My 16 year old Cisco DPC3010 DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem and 10 year old Cisco LinkSys E1200 router were found to be in dire need of replacement when my ISP made a service call about flaky 100/10 service.

After reviewing their list of compatible cable modem options I ordered online a NETGEAR CM1200 DOCSIS 3.1 10GB Cable Modem ($175) and a modest LinkSys AC1200 Dual band WiFi Router ($39).
No need for anything more sophisticated like WiFi 6 or a Mesh Router. Already have a LinkSys AC750 dual band extender that works well for a smart TV the furthest from the router.

Recently my $10 loyalty discount expired on our 100/10 service so the monthly cost went from $49.95 to $59.95. With the new high speed modem we ended up with a 1GB/50 plan for $20 more per month for the next two years ($79.95) with our $20 loyalty discount.

Here is what we're getting now. Yowser!

Nice!

The bastards at Xfinity contacted me to come in and pick up a new router a couple years ago. My current one was working fine but the guy was correct when I picked up a new one when he explained that after so many years, it's to your benefit to upgrade anyway, cable box and modem.
I'm one of the few who doesn't buy my own as I've had a couple bust and they replace them for "free" (*).
When I got home I was getting x4 the previous speed.

Went through this recently myself. Went from ISP modem to my own Moto modem. Got rid of TV service and upped my data rate (which I didn't really need).

I halved my monthly bill. As long as I break even on the modem, I'm happy. I wanted to opt out of this stupid free wifi for all stuff.

I thought my cable internet was fast, but yours is smoking!

My speed test is 200 Mbps down, 16 Mbps up

I'm currently connecting a new office, and the promised speeds in the new location are as you've indicated above. Capped at 2TB data a month. In one of the largest cities in Alaska.

The monthly cost is $401 before taxes and fees. We're expecting about $500 a month on average.

Once again...we wait for starlink to change the face of Alaska.

quote:

Originally posted by AKSuperDually:
I'm currently connecting a new office, and the promised speeds in the new location are as you've indicated above. Capped at 2TB data a month. In one of the largest cities in Alaska.

The monthly cost is $401 before taxes and fees. We're expecting about $500 a month on average.

Once again...we wait for starlink to change the face of Alaska.

Yikes that's expensive plus a data cap.
My ISP's 1GB/50 plan has unlimited data.
FWIW Midco (MidContinent) is in the process of upgrading their network to 10GB service.
This in flyover country too FWIW.

Business rates have always been higher.

The cheapest business rate I can get from the local phone company is $905 a month.

I pay for gigabit service but only get 350 download. The upload is close to 900 though. I'm stuck with it for now. I do use the upload for backups to three cloud services I use.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I pay for gigabit service but only get 350 download. The upload is close to 900 though. I'm stuck with it for now. I do use the upload for backups to three cloud services I use.

Rey,
With that kind of screwed up speeds on a 1GB plan I'd be all over my ISP to figure out what's wrong and fix it.

SIGforum works well on just 1Mbps. What are you going to do with the other 976Mbps?

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:


Rey,
With that kind of screwed up speeds on a 1GB plan I'd be all over my ISP to figure out what's wrong and fix it.

I tried the first week. They sent a guy who didn't really understand. He showed me he had to connect via a ethernet cable, boot into safe mode, and run the app on his laptop to show it was close to gigabit upload.

After I settle in, I may follow up again. Thanks for the prod.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
He showed me he had to connect via a ethernet cable....

After I settle in, I may follow up again. Thanks for the prod.

Ah, if you're running WiFi, speeds are always slower than with an ethernet cable. It may be that your WiFi router isn't capable of supporting 1GB speeds. My ancient router was only rated to 300Mbps for example but still choked when trying 200/20 instead of 100/10.

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:


Ah, if you're running WiFi, speeds are always slower than with an ethernet cable. It may be that your WiFi router isn't capable of supporting 1GB speeds. My ancient router was only rated to 300Mbps for example but still choked when trying 200/20 instead of 100/10.

I went with a "gigabit" ethernet cable. Still nowhere near gigabit download speeds.

^^^^^^ when upgrading hardware, keep in mind you just speed up things until they reach the next chokepoint.
The ethernet cable might not be it.
Must find out how does the NIC cards perform vs the router. Drivers might be an issue, MTU , duplex configuration and/or auto settings, etc.

0-0

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I went with a "gigabit" ethernet cable. Still nowhere near gigabit download speeds.

1) As your tech noted, you measure ISP speed with one device hooked to the modem. Cuts out any infrastructure deficiencies and any bandwidth potentially taken by other devices in the house.

2) At Gigabit speeds my installer said to use an actual installed program like this one from Speedtest vs. a web page. More direct measurement, not dependent on remote site performance or browser issues.

