[Cialug] new cable modem advice

[Jerry Weida]

Try to avoid picking up a Moto 4220 (they should all have been
recalled by now I hope).  The Moto SB5100 is a pretty good modem. 
There are some things about Motorola that don't affect people right
now, but may in the future.

They have really poor DOCSIS support.  They bend the rules as much a
they can and in the "taking full advantage of bandwidth given"
category, it really pays off.  The Moto's seem to have the best
throughput of any of the cable modems that I've tested.

However, these "minor deviations" from the DOCSIS 1.1 and PacketCable
1.0 specs have cost us some man hours in trying to get their modems
working with VoIP.  There are workarounds that we can do, but they
don't always seem stable.

Also, their deviation from the DOCSIS 1.1 spec caused a bit of a
problem we someone learned that the bridge between the ethernet port
and the cable RF side wasn't disabled during the initial boot process.
 This combined with the "deviation" that a modem isn't suppose to
accept a download of configuration from the ethernet side caused it so
that the Motorola's could be "hacked" very easily and we ended up
suspending several peoples accounts and dropping them due to constant
violations.  Of course, this point probably won't sway you away from
the brand :)  But it does illustrate Motorola's abillity to pass the
spec tests, but not particularly adhere to the specs.

Just my $.02


On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 08:18:44 -0600, Barry Von Ahsen <barry@vonahsen.com> wrote:
> Stephen Hawkins wrote:
> > Barry,
> >
> > On Thursday 17 March 2005 14:59, Barry Von Ahsen wrote:
> >
> >>as I was complaining about last night, I'm about to ditch my P.O.S. RCA
> >>cable modem, and I'm soliciting advice for it's replacement.  From what
> >>I can google, the Motorola surf board 5100 seems pretty good.
> >
> >
> > After having a wearying number of arguments with the tech support folks at my
> > current ISP, and several others in the past. Arguments over things that
> > should have been detected by them, and fixed before I ever called, I decided
> > that I would pay the 3 bucks a month and use their Cable Modem no matter what
> > kind it was.
> >
> > I did this because it seemed to me that every time I called my ISP to let them
> > know that they had a problem, they told me:
> >
> > A. Reinstall Windows even though I don't use Windows.
> > B. You have a bad cable modem.
> >
> > Where upon I could then tell them, "No, it is your cable modem".  It is
> > amazing, right after I point this out, magically the cable modem starts
> > working, and is no longer the culprit.  It has saved me endless arguments.
> >
> 
> I did have that thought, since I called once and got some grief about
> having a router that didn't = {linksys|dlink|microsoft}.  I checked my
> Dad's last night and it's a Moto 4200 (1 rev back), so I may go with the
> official, if it won't take 3 weeks to get it
> 
> -barry
> 
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