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Comment by lynndotpy | Hacker News Reader

The people who do this will be a vanishingly small minority. It's not as easy to set up one's own modem as it is their own router, IME. And even then, going with your own router is rare.

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> It's not as easy to set up one's own modem as it is their own router, IME.

I mean, I suppose it's got the additional step of calling Comcast and giving them the MAC of your modem, but IIRC that's all I had to do after buying one on their approved list. Been at least 7-8 years since I had them, though.

You can plug-and-play with a consumer "router", but even then you need to know the difference between WAN and LAN sides. So the extra effort seems minimal.

Most people don't know how to set up either one. I know when the fiber techs came to my house to set me up they were greatly impressed at my (fairly basic; I don't do this for a living) networking knowledge.

You don't usually have to call any more, there's a captive portal provisioning process. It's not totally reliable and sometimes you might give up after a few tries and call instead.

What are you talking about? Modems are incredibly simple to set up. You buy it, log into your account on another network or call the ISP, enter your modem's mac address...and that's it. You have to type in the mac or read it off over the phone. There's nothing on device to set up, it's much easier than a router.

I'd definitely appreciate if you know any resources on this. I don't recall the details, since it's been seven years since I last tried, but I remember hitting friction I couldn't get past.

You also get better rates if you use their equipment.

Surely that is not true? I thought rental fees were common with using the vendor equipment (something like $10/month). It is a frequently listed as a cost cutting measure to buy your own modem rather than rent from The ISP. A modem is $100-200, so you should be net positive after a year on the investment.

No longer true last time I went in to renegotiate my service plan, I got a better monthly rate and higher bandwidth using their gear. I had previously used my own modem and router.

Huh. At least there is now a carrot to get you to mule for their public WiFi offering.

docsis modem costs $30, wireless AP costs another $50, add repeaters if you want.

I have been using my setup for 9 years and never paid a dime in rent of equipment.

the setup is plug-n-play / one youtube video away

I guess you don’t want the fastest speed or no data cap. We easily surpass the 1TB cap with 4K streaming and WFH video calls.

I use Cox and get their fastest speed (2.5Gbps) with the option for unlimited data if I wanted it, and I'm using my own equipment.

Similarly, never seen limitations on speed or allotment if using owned equipment. The ISP will give a big scary message about how support will be unable to help you if things go wrong, but that’s the extent of it.

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