3) Your earlier numbers, with a higher upload than download (if borne out by the remeasurement done per above) are odd.

quote:

350 download. The upload is close to 900 though

Normal ISP delivery is much faster download than upload. If your tests continue to show much faster uploads than downloads, then that's something the ISP should be able to address. The good news is that if those numbers bear out then it would appear there should be plenty of bandwidth on your system to deliver your Gigabit speeds once the ISP is done tweaking.

I did a recent install using a Netgear dual-band wifi router this last month. Since I'm strictly using wifi to connect my devices I don't have anything near those blazing speeds but I have a small one story 3/2 home and the wifi speeds are adequate at on average 75-100mbps download and 20mbps upload.

The tech set up and tested all my wifi device connections and separated which band they would use most efficiently. I just purchased a Samsung 4k smart TV and it's very close to my router using a 5GHz connection along with the Apple TV streaming device and they work good so far.

I read about the pros/cons of using both the 2.4 and 5GHz bands and set the home devices up accordingly. So far, so good. The Netgear router is doing it's job.

quote:

Originally posted by .38supersig:

Business rates have always been higher.

The cheapest business rate I can get from the local phone company is $905 a month.

Gaaaahhh! $905! I'm paying $45.00 / month guaranteed "forever," including all taxes and junk fees, at the hangar. Business rate, the residential sales people would not talk to me, as the airport is not zoned residential.

It's DSL, so not super fast, but totally adequate for my needs: a "hand-shake" every second with the fire alarm monitoring company, light email use, and the occasional updating of a QuickBooks data file via DropBox.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I went with a "gigabit" ethernet cable. Still nowhere near gigabit download speeds.

1) As your tech noted, you measure ISP speed with one device hooked to the modem. Cuts out any infrastructure deficiencies and any bandwidth potentially taken by other devices in the house.

2) At Gigabit speeds my installer said to use an actual installed program like this one from Speedtest vs. a web page. More direct measurement, not dependent on remote site performance or browser issues.

3) Your earlier numbers, with a higher upload than download (if borne out by the remeasurement done per above) are odd.

quote:

350 download. The upload is close to 900 though

Normal ISP delivery is much faster download than upload. If your tests continue to show much faster uploads than downloads, then that's something the ISP should be able to address. The good news is that if those numbers bear out then it would appear there should be plenty of bandwidth on your system to deliver your Gigabit speeds once the ISP is done tweaking.

Thanks for chiming in. Yes, I tried that with one device connected by cable at the modem. Same result. Let me give you a sitrep to see if it gives you any insight. The tech was placing the blame on the builder as the builder installed the wiring and equipment. It's a community of stand alone rental single and duplex houses. What I notice is I see a lot of the other wifi signals from the different houses even though I'm in a corner unit separated by 50 yards from the two closest units. It's suppose to be fiber net gigabit. So I don't know if my thinking makes sense but I think I'm sharing a community download pipeline and it's not really enough to provide gigabit download speeds for each unit.

2) Speedtest is the one I've been using.

3) Yes, the numbers I said are what I get. See the pic of the test I ran just now. It really is true because I've done uploads for backups with the normal 25 upload and it takes me about 8 to 12 hours for each of my three backups that I do. I usually start them before I go to bed. Now, I just zip through.

Interesting. Given these results are from your own modem, whatever wires the builder put in, those wires are not limiting your bandwidth.

The plethora of community WiFi can definitely affect your planning/configuring for your own WiFi setup (tackle that later) but that isn't affecting the download/upload speeds while you're hooked to the modem with a cable.

To me it looks like your line is getting a little over 1.2 Gb/s bandwidth, while their system/modem is only allocating you a bit over 300Mb/s download and dedicating the rest of the bandwidth to upload : ~25% download/75% upload. In a normal setup, it'd be about 90/10 the other way, and if they did that on your line, you'd get your Gigabit speeds.

Anyway, your results should support your calling CenturyLink support. Assuming you'd rather have a normal allocation of your bandwidth (and assuming you're paying for Gigabit download speeds) they should be able to either change it on their end or schedule a truck roll.

Depending on how the ISP defines its speed guarantees (usually it's based on download speed) you might even ask for a partial refund for selling you Gigabit service but not delivering same. They might not go for it, but it may be worth a try.

Best of luck!

Visiting AZ in June, I finally had enough of my ex-MIL's wifi speed. Sub- 1.0 Mbps. Seriously. Turns out she had 26Mbps with CenturyLink but her wireless router was far behind the times. They twiddled with the cables, swapped in a new $200 router, changed the deal to "up to 100Mbps", and wifi was lightening fast. Real snappy. That is with DSL.

Now she can Zoom her septuagenarian chair workouts in decent resolution.