[BBLISA] comcast ... again

[K. M. Peterson]

On 20Oct10, at 07:26 , Edward Ned Harvey wrote:

>> From: Carl Alexander [mailto:xela at MIT.EDU]
>> 
>> Um.  I can only assume from this that your friend is renting his
>> router from Comcast, rather than using one of his own?  Because
>> the normal thing for computer-proficient people to do is to
>> buy a WRT54GL and run their NAT off that.  Which will happily
> 
> So, you buy your own cable modem?  Last I checked, you couldn't connect a
> Coax to a WRT54G.  Other than that ... The coax comes into the house,
> connects to this comcast supplied router, which has a wifi antenna and some
> wired data ports...  Serves up 5 IP addresses.  It's got a public IP on the
> coax side, and that's it.
> 
> Maybe you have to specify, "I want a dumb cable modem so I can run my own
> router" so they don't give you a crippled router cable modem?
> 

You're correct... or, in my case, I have the higher-speed tier, and there wasn't much of a question: they gave me a modem.

I had a router from them previously.  Like someone else said here, I really don't want Comcast inside my network at all.  I didn't want them to have control over my WAP, either, and they didn't offer 802.11n at that time.  At one point, IIRC, the router/WAP package ("home networking package"?) specified the ability to have 5 home devices.  I haven't had any issues with my setup with them.  I don't see any advantage to a technical user having an "all-in-one" modem/router/WAP.

I tried at first to even purchase my own DOCSIS 3.0 modem so I could even control that part of the equation.  The Motorola SB6120 wasn't available at the time to purchase, but I see Amazon has it for $81.  And there may even be people on this list who have an old DOCSIS modem in their basement they would be happy to part with - I gave mine away last year.

Comcast is actually doing some fairly good things these days, from my perspective.  They are working on IPv6 rollout; they have 6to4 access and 6RD (I don't think my IOS-based Cisco supports 6RD, so I am using a tunnel from he.net for the moment) and they are trying to help with things like botnet detection.  One of their guys gave a good presentation at NANOG recently on their plans... for what I pay, I think the service is pretty good.  

Some months I might get a bit closer to the 250GB transfer limit than I'd like, but they even introduced their own traffic monitor so anyone can see what their usage is (I'd written my own before this).  But like any other company in technology, there are certain questions I just know I'd be wasting my time asking (like a colleague who called their "business class" sales guy and asked about BGP...).

Happy to help with any specifics or pointers offline if your friend needs the help.

_KMP

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--
K. M. Peterson                                 voice:  +1 617 731 6177
Boston, Massachusetts, USA                       fax:  +1 206 338 6427
    Full contact information at http://kmpeterson.com/contact.html 

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