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03 Jan 11 - 11:18 AM (#3066251) Subject: Tech: US - cable modem replacement time From: Stilly River Sage 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 |
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03 Jan 11 - 12:33 PM (#3066311) Subject: RE: Tech: US - cable modem replacement time From: Stilly River Sage Reading reviews, looking for sites with enough density of users to give a good reading of users. NewEgg wins again. And it looks like the gaming router is a good route to go because it will probably be more the standard in future. Here are a couple of well-written and fairly representative reviews of the Motorola SB6120: Pros: Recieved modem and provisioned it before i left work. when i got home i hooked it up took about a half an hour to sink up. Was worrying me at first as it took so long to come on. Now that its on, going through a router and a moca device i am still pulling avg of 55mbps down. Torrents download at 4-5mbs much faster then with a doc 2 modem. channel bonding in my area deff helped me. Cons: soon enough internet providers will learn how to control channel bonding and eventually make it correspond as close as poss to your actual connection speed you pay for. So basically if you upgraded to this just for speed, that will be gone prolly within the year. Other Thoughts: Still a great modem with the speed issue to the side. Pros: I paid $82 bucks for it about 3 months ago… Get it now at 77 w/free S&H… can't go wrong. When cable person wad doing the install (had DSL before), he asked for modem and said "You should have no problems with this" "We don't offer this model yet but our technology is compatible" Bottom line, I pay for 8Mb speed but am consistently hooked up at 15Mb (Cable guy said this would be the case) I never usually install any of the software that comes with modems/routers just plug-n-Go. Have never had any problems with connectivity yet. I will say DSL is more reliable, but much pricier when trying to get anything faster than 1.5 Mb Cons: I wish it was it $77 when I ordered it. (Not sure why #2 says DSL is more "reliable" - it's as slow as the second coming.) SRS |
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03 Jan 11 - 12:39 PM (#3066313) Subject: RE: Tech: US - cable modem replacement time From: Stilly River Sage Specs from Cnet: Connectivity Technology - Wired Max Transfer Rate - 160 Mbps Protocols & Specifications - DOCSIS 3.0, Euro-DOCSIS 3.0 Line Coding Format - QPSK, 16 QAM, 64 QAM |