WiFi Router/Modem

[CABilly]

Anyone with XFinity Home use their own router? I'm not happy with the one from Comcast. I'd rather buy my own and stop renting theirs.

Those Arlo setups look fancy but are 2x a similar unit. Are you just paying for that sleek plastic body? What's a good replacement for the XFinity tower router?

We have cable and home alarm through XFinity. We stream a lot, and our son plays video games. Currently he's hard-wired into the router. Is there one that would suit all our needs while keeping us secure?

Thanks in advance

 

[tzrider]

Does your home alarm connect to your Xfinity gateway directly or did they provide a small NetGear router that is in between the alarm and the gateway?

 

[TylerW]

Likely there's two parts you'll need - modem and router. I haven't had comcast in a while, but when I did I used the Motorola Surfboard product line. It was good, fast and fairly affordable. Not sure what the new hotness is. Anyhow your modem just takes the signal coming off the RG6 cable and turns it into a single ethernet port. Then you'll want to jam that into your router to manage your internal network.

I've been very happy with the Amplifi product line - its the consumer facing brand of Ubiquiti networks which makes enterprise-grade network hardware. It was considerably more expensive than any router I've ever purchased, but I also haven't needed to replace it every year or so either.

It's also nice to tell your comcast service rep that they're now only responsible for the wiring until it reaches the MPOE in your home. After that their technicians can fuck right off and have no further business in your home.

 

[CABilly]

Does your home alarm connect to your Xfinity gateway directly or did they provide a small NetGear router that is in between the alarm and the gateway?

Our alarm is outdated but the main unit is a handheld touchscreen that just uses WiFi.

Also the router is wired to be upstairs because that’s where the home office is. We mostly live downstairs and I’m tired of weak WiFi in some corners of the house. I don’t trust booster pods I’m afraid they spy on you. (Yes I have a smartphone but I can at least put it away when I want to pretend I have some privacy)

 

[tzrider]

Xfinity usually deploys a single “gateway” that is both a modem and router. The newer ones work directly with their home security offering, while older installations used a separate NetGear router to connect the security system to the gateway.

They have a list of compatible gateways or modems on their website. If you’re using Xfinity Voice, the options are fewer.

If you have connectivity issues with your own equipment, they will blame your equipment and you won’t be able to get them to troubleshoot further.

 

[tzrider]

What I did was use their gateway in bridge mode, which turns off their router and wifi. Connected to the gateway is a UniFi security appliance, POE switch and two AP’s that will support up to 500 connections each. No more wifi problems.

 

[CABilly]

:thumbup

I’ll have to look up what those mean and try to copy it. There is no other router for the alarm system. But it’s really old. We had a service tech just tell us to threaten to cancel so they’d upgrade us.

Thanks for the tip, I wouldn’t have expected their website to have info to stop renting their equipment. What is the benefit to you for keeping their unit? Just tech support?

 

[W800]

One thing that Xfinity does with their modems is prevent you from using any DNS except for their "75" DNS. I run a VPN on my computer, so not a big deal - but still irritating. They literally disable the setting so that it can't be changed. Then of course, they sell your DNS lookup data as well to advertisers.

I also run an ad blocker on my desktop, but on my phone I noticed that I was getting a lot of ads for video games. I don't game. Realized that it was a housemate who was triggering this.

I was like f-that!!

Now for my phone I run my own AWS VPN and use the Ad Guard DNS on the VPN end.

I also made it so the rest of the house connects through a mesh. That mesh uses https://www.cloudflare.com/teams/gateway/ for its DNS so I can keep the rest of the house from picking up malware. It's just a fancy way to control DNS - but with a lot of granularity. Like, if I was a dick - I could add a rule that would prevent them from visiting porn sites. Highly recommended for work. Free for up to 50 users, BTW.

Some day I am just going to buy my own cable modem, lol.

As a side note - you can run your own OpenVPN server for free on AWS for a year if you choose a free tier EC2 server. Setup is not hard if you know how to SSH and change user passwords.

Sorry for all the acronyms.

 

[UDRider]

I have been using motorola modem and linksys router for a while. No problem, but I also don't have fancy stuff like xfinity voice or security.
Fuck paying them monthly fee for their shitty hardware.

 

[Yakoo752]

I run a tplink modem and a dream machine.

With my dream machine ALL of my IOT are on a separate VLAN, all of my mobile devices are on a separate VLAN, all of my computers are on a separate VLAN (see the trend here), and home automation on a separate VLAN.

The Dream Machine is "prosumer" level infrastructure. Mesh's easily with Ubiquiti WAPs/APs and has a ton of features. Overkill for the common plug and play consumer but if you want to nerd out, it's all there to play with.

 

[Abacinator]

I run a netgear CM1000 cable modem and an Asus RT-AC68U router/WAP. If you have their VOIP service you'll need a modem that also supports telephony.

Our setup works perfectly for 2-3 kids doing zoom school and my wife's WFH job which includes Talkdesk video conferencing. Streaming is flawless too. If I were an actual gamer I'd consider a hard-wired setup, but we rent so I'm loathe to pull cable ina place I don't own.

 

[TylerW]

I don’t trust booster pods I’m afraid they spy on you. (Yes I have a smartphone but I can at least put it away when I want to pretend I have some privacy)

You know that Comcast already analyzes your network and traffic metadata, retains it and will happily sell it to third parties as advertising info, right?

 

[HappyHighwayman]

I got my own modem and I have it wired to two apple extreme routers. One on ground floor one on middle floor to cover that and upper floor. Probably need an upgrade

 

[tzrider]

What is the benefit to you for keeping their unit? Just tech support?

That's the primary reason.

We have their voice service too, so replacing them is non-trivial. I spent the better part of a year dealing with their tech support over periodic short outages, 20 seconds each, several a day. They blamed the gateway, sent a replacement. Same issue. They blamed the wiring in my home. Tech eventually came out, no trouble found. Problem persisted. I was running three external uptime monitors against my network and all reported the same outages.

The gateway I had would run for a few days, then the web UI would become unresponsive. The network would still function, but the periodic outages continued.

A Comcast Business rep contacted me on LinkedIn to try to sell services to my company. I described my natural distrust of his company based on my residential experience. He offered to help and escalated to their operations center, who rolled a truck that day and found evidence of a squirrel having chewed the wires at the pole. They made a repair. No change in network behavior.

I eventually called again and was close to cancelling service, now that fiber is available in my neighborhood. After some back and forth, they offered to send me their latest gateway, which wasn't yet fully rolled out. I agreed. I arrived, I plugged it in, set it to bridge mode (which makes it behave like a modem only) and have had solid connectivity ever since.

It would have been pretty hard to get them to pay anywhere near this much attention to the issue if I were running my own gateway. For me, it's currently the lesser evil to keep renting the thing.

 

[RS250 Chester]

My nephew recently got Comcast and he already had his own modern and router. Comcast told him if he used his own equipment they would lower his speed or something among those lines, can't remember exactly. But it was shitty enough that he's using Comcast equipment. Was it just a sales ploy to rent their equipment

 

[Yakoo752]

My nephew recently got Comcast and he already had his own modern and router. Comcast told him if he used his own equipment they would lower his speed or something among those lines, can't remember exactly. But it was shitty enough that he's using Comcast equipment. Was it just a sales ploy to rent their equipment

Yep