- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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Get your own gateway. Don’t rent theirs.
You can buy cable modems cheap, too. No reason to use their crap at all.
“cheap” is a relative term.
Nobody should be buying a DOCSIS 3.0 modem these days. They are obsolete and for some reason still being sold.
A decent DOCSIS 3.1 modem is at least $200. A Next Gen like S34 is at least $220. At least at the big blue big box store. And then you have to get your own wifi.
(However, that big blue store also will give you a 15% discount on any networking purchase if you recycle an old network device…I traded in an old modem but you should be able to find a switch or router at a thrift store and still come out ahead)
It pays for itself pretty quick (by not paying rental fees), but that doesn’t necessarily make it cheap.
I absolutely prefer using my own equipment, and do…but it’s also worth mentioning that in many markets, Xfinity removed data caps if you have a rented modem.
If a DOCSIS 3.0 modem still can’t be saturated by the tier of internet someone is paying for, what advantage would 3.1 have?
If your provider has implemented it (Comcast is the only one i know of in north america) then Active Queue Management is a huge quality of life improvement that you won’t know you were missing unless you already had a router that implements queue management. https://www.cablelabs.com/blog/how-docsis-3-1-reduces-latency-with-active-queue-management
Not buying another modem when the ISP quietly upgrades the CMTS and makes more speed available in your neighborhood.
Yeah I recently switched from cable to fiber (finally available), and prior I was using an old as fuck modem/router that capped at 500Mbps. My internet at fastest was 380. I rarely transfer files over the network, so figured why bother? (I did have Gen1 Google Mesh though to cover dead spots). I had a bit of a shopping splurge when I got fiber. Nothing crazy, just an upgraded mesh and a switch (Why the fuck does Frontier provide an ONT with 8 ethernet ports but only one is active?)
At least in my case, my DOC IS 3.0 modem was having connectivity issues. My neighbor in another apartment had similar issues: dropped connections, slower than expected speeds, etc. Switching to DOCSIS 3.0 modems solved the problem. I guess Comcast upgraded their hardware and it wasn’t compatible with my modem anymore
I used docsis 3.0 and it worked just fine. So why not?
Because docsis 3.0 standard is nearly 20 years old at this point and 3.1 is significantly faster. Docsis 3.1 is only 15, but 4 (which is still 8 years old) probably isn’t supported by your ISP yet. But the speed difference is quite noticeable. 3.0 will theoretically do 1gbps down, and 100-200 up, but 3.1 could do 10 down and 1gbps up. In the age of symmetrical fiber internet those upload speeds are dire. 3.1 realistically gets you a symmetrical gig connection.
Ah, so 3.0 is fine if your internet still sucks. Got it.
Exactly. So it’s great for xfinity
Xfinity likely wouldn’t allow you to use it at this point. They’ve been pushing people toward 3.1 for a while now, and won’t register a new 3.0 modem.
I have a 3.1 modem but my ISP only has 3.0 speeds as far as I can tell. 1000/100 is their highest plan so the extra doesn’t really do anything.
My modem is 32x8 and I can see in the UI that only 4 of the 8 upload channels are actually bonded to reach that 100, which is half of the 200 that 3.0 can theoretically do.
Rental? How much is rental?
It looks like DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 are for coax which should be avoid anyway . VodafoneZiggo is already starting with DOCSIS 4.0.
In my neighborhood you get a choice between coax or nothing.
5G modems are probably an option.
Edit: never said it was a good option, just that it was an option.
While that may be “an option”, 5G sucks compared to coax service.
Both are inferior to fiber by a long shot, but wired will always be better than cellular, which is limited spectrum and inconsistent.
As others have said, highly location dependent.
I switched from Xfinity to T-Mobile 4 years ago because tmobiles speed (raw speed) blew Xfinity out of the water…especially for upload. Latency and jitter suffered a bit but not enough to greatly effect voice calls. It didn’t help my online gaming skills, but likely would’ve if I were a higher-caliber gamer. For me, the latency between chair and gamepad was much more impactful.
However Xfinity did some upgrades in my area and the roles have reversed so I’m back to Xfinity. Tmo is still absolutely usable, but Xfinity now offering 250mbps upload makes my mouth water.
It depends a bit on where you are and what you need, the speed of my 5G modem was a lot quicker than the coax options for the same money, and it was decently stable. My only issue was that I had like no upload speed.
I was also point out it was an option and it has it’s use cases
Highly location dependent. We have useable cell service in our house but Internet over 5G is slow.
Can confirm, I live out in the countryside with only coax available, and a measly 1Gbit down 150Mbit up and 9 - 11ms ping. No caps.
