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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

Yep, and you have to also watch out for their multiple EOL lists. I have a modem that has been EOL'd if it's a leased modem (meaning they will give you a new one if you're leasing it) but has explicitly not been EOL'd if it's customer-owned. But guess how many Comcast reps catch that distinction? None, of course. Even when I show them their own page that explains this, they insist that I need to get a new modem.

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I have Spectrum and the best decision I ever made was buying my own modem and router. I've had zero issues since and consistent speeds.

I second this. With Comcast (business). No complaints coming up on the first year. Caveat: I don't need blinding speed to push code back and forth. Verizon DSL was fine, actually, when I used that.

I was in the same situation. Their all-in-one modem/router is the most insufferable piece of equipment I've ever had to work with. Trying to do any kind of video chat using it was a nightmare with constant freezing and buffering issues even when standing right next to it.

Bought my own Surfboard and TP-Link router and installed DDWRT and have been free of most issues since then except one. I randomly lost internet connection once and tried everything that I could to get it back up and running. Finally got a technician out and he showed me that sometimes you have to keep the power on the surfboard and only unplug/replug the coaxial cable to the wall and then it will start working again. I had never seen an issue like that before in my life and I'm still trying to figure out why that fixed it.

Probably a supply glitch during power up that interferes with block sync, but only sometimes.

The reason leased modems fall onto the EOL list sooner is because it takes time for Comcast to rollover those units. Comcast has to continue to support those units until they've removed them from the field. Once they've rollover all the units, then the modem is put on the customer owned EOL list.

The EOL list serves two functions. They will remotely update the firmware of supported modems using the TFTP interface and the will validate supported modems on their network for the speeds offered by the modem. When your modem falls onto the EOL list it is no longer updated and they cannot guarantee your speed. The former is a security concern for them, and the later is more of a nuisance if you upgrade your service to a tier your modem can't achieve on their network.

So ISPs remotely push updates to their customer premises hardware? This doesn't apply to the customer's own equipment, right?

It does, if you access your cable modem's web interface you'll find rebooting is the only function you can perform otherwise it is read only.

ISPs manage Cable Modems regardless of who owns them. It's part of the subscriber agreement.

If you have an all-in-one device that is a cable modem, router, switch, and wifi ap all-in-one; the cable modem is still managed by the ISP.

Only the modem is managed? Is it a separate system/firmware? That would make a lot of sense. My ISP gave me a VDSL router and I can configure a lot of things via the web interface, but to get access to features such as bridge mode I'd have to replace its firmware.

Is there a way to get the modem as a discrete component, rather than integrated into these all-in-one things?

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