I find that most modems seem to fail after two or three years, and the Motorola Surfboard SB5101 has been great for about 3 years, but I have had to power cycle (turn off everything then turn it back on a minute later) several times now. Once it is turned back on the speed is fine, but then the lag time comes back and it hangs on a lot of pages. I'm going to connect it directly to the computer today, to be sure that it is the modem and not the router, but I'm pretty sure it is the modem.

So, I usually find that prices come down a bit and there are a few clear winners in the reviews each time I need to shop. I checked with tech support at the cable company - they have a list of suppliers they prefer (they have their own dedicated modem that only they can set for people who rent them directly from the cable folks - that isn't me.)

DLink, Linksys, Motorola, Netgear, the usual suspects.

The thing I am wondering about, is if any of you know anything about the "gaming" modems vs the regular ones. Is it actually faster for gamers to have a special modem? And would that also make the responsiveness for other household computers page loads better?

We're dealing with a brand spanking new HP desktop (purchased in November), a newly built computer (my son took it to college, and he'll be bringing it back in the spring to spend the summer here), and a couple of older ones. Three are on Win7 Ultimate, the others on XP Pro. My son is the gamer, so he would benefit with his computer or his gaming devices (he can play online games with the Wii and X-Box, etc.)

Any thoughts? Thanks!

SRS