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Many years ago I lived in an apartment complex mostly populated by Comcast employees, with those horrid Comcast modems that broadcast two 2.4Ghz AP's a piece (Y

Many years ago I lived in an apartment complex mostly populated by Comcast employees, with those horrid Comcast modems that broadcast two 2.4Ghz AP's a piece (Yours and the "xfinitywifi" hotspot) My laptop picked up about 140 AP's from the couch. I could copy files from my NAS over Wi-Fi at a blistering 6KB/s! Sometimes bursting to 25KB/s

bscphil 6y ago
That's kind of surprising, actually, I'd expect a bunch of techy types to be running their own routers or at least to have manually configured their router. At least, assuming everyone in the building has Comcast as an ISP, I'd expect the number of xfinitywifi APs to be inversely related to the number of Comcast employees who live there.
- IntelMiner 6y ago
  It was next to a large call centre so "techy types" is pushing it for most of them Indeed they were surprised I DIDN'T want a Comcast modem, instead opting for a Surfboard/PFsense combo setup
- billh 6y ago
  I'm a techie type and have one of those comcast modems. I also have a descent Ubiquiti setup that rides behind it, but I'm kind of shoehorned into using their provided modem or alternatively paying for a modem myself and then paying another $35/month for "unlimited data" (Really crappy comcast policy but that's beside the point). Long story short, this modem will reset itself and require me to not only become aware that it's once again broadcasting the "xfinitywifi" hotspot, but to also redownload the xfinity app, configure the app with my information and try to remember where they buried the setting to disable this "feature". After disabling it somehow takes up to 24 hours to actually happen....
  - tzs 6y ago
    Have you taken into account that if you own your own modem, you aren't paying Comcast's monthly modem rental fee? In most areas, the modem rental is $14/month. Adding unlimited is $11/month, for a total of $25/month. In most areas, adding unlimited to your own modem is $30/month. Thus, in most areas, switching to your own modem with unlimited costs $5/month more.

bscphil 6y ago

That's kind of surprising, actually, I'd expect a bunch of techy types to be running their own routers or at least to have manually configured their router. At least, assuming everyone in the building has Comcast as an ISP, I'd expect the number of xfinitywifi APs to be inversely related to the number of Comcast employees who live there.

IntelMiner 6y ago
It was next to a large call centre so "techy types" is pushing it for most of them Indeed they were surprised I DIDN'T want a Comcast modem, instead opting for a Surfboard/PFsense combo setup
billh 6y ago
I'm a techie type and have one of those comcast modems. I also have a descent Ubiquiti setup that rides behind it, but I'm kind of shoehorned into using their provided modem or alternatively paying for a modem myself and then paying another $35/month for "unlimited data" (Really crappy comcast policy but that's beside the point). Long story short, this modem will reset itself and require me to not only become aware that it's once again broadcasting the "xfinitywifi" hotspot, but to also redownload the xfinity app, configure the app with my information and try to remember where they buried the setting to disable this "feature". After disabling it somehow takes up to 24 hours to actually happen....
- tzs 6y ago
  Have you taken into account that if you own your own modem, you aren't paying Comcast's monthly modem rental fee? In most areas, the modem rental is $14/month. Adding unlimited is $11/month, for a total of $25/month. In most areas, adding unlimited to your own modem is $30/month. Thus, in most areas, switching to your own modem with unlimited costs $5/month more.