Wait, that’s awesome and steady and reliable. Expensive sure but with heavy multiperson usage and no noticeable issues, I am wondering WTF you’re on about unless it’s some weird edge case?
Maybe you are referring to predatory business practices like oversubscribed lines? That’s not a technical problem.
Coax is generally a terrible and more expensive option, lower speeds all around and a worse ping. Especially now with fibre being so standard you shouldn’t go for Coax if you have the choice.
Currently I do not have the choice so I have to pay 40 euro a month for 100mbps down and 25mbps up, with fibre I get symetrical gigabit for 45 euro a month or 400mbps symetrical for 40 euro. That’s 16 times the upload speed for the same money. And the first party with their coax (VodafoneZiggo) sells their coax as a fiber-cable. Which is just misleading bullshit.
Heck the 5G modem I had was unstable at times, but the download was 100-200mbs and I paid 25 euro a month for that.
I still use coax because I buy internet from a reseller third party and this is what they have. I have 400/50 for 35$, which is a lot cheaper yhan the competitors. No reason for me to change.
Like I responded in the other comment, I can get fibre with 4 times the download speed and 16 times the upload speed for the same amount of money. And that is pretty standard since it is apparently a way cheaper thing to offer for companies.
I can’t get anything cheaper than that because it’s a price I got when the reseller started business and as long as I don’t switch, I get that price.
Good for you that you can get better, but coax still has its place until internet providers up their game, but I won’t hold my breath.
I wouldn’t trust them to not randomly enable WiFi, but you can also use their modem but disable any built in WiFi on it & still use your own router. ISPs continue to try to bundle their modem & router, which gives them complete access to your home network. Some lucky people have found fiber providers that let them use their own SFP.
Can you use your own modem? I thought you had to use theirs?
Yes, look on their website for compatible models, there’s a handful of affordable ones, many which perform better on higher tier connections too. Been using my own modems with Comcast for 25 years.
Well sheeit. What about Spectrum?
I’m on Spectrum and have tons of friends that always complain they’re shit. Spectrum itself isn’t shit, it’s the garbage equipment they set you up with.
Make sure whatever you get works well with IPv6. For whatever reason IPv4 can go out at random but their IPv6 has never failed me (in the Los Angeles area at least).
I have always had my own router, just not the modem.
And the only problem I have is intermittent outages, repeatedly increasing the price without my knowledge or consent, and high latency.
I bought my current one because IPv6 failed to provision on the one they gave me when I moved to a bigger apartment just two units away. I found some post on Reddit about the problem and it mentioned one that “ignores” the lack of IPv6 provisioning and does it anyway (I’m a programmer and IT geek but I don’t really understand cable/DOCSIS well).
If the modem they provided is just a modem and it works well, I don’t think there’s much reason to get rid of it. But personally if it’s an all-in-one box that has “bridge” mode I’d still run away and just go with my own modem.
Yes. Same thing, probably different models.
Probably even the same models as long as they’re using cable internet and not DSL.
In Europe that used to be the case, but that changed not that long ago. Now providers are legally obligated to allow you to get your own modem
No you can use your own modem with xfinity.
You can use your own. But at every single point they’re going to tell you that your brand new top of the line modem, is out of date and is probably the problem of any issue that you’re having. They try so hard to gaslight customers in believing that you need to use their white labeled equipment. They want you to use their stuff and pay the fees so they can resell the Wi-Fi, and they have full control over your device.
Use your own modem and open source long range router
open source long range router
Do you have a recommendation?
Asus Rog GT-AX6000 with Merlin OS looks interesting. Can check list of devices for OpenWRT also.
You need to use their modem quite often, but you don’t need to use their router. They’re usually “all in one” modem/router things these days, but they’re legally required to provide you with a modem in bridge mode if you ask — at that point, an Ethernet cable attached to their modem is effectively attached to the Internet, and you can put your own hardware inside (firewall, Wifi router, etc.).
While you need to connect to their IP gateway, you don’t need to use their DNS services or anything but their IP gateway service.
I use my own modem and my own router with XFinity.
I don’t think that’s true. Their techs may claim that, but you van buy compatible modems online and find a helpful phone support person to get the details you need. Read up a bit on it first because they’re not going to walk you through it.
I have always had my own router. What is bridge mode? Can I do that?
Bridge mode disables the router in the modem; if you have an admin account on the modem you should be able to enable it yourself; otherwise you need to get your ISP to enable it. It will turn off all the firewall and WiFi features on the modem.
