Tag: speed

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Motorola SURFboard SB5101 Cable Modem

So I finally picked up a Motorola Surfboard SB5101 Cable Modem. Amazon.com finally had a deal for $43.99 – $20 rebate, making it only $23.99 shipped. Well, I had to pay sales tax too, but that’s because I’m in Washington.

There has been discussion on threads if the rebate is valid for Amazon.com given that the rebate form is hosted on Frys.com and that Amazon.com doesn’t actually list the rebate. However on the rebate form, it does state that Amazon.com is a valid retailer to purchase from. Then there was doubt about the UPC matching given that apparently there are 3 UPCs for this particular modem and something about the color of the box.

I got the modem today and the UPC do indeed match (6-12572-14827-3) and mine came in a blue/black box if that matters.

Previously, I had posted my results from Speedtest.net using my D-Link DCM-202 flashed with a special Comcast firmware yielding these results:

speed test with d-link dcm-202

A couple days later, TekMan showed me his results:

TekMan's Motorola SB5101 speed test

I was shocked how much of a jump there is just based on the cable modem alone! At this point I was determined to find a deal and get my own Motorola cable modem.

A week or 2 ago, there was a Circuit City deal for $20 after rebate, but required price matching to Office Depot and the fact that I had to actually visit a store discouraged me from attempting. When I saw this Amazon.com deal on SlickDeals, I knew I had to get it.

I ordered it last week for $44.99 + tax shipped and then it dropped a dollar further to $43.99. I did get my dollar back through Amazon.com’s 30 day price guarantee. Anyway, the modem arrived today and I called Comcast to update the MAC address so I can associate the new cable modem to my account. After giving him the information, he tells me the registration server was down and told me to try back at 3am. I had called around 11pm and the thought of me going internet-less for 4 hours was a scary thought.

So I sat around filing my rebate and did a couple other things while the clock ticked away. When the clock hit 1am, I knew I had to check to see if I can register my modem yet. I called and indeed the server was back up. Registration only took a few minutes and my internet was up and running in no time. Whoopee!

Of course, the first thing I do is another speed test:

My Motorola SB5101 speed test

This purchase was definitely worth it. I did 3 tests with my D-Link DCM-202 and they average to around 18000Kbps down and 1500Kbps up. I did 2 tests with my Motorola SB5101 and they average to 23000Kbps down and 3100Kbps up. Quite a performance increase for just $25! Of course, this could just be the initial burst speed, but I’m still excited about the speed increase.

Now I have a spare cable modem or if I sell it, it’ll probably pay for my Motorola cable modem completely!

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Comcast Blast Speed Tier

So Tekman IMs me today about this new Comcast Blast Tier (16Mbps down / 2Mbps up) and says that the D-Link DCM-202 cable modem (which I recommended) wasn’t compatible with it and it maxed out at ~8Mbps.

So I started digging around the internet for this and apparently many users were having problems getting the higher speeds from Comcast with this D-Link cable modem. Some people claimed that Comcast uses some proprietary “Burst” technology which wasn’t compatible with all cable modems. According to their FAQ, if you’re renting a modem from them, you can always ask for an upgrade to a newer model which is compatible. Others were saying that even though the Burst technology required DOCSIS 1.1 and the D-Link cable modem was DOCSIS 2.0 compatible, there was some header configuration screw up, where Comcast would only detect the cable modem as DOCSIS 1.0, which capped the transfer speeds to 8Mbps/768Kbps. Apparently if you call in and keep on escalating to a knowledgeable tech support, they would be able to manually set your DOCSIS to 1.1 and you’ll be able to get the higher speeds.

So first thing I go check is what tier I am on. Apparently I’m on the 8Mbps/768Kbps tier and Tekman said he was able to get the 16/2 Burst Tier for $42/mo. A bit bummed, I decided I could live with 8/768 for $30/mo.

However when I got home today, I received a letter from Comcast stating:

RE: 16 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload High-Speed Internet for no additional charge
…

I didn’t even bother reading the rest of the letter till later and went ahead decided to try flashing my modem. Apparently there’s a Comcast specific firmware you’re suppose to use. You can find the firmware on D-Link’s website: Product Support Resources for DCM-202. I thought it was a bit weird that the Comcast firmware was 2004 while the newest one was 2007, but I decided to go with the 2.0.1 Comcast firmware anyway.

The included PDF documentation was pretty straight forward, though they only included instructions for Windows XP. There was one missing instruction and that was the fact you should connect your computer directly to the cable modem’s ethernet port. When I was first trying to connect over the switch, it wouldn’t see the cable modem. Once I was able to ping it, the flashing was pretty painless. They did screw up the login information. The web login information remains dlink/dlink and not admin/hitron.

My newly flashed cable modem shows:

  • Class ID: 2
  • Max Downstream Rate (bps): 17600000
  • Max Upstream Rate (bps): 2200000
  • Upstream Channel Priority: 1
  • Guaranteed Min Upstream Data Rate (bps): 0
  • Max Upstream Transmit Burst (bytes): 0
  • Privacy Enable: 1

Unfortunately, I don’t have what it showed beforehand as I was too excited to get the newer speeds.

So I went and did a speed test and the results are:
comcast burst tier speed test

Sweet! 16/2 Burst Speed Tier for $30/month! I guess that might be ending soon, since it was only a 6 month promo. At 16/2, this matches Verizon FiOS’ $52.99 plan. Did I mention how sweet this is?!

UPDATE: Apparently it wasn’t the fact that Tekman wasn’t getting the higher speeds with the D-Link DCM-202 cable modem, but they weren’t as high as when he had tested the connection with a Motorola cable modem. He was getting 12000-16000Kbps down / 1000-1500Kbps up with the D-Link DCM-202, while with the Motorola cable modem, he was consistently getting 18000-20000Kbps down / 2000Kbps up. I did notice my upload speed was a bit on the weak side for 2Mbps. Looks like the cheapest Motorola cable modem on Amazon is ~$55.