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I have Spectrum cable Internet. I use their modem, but I supply my own router, and they've never given me any trouble. In fact, they recently upgraded my modem
by msla 7y ago
I have Spectrum cable Internet. I use their modem, but I supply my own router, and they've never given me any trouble. In fact, they recently upgraded my modem (from a Scientific Atlanta 2203C to a Ubee E31U2V1) and they didn't send me a router. The Ubee E31U2V1, like the Scientific Atlanta 2203C before it, only has one Ethernet port, and their official guide to getting the new modem working involved rebooting an external router, so there's no possible way they have a problem with customer-owned routers.
Which works out great for me. I can use OpenWRT with no hassle.
More to the point, I see the cable stuff as "ISP land" in that it's directly interfacing with their internal hardware, and so has to dance to their tune very directly, whereas Ethernet and TCP/IP are common, and so will obey my rules in my home. I don't expect my modem to perform adblocking, which is why my router does it, and I'm not going to be stupid and try to "uncap" my modem to get more speed, so I don't see a point to being able to provide my own cable modem. As long as I can own the router which provides the only path in and out of my LAN, I can do everything I'm capable of doing anyway, as far as I can see.
- pmh 7y ago> I don't see a point to being able to provide my own cable modem Other cable providers (e.g. Comcast) charge you a monthly fee (~$5-15) to rent their modem. Buying a modem gets cost effective pretty quickly.
- AmericanChopper 7y agoI use my own one because the $2 Huawei ones perform really poorly, they’re the source of a large portion of general internet performance issues for a lot of people.
- LeonM 7y ago> I'm not going to be stupid and try to "uncap" my modem to get more speed I think this modem "uncapping" thing has mostly been an urban myth. Maybe there were some really early cable modem systems in the 90s where that would have been possible, but AFAIK with DOCSIS the speed is regulated by the CMTS [0], not the modems. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_modem_termination_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_modem_termination_system
- grecy 7y ago> I think this modem "uncapping" thing has mostly been an urban myth. Maybe there were some really early cable modem systems in the 90s where that would have been possible, but AFAIK with DOCSIS the speed is regulated by the CMTS [0], not the modems. It depends in precisely what CMTS is running, what firmware it has and the ISP's willingness to replace/upgrade old hardware at great expense. At the last telco I worked for we had about 12 CMTS's, and 2 of them were holding up a bunch of upgrades because of their age. One of the things they specifically couldn't do was provision the speed of the individual circuits.