I’ll check that out, thanks
I have successfully avoided cable up to this point, but I did use my own modem back when I used DSL. It wasn’t advertised anywhere, but I just took the details from their modem and called support for the last bit I needed and used my own. It worked well, and I had my router be separate so I was able to just toss the modem when I got better service.
Well yeah. That’s what their tech does. And it’s why I have my ISP’s WiFi offering disabled and the antennas removed and run their router in bridged mode, hooked up to equipment I own that doesn’t call out to the Internet.
Doesn’t matter for me, my neighbors use all that shit. There’s enough latent rf for them to triangulate literally everything happening nearby.
I live in an apartment building. I wonder if this is useless tech with dozens of WiFi networks from my neighbors going
If anything it’s far more dangerous tech due to that. Let’s say you live in 304; They know who lives in 303, 305, 203, 204, 205, 403, 404, 405, and the likelihood that your neighbors aren’t as tech savvy and use ISP provided routers and modems means that they can use all of those sources to create a 3d image of you and your apartment with the proliferation of 2.4ghz and 5ghz to create a high resolution image that can track your lip movements and even your keystrokes on a computer. That basically just becomes a multi lens 3d camera recording at 5000 fps. The only way to avoid this is to faraday your entire apartment which ironically makes your signal much higher due to the deployment of countermeasures. The ol’ “huh, interesting, what are they hiding?” approach.
What the actual Batman fuckery is this. I hope you are wrong or nobody is that motivated to do such things. Either way, scary! Where’s my tin foil hat?
I really fucking hope I’m just being paranoid, but this is absolutely possible given the already existing research. AI isn’t going to launch nukes, it’s just going to facilitate horrors beyond our wildest comprehension.
Edit: This article is from 9 years ago, before the current ai boom, we’re fuckin’ cooked. https://www.inc.com/joseph-steinberg/how-wifi-lets-people-read-your-lips-identity-you-and-read-your-writing.html
Faraday cage or bust.
Is your ISP know for robbing customers when they’re not home?
It doesn’t really matter… the data is managed by a third party in another country. I have no real control over who gets access to it, intentionally or otherwise. Better that the data just doesn’t exist in the first place.
At this point all the arguments about what nefarious could they possibly do with the data are busted. They answer is - our imagination and access to information is not rich enough to figure out today and it’s probably worse than what we can think of.
Yes but they also rob them when they are. Usually via hidden fees.
Didn’t read the article, but it’s possible to get a 3d map with wifi. They can probably see you.
There is no privacy or security.
They don’t need a 3D map, and the researchers who have rendered a 3D map need a lot of specialized software and resources.
Xfinity doesn’t need that. They only need to know when people are online, what they’re looking at, and who/how many people are watching TV, and if there’s indication of pets in the house. That gives them an advertising gold mine of data.
By default, WiFi Motion is set to detect even small amounts of movement in the motion-sensing areas, including motion caused by small pets.
holy shit lol
Oh boy, I can’t wait for this new wave of paranoid customers claiming their wifi is watching them. Thanks, comcast.
Well, it very well can be used for exactly that.
I remember when MIT had a paper on this around 2000
The show continuum used it too.
fucking Batman
I don’t really understand how this works, so struggle to see any benefits (only drawbacks😐). It does make me thankful my provider is a small local company. Not the fastest, but probably no spying.
If you are interested I can try and find the article on it but a few years ago an article came out where they were able to use wifi signals with enough accuracy that they could see a password that you were typing on your keyboard!!
But basically they use the way the wifi signal bounce off things to make an image in much the same way that echo location works
Like - I’m excited about sensors that uses higher frequency versions of this for health monitoring. I think that’s a perfectly valid use. But also, in my use, I’d be installing it as an IoT device on a network I control, feeding data to services I own.
This use - where it’s opt in for now, until they figure out how to monetize selling how much time you spend in front of the TV, in the kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom (paired with ‘anonymized’ data about what you’re looking at online in each space) is creepy as fuck.
Is it really “opt in” or is the opt in only for them to give you the information that they collect? I haven’t read through any terms of service for it but my assumption is they are already selling that data
That is nuts. I’ve always liked hardwired better but hard to do that with a mobile phone.
It’s been around for almost 4 years. Don’t use rental modems.
Different context but the first time I heard about this it was touted as the future for VR
DOCIS 3.1 involves more than just speed. No point going over the speed limit if all the traffic lights are timed based on a certain speed. https://www.cablelabs.com/blog/how-docsis-3-1-reduces-latency-with-active-queue-management
Mad at the concept, but at least it’s off by default. Had Xfinity for 2 years and was running my own modem and router anyway, so I’m all set if I decide to switch back at this point
