Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Xfinity “Fastest In Home Wireless”

I received a letter from Comcast a few weeks ago that they were upgrading my speed tier to a higher speed that my current modem wouldn’t support. Color me impressed, they actually notified me about something that wasn’t going to cost me more? Unheard of.

Last night I received a large box filled with a new Xfinity modem, good quality coax cables wrapped in Velcro wire ties with expensive embroidered labels, a cheap Ethernet cable and a lot of instructions. I should have taken pictures I was that impressed. Then reality sunk in, it has the same wireless all in one gateway they gave my Father in law. Disappointed smile

He has a lower tier and the gateway they sent him is crippled, they claim he has to pay for the wireless to function yet, I was able to get it working, albeit at very low wireless power making it useless, also I was unable to install a wireless router in essence crippling his home network unless he pays Comcast extra fees to unlock it. I’ll be bringing my test gear to his house and I’ll be calling them to either get his gateway replaced or to allow us the ability to use a wireless router, my guess is his gateway needs to be replaced, we’ll see.

Back to my installation. I plugged it in and followed the directions, it didn’t work so I called the activation hotline and gritted my teeth because I’ve been on the hotline with Comcast before and it was a horrible experience. This time the automated process worked, yes, you read that right, I know shut the door right?? So I set it up and ran some tests, ok, this is much better than the 30Mbps down and 10Mbps up that I was getting before but it ain’t no 100Mbps. I’ll be contacting Comcast to find out if the speed upgrade has happened and if so when will it hit my house, but honestly, this is fine for my needs. See that ping time? SWEET!

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So now for the wireless tests, as configured from Comcast it was set to use channel 6, just like all the others they ship, and that AT&T ships etc… so signal range suffered because all of my neighbors are on the same channel. My D-Link DIR-655 had better signal coverage but strangely enough, lower performance. I set the Xfinity to channel 11 and signal coverage improved and performance to the internet was the same as my wired connections so I removed the D-Link from the network.

So, aside form the not 100Mbps benchmarks it works nicely and reduces the equipment I have to keep running down to this one device. Is it the fastest in home wireless, well for now in my home it is but people who know me know that I will tweak, oh yes I will!

Here is the device, it’s very light so God only knows how long it will last.. more to come after I have spent a few long nights tweaking. Smile

Xfinity_D3

 

 

Xfinity_D3_Back

8 comments:

Ronda said...

lol! Okay this is what I saw '*$&^%&$*& **&^% *(^&^%**&&% ^%%*&(*%$ &&* &*$%' vrooom...right over my head it went. I am such a lowly little moron. Not a clue! God forbid anything happens to you dude. I'm screwed!! All that equipment and stuff you have...spiderwebs dude, spiderwebs. I will be sitting with a little tv getting 3 channels because I will be totally clueless. Internet?? What internet? I will be playing games on a handheld little device from the 90's (battery operated) because that is the best I'll be able to do. Sigh...you better not die dammit!! hehehee! Love you hon! ;-)

Erik's RV Blog said...

I have no plans of exiting anytime soon hon. :)

Sam&Donna Weibel said...

One thing I will say I have Centurytel DSL with their Wireless Modem and consistantly hit 100mps on the wire and 54mps on the wireles, I have installed Alfa wireless extenders on both our laptops and plan to take them with us when we travel. The difference is quite astonishing. Sam

Rae said...

I set that same gateway up recently. I was a little intimidated when the BIG box arrived. I wasn't sure if I could do it. I only had one small issue before I got it working. I have no idea what speed I am achieving. Whatever it is I am happy.

Erik's RV Blog said...

Sam - Supposedly I have 100Mbps, but my call to Comcast last night resulted in "how did you get the new modem, your area isn't upgraded yet"...

You can imagine how the rest of the conversation went...

Erik's RV Blog said...

Rae - Congrats! Yeah they make it easy to configure. I remove all of their settings and go the custom route but for most people the out of the box config will work, just remember to change the routers login password and also the wireless passphrase.

The speed test for Comcast is
http://speedtest.comcast.net/

You can keep them honest by using another one.
http://www.speedtest.net/

Big Matt said...

Dang, that's big and fancy compared to the modem I setup at my folks place.

It has no built in wireless at all, it's an older motorola product and it's actually in the attic right by the feed coming into the house (to maximize signal strength as the cable lines in the house are split more than once to multiple rooms and devices) and has a network link running upstairs to the antique Centrino 333 mhz PC running upstairs with Smoothwall as the primary firewall/router.

It has a DMZ, through which I run a server, it's on a separate network adapter from the line that feeds the main backbone switch (unmanaged antique 100mbps full duplex critter) to which the N speed access point and the other rooms (All wired with their own network outlet) connect.

I built most of it back in junior college and it's been humming along ever since.

You could try a junk PC router in front of their modem and then feed the uplink to the wireless access point on the other side at your father's place, as far as the modem appears to be concerned, it just sees one PC, but its a much older modem than these newer units, though I recreated this configuration for a lab external test network (Uses comcast) and it worked just as well :).

Erik's RV Blog said...

Matt - I'm going to "explain" to the Comcast tech they need to send another gateway, period and I'll handle the install instead of their tech because the guy they send out had no clue.

I'll get 'er done. :)