I recently found out that my normally cost-conscious father has been renting his modems from his ISP for like 25 years and for Christmas I want to give him the gift of not having to pay $15 a month to Comcast anymore, but I was hoping for some guidance.
He’s currently paying for 800mb/s and they have him Arris TG3482G wireless gateway.
He lives in a ~1700 sf one story (plus basement) housee. All three bedrooms (and maybe the kitchen?) are wired with with ethernet jacks if that matters. Both he and my mom have said the signal in their bedroom can occasionally get spotty (in the rough sketch of their house below, the router is in the basement roughly on the X, room with occasional coverage issues is red square). That initially made me think maybe I should look into a mesh network, but then I realized it could just be that the signal on those modem/router combos really is that bad and a decent traditional modem could suffice.
Their internet usage typically consists of your run of the mill web surfing and occasional streaming. My dad also works from home over the wired connection.
They recently moved their landline over to Xfinity, so the modem requires voice. The modems xfinity lists as compatible with their plan:
- NetgearCM2050V
- Motorola MT8733
- Arris T25
- Netgear CM1150V
- Arris SBV3202
- Netgear C7100V
- Motorola MT7711
- Arris SVG2482AC
- Arris SBV2402
Any thoughts on which modem and router would best fit their situation and needs? Obviously the CM2050V appears to be the superior modem on the list, but also seems like a overkill given their plan and usage habits (unless it’d be a good idea for a bit of future proofing in case their plan ever gets upgraded?).
Well in her case, she has Consolidated Communications as the ISP which is a smaller regional phone company that only provided painfully slow DSL until 3 years ago. When her contract was up this year I tried to see if they could give us the same discount she had before since in the past, that was something they would do (I guess because they knew they only had DSL and could only compete on price), but they said no and the only promotion they had was if she upgraded her 50/50 service (which for her is plenty given that all the cameras I have there upload more than she downloads) to gigabit but it would require them to change the equipment and bring in a mesh router and move on to their “Fidium Service” which is I guess the new branding they have for fiber.
Even discounted, it would cost more than what she’s paying now and I didn’t want to go deal with the installer again so we’re sticking with what we have for now, but the writing is on the wall that they’re going to be changing people over to the new service one of these days anyway so at least this way I don’t have to keep buying new equipment or have compatibility issues for which my equipment gets blamed.