Replacing my Router: An Adventure !

[rojo]

I just learned last night that my electric company is planning to offer high speed internet... via cantenna. I'm pretty sure my house doesn't have line of sight to any broadcast towers; but even if it did, I'm apprehensive about the reliability and scalability of such tech. Still, I'm currently paying 80 bucks for 75/15 advertised speeds, and my fastest tests on beta.speedtest.net last night showed speeds of 18/11 with no QoS enabled in my router and no other downloads going. Comparing that to @panteragstk's speedtest porn, I can't help but hope for something better.

 

[Alex2507]

Woo-hoo! I replaced Cox's router/modem combo for rojo's recommended SB6190 modem and my old dlink 655 router. The speed test indicates that I'm still getting better than the 300/30 speeds. So far the dlink hasn't negatively impacted speed.

Cox tech support said that the SB6190 modem was only good to about 150 mbps and that my speed test was wrong. I downgraded the service to 100/10 mbps for the savings and now the speed test says I'm getting 130/13 mbps.

It goes without saying that making the new modem work and resetting the old router was challenging. I don't know how you guys do it.

beta.speedtest.net

Thanks for that too. They say I'm at 117/12 on a 100/10 plan. I don't think I see a difference. Like maybe Photobucket doesn't seem as sluggish but that could be a bad comparison from Windows 10 to Vista.

 

[rojo]

Cox tech support said that the SB6190 modem was only good to about 150 mbps and that my speed test was wrong.

Yeah, I think they left off a zero from their estimate. It'll do 1.4 Gbps down / 131 Mbps up.

I downgraded the service to 100/10 mbps for the savings and now the speed test says I'm getting 130/13 mbps.

It goes without saying that making the new modem work and resetting the old router was challenging. I don't know how you guys do it.

I bet if you had to do it a second time you'd find it easier now that you've done it once.

Thanks for that too. They say I'm at 117/12 on a 100/10 plan. I don't think I see a difference. Like maybe Photobucket doesn't seem as sluggish but that could be a bad comparison from Windows 10 to Vista.

The difference is you no longer have to pay $10 a month to rent someone else's modem.

 

[Alex2507]

Yeah, I think they left off a zero from their estimate. It'll do 1.4 Gbps down / 131 Mbps up.

Ahhh ... bad info from tech support is plain evil. Conversations that leave me dumber than when I started aren't what I need.

I bet if you had to do it a second time you'd find it easier now that you've done it once.

This is my second time! A guy on here gave me some instructions to reprogram a Verizon router/modem to be just a modem so that I could use the dlink DIR655 router which was suppose to be better at routing than the Verizon equipment. That set-up was incredibly stable.

The difference is you no longer have to pay $10 a month to rent someone else's modem.

Right. If this set up lasts 7 years like the last one, that will add up.

The new Cox router/modem already lost the internet and interrupted streams a couple of times in the 24 hours we used it. The SB6190/DIR655 combo is working fine. I got my devices all set up and there is 1 wireless item in the works now that PDawg sent me a Roku stick.

Maybe now I can go back into a techno-slumber and not be bothered for another decade. I did notice that all my cabling is Cat 5e so TLS can rest easy. It's a little odd though that one cable that I had made at work was a lot thicker than pre-terminated store bought cables but they all work fine.

Do you know why you get such sh!t service while paying for better? I did read somewhere that internet speeds weren't guaranteed but the discrepancy in your service is outrageous.

 

[TLS Guy]

Ahhh ... bad info from tech support is plain evil. Conversations that leave me dumber than when I started aren't what I need.



This is my second time! A guy on here gave me some instructions to reprogram a Verizon router/modem to be just a modem so that I could use the dlink DIR655 router which was suppose to be better at routing than the Verizon equipment. That set-up was incredibly stable.



Right. If this set up lasts 7 years like the last one, that will add up.

The new Cox router/modem already lost the internet and interrupted streams a couple of times in the 24 hours we used it. The SB6190/DIR655 combo is working fine. I got my devices all set up and there is 1 wireless item in the works now that PDawg sent me a Roku stick.

Maybe now I can go back into a techno-slumber and not be bothered for another decade. I did notice that all my cabling is Cat 5e so TLS can rest easy. It's a little odd though that one cable that I had made at work was a lot thicker than pre-terminated store bought cables but they all work fine.

Do you know why you get such sh!t service while paying for better? I did read somewhere that internet speeds weren't guaranteed but the discrepancy in your service is outrageous.

Just one thing, that 5e cable needs to be solid core.

 

[Alex2507]

Just one thing, that 5e cable needs to be solid core.

The 50' cable that I brought from work actually is solid core.

I've been having random internet drop outs. The 3rd visit from the cable company tech's revealed errors on their end which they in turn report to "maintenance". The tech's didn't know what or when "maintenance" would address the issue so I told them that one thing the cable company could know is that one more drop out would be the end of our subscription. They didn't give a sh!t. I could tell.

Good news is that they're all done telling me about my wires and equipment being the problem.

 

[panteragstk]

The 50' cable that I brought from work actually is solid core.

I've been having random internet drop outs. The 3rd visit from the cable company tech's revealed errors on their end which they in turn report to "maintenance". The tech's didn't know what or when "maintenance" would address the issue so I told them that one thing the cable company could know is that one more drop out would be the end of our subscription. They didn't give a sh!t. I could tell.

Good news is that they're all done telling me about my wires and equipment being the problem.

Sadly typical of cable companies to blame everything but their own equipment/installation.

I had people bring TVs into my old store and say "the cable company says my TV isn't working with HDMI" I proceed to plug in some random HDMI source that show up on their TV just fine. I say "TV is fine, they don't want to have to do anything". Customer wasn't happy with them after that. Of course.

They really hate it when someone with actual knowledge calls in and has tried everything they're going to tell me to try. Of course they make you do it again which never works.

I digress.