Modem/Router Combo

[Judas Maccabeus]

You may be able to find both in one unit. Last time I set one up on Comcast, it is what I used. I simply found out which of these Comcast sold. Like this. Josh, what do you htink?

15% of buyers gave this a 1 star

You will always have 10-15 % who have no clue how to set one up. Depending on system you sometimes need a login script or fixed ip address

[Neto]

Make sure that the provider doesn't supply an upgraded one "for free", as a part of your service contract. After the big storm here in June of 2022, we switched to cable, because the telephone company never repaired the physical line. I had purchased a cable router, but the tech who came out to do the installation said that their router was no additional charge.

(The telephone company had supplied an update not long before the storm, and they sent a shipping label to send that newest one back. But in previous upgrades, they didn't want the old one back.)

[mike]

Make sure that the provider doesn't supply an upgraded one "for free", as a part of your service contract. After the big storm here in June of 2022, we switched to cable, because the telephone company never repaired the physical line. I had purchased a cable router, but the tech who came out to do the installation said that their router was no additional charge.

(The telephone company had supplied an update not long before the storm, and they sent a shipping label to send that newest one back. But in previous upgrades, they didn't want the old one back.)

The last time I renewed our cable provider, they insisted that it would cost me MORE to own my own router than to rent one because renting it is part of the service agreement. Doesn't make sense to me.

I've been really happy that I don't have to rely on cable as a main provider for Internet at my business due to a local company that is selling wireless broadband via line of sight towers. We've never had a good working backup for business internet, and with a dual-ISP router we use a low-speed cheaper plan from Comcast as backup and the wireless as primary. It works very well and we never even find out when one or the other has an outage. There are few things more frustrating than being in the middle of a busy Saturday with lines at all checkouts and you suddenly can't process cards.

[Josh]

I recommend renting a wifi / router / modem combo if at all possible unless you are tech savvy.

[Judas Maccabeus]

I recommend renting a wifi / router / modem combo if at all possible unless you are tech savvy.

That is probably the safest course. If you have fiber it is a snap, cable is more difficult.

Let’s not talk about DSL.

[Soloist]

I hate renting but it’s generally packaged now and they get all your information anyway…

[Josh]

I have Spectrum (the old Time Warner Cable, nowadays merged with Charter and Bright House, amongst others), and they include the modem/router for "free". (Wi-Fi costs an extra $5 or so a month, but you can use your own Wi-Fi if you want to.)

If you really want to buy the equipment, which has a chance of going obsolete before it would pay off compared to the price of renting, I would get an Arris SURFboard and then get a consumer router/Wi-Fi combo. (Or get an Ubiquiti ER-X plus a Ubiquiti wireless access points, if you have a big house or office to try to cover.)

If you can deal with slightly slower DOCSIS 3.0 speeds (which are still very fast), a unit like this is a great value:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/ARRIS-SURFbo ... SellerId=0

These would work well for a small office or home set up. The only case I wouldn't recommend it is if you are doing a lot of live video streaming / heavy Internet gaming.

[Soloist]

It’s insane that people think you need this fast and faster for gaming. I remember gaming in the early 2000s… you didn’t need a high end connection for gaming, you needed good signal and generally you wanted a solid connection. At that point gold plated connectors were the rage.
Now days gaming is too data intensive for what they are actually doing.

[Josh]

It’s insane that people think you need this fast and faster for gaming. I remember gaming in the early 2000s… you didn’t need a high end connection for gaming, you needed good signal and generally you wanted a solid connection. At that point gold plated connectors were the rage.
Now days gaming is too data intensive for what they are actually doing.

Well, a lot of gamers are streaming whatever it is they're doing on Twitch (which chews up a fair bit of upstream), and then they're playing games where every bit of latency counts... so they can actual benefit from a 2.5G uplink to their 1G/30M connection, for example.

[Soloist]

Well, a lot of gamers are streaming whatever it is they're doing on Twitch (which chews up a fair bit of upstream), and then they're playing games where every bit of latency counts... so they can actual benefit from a 2.5G uplink to their 1G/30M connection, for example.

It’s the everyone can be a movie star. I have a friend who decided he was going to be the next big thing in gaming. He recently hit around 1k viewers last I talked to him. He makes around a dollar a month for that. He spends at least 100 on the net and add several necessary subscriptions and of course beautification items for his streaming station… he is spending so much money and is horribly depressed. I can’t get through to him what the source of his marital strife and general problems he has actually is. He listens but it goes in one ear and out the other.