Thinkpads Forum

I signed up recently for Comcast's Xfinity service, they quote my service at 15/3. We had been on DSL for years and that service had been slowly deteriorating. I upgraded the wireless card in my T61 to an N-enabled version so I could run two networks in my home. The Linksys network provides a mixed signal (a/b/g) and the new Belkin N+ router provides N only. So, my T61 and our Windows 7 machines connect on N and the older machines connect to the older standard. This has worked out very well for the N network in that we are getting download speeds far in excess of the service quoted by Comcast. I will add that I returned the Comcast modem and purchased the Motorola DOCSIS 3.0 router to feed this network. All these minor upgrades along the way have provided quite a boost in speed.



The Motorola modem indicates I am getting channel bonding on the download stream even though we are not paying for the DOCSIS 3.0 service (which is available in our area, but much more $$$ than what I am paying).

The older laptops on the Linksys network cruise along at 20/3 or thereabout. FWIW, the T61 has the fastest download spped, even faster than either of the WIN7 machines.

Some cable companies require the MAC address of your network equipment to be registered. Easy solution: clone your registered computer's MAC address to your router, keep your wi-fi a "secret." Most routers provide the option to change the MAC address and even automatically grab it from the connected computer. Obtuse and show cable company knows no better, you get your wi-fi without paying an arm and a leg to plug in two boxes.

Tõnis wrote: > My neighbor said that he was required to register both modem and router.
What happens if you don't?

They won't be able to lie and claim that a problem was due to your equipment.

There is absolutely zero technical need for Comcast to know the MAC address of any of your networking gear past their modem. Heck, there's no need for them to even know you have any networking gear other than their modem.

In my experience, the less your ISP knows about your house's network, the better.

ThinkRob wrote: They won't be able to lie and claim that a problem was due to your equipment.

Amazing; it sounds like the bad old days when the phone company was being broken and you were first allowed to hook up your own phones. Then they'd claim it was "foreign equipment" that was the cause of any problem and ask bewildered customers what the Ringer Equivalence Number of their phone was!

Mike Blake wrote:Amazing; it sounds like the bad old days when the phone company was being broken and you were first allowed to hook up your own phones. Then they'd claim it was "foreign equipment" that was the cause of any problem and ask bewildered customers what the Ringer Equivalence Number of their phone was!

Sorry, I was being a bit too cynical there. It actually makes a bit more sense in this case, as very often people *do* manage to mess up their home network config. ISPs can't troubleshoot foreign equipment as easily, and given that the set of people who know what they're doing when it comes to home networking is almost certainly a subset of the people who actually try to set up a home network... well I can see the ISPs' point.

Of course when you're told by your DSL provider that "sorry, but our DSL isn't compatible with Linux", you tend to take a pretty skeptical view of anything that your ISP says...