard usage, bad when lots of clients are connected, bad wifi range, low memory, require frequent reboots, etc.

For about $70 (about 5mos of rental charges) you can get a Surfboard barebones Docsis 3 modem that will vastly outperform whatever junk they rent out.

After that you could get a TP-Link Archer C7 for sub $80 that will have good range and performance for that price point.

So within about the first year you've broken even with vastly superior components and you'll be able to take them with you to any cable provider you wind up using in the future.

I get why most people don't do this, they don't even know it's possible, but I'm amazed when colleagues in the industry are still running the company hardware.

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This is a thing I would kind of want to do, but I've never bothered to figure out how. Like how will I know if it's a compatible modem, or better than what's there? How do you configure it?

So those are my reasons.

http://mynewmodem.comcast.net/ Lists most of the modems you can purchase from amazon. They have a slightly larger list of supported modems but many of them are noy sold to the public like some Cisco models.

https://mydeviceinfo.xfinity.com/ will walk you through finding which devices your local service + speed work with. Spoiler: most DOCSIS 3.0 modems are compatible.

Buy it, unplug your existing modem, plug the new one in, and call Comcast. I had mine out of the box and up and running in all of 15 minutes (most of that was spent on hold and waiting for the modem to reboot).

http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-cable-modem/

You can figure this sort of thing out with less than 1 hour of effort.

https://www.xfinity.com/support/internet/list-of-approved-ca...

To configure it, you just plug it in. I think you may have to call them after you plugged it in and then activate it on their end.

The beauty is that (as far as my experience for the last ten years with Comcast for home and business in Seattle and Portland) I've never once had to do any configuration other than plugging it in while on the phone with support and reading off the various IDs.

The only thing I've ever needed was the serial numbers and such that are printed on the bottom of my modem.

Pro tip, the chat is much faster, tether to your phone for internet and do it via their web chat.

I replaced my router a few weeks ago (lightning!) on Comcast and the configuration was completely automatic. Maybe I had to enter my comcast id and password, but I didn't have to call anyone and it was done in just a few minutes. This was in Knoxville, TN.

I've been back on FiOS since we moved back to PDX last summer, so my last cable modem switcharoo was about 5 years ago in Seattle. It's likely they could've made it easier.

To that end, I've done the modem switch probably a dozen times for myself, family, or friends and I've never encountered any resistance from Comcast during the process. Though they did fat finger a MAC address or serial number one time.

Before going out and buying a modem, I would strongly recommend making sure through support that the modem you're planning on getting is ALSO compatible with the very specific data plans for now and for the foreseeable future. One of the interesting things I found was that the Comcast device compatibility site listed a modem I bought as compatible, but you can still wind up unable to get the speeds you're paying for because the specific profile that was listed for my account was not flagged for that modem even though the modem is actually capable of it (300/35 plan, which is a bit unusual). So I wound up returning my 24-channel DOCSIS 3.0 modem and buying a more expensive one on DOCSIS 3.1. The other option was to actually downgrade my plan to maybe 150 Mbps.

Changing my router was the best thing I have done to my internet connection, but somehow it never occurred to me to change my modem until I just read your comment. Er, duh! Ordering one now. Any recommendations from this list?: http://www.spectrum.net/support/internet/compliant-modems-ch...

I've always used Arris (sometimes branded as Motorola) and had consistently good results.

Today, from that list, I'd buy the Woot SB6183 ($51.09 on Amazon-ASIN B018IS1S4C) as that's what I've been running at home for 13 months without issue. (I upgrade about every 6-9 years. You caught me "just" after the latest one.)

It's a 16x4 modem, though when I use it on Comcast, Comcast operates it as a 16x3 (16 channels down, 3 channels up)

The Arris/Motorola Surfboard series have always been great for me. I think the biggest difference between the cheapest model and the most expensive one is that the most expensive one is capable of a theoretical max that is multiples of what Comcast even offers. So, it's technically more future proof. I've had the cheapest one forever and never had issues with it being slower than my pipe could deliver.

I've been using a Zoom modem for years now with no issues at all. The Surfboard series is also pretty well recommended by my friends in the industry.

I still prefer to avoid combo modems though, I find that the Wi-fi tech upgrades at a faster pace, and prefer to keep the devices separate rather than combined into one box. YMMV, do what makes sense for your setup.

As of a couple weeks ago, you can buy a DOCSIS 3.1 modem. Supposedly they have AQM (i.e. bufferbloat mitigation). I don't know for sure, but I expect that the upstream AQM will work even if the ISP hasn't switched to DOCSIS 3.1 in your area.

I hate that I've become an AT&T fanboy, but I have their Gigabit fiber service and use their router. The modem/router they gave me -- and don't charge an extra fee for it -- is in the worse possible place in my two story house. It's in a guest bedroom closet downstairs attached to the smart panel.

When I'm right under it, I can get 400Mbps u/d from my iPhone and my laptops. In the worse location in the house I get 120/120. My house is wired for gig-e throughout but I with that kind of wireless speed, I didn't bother about getting the more expensive Roku boxes with 10/100 Ethernet connections.

Of course I usually get 900+ u/d wired.

Yeah I own my own modem/router forced Comcast to setup my own stuff rather than rent from them but I made sure it was a Comcast compatible modem.

Protip: buy used off of craigslist.

I've done this multiple times over the years and saved a bundle.

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