A few days into our recent winter storm our internet connection conked out. A quick call to Comcast confirmed that it was offline. A few reboots didn’t help and Comcast suggested that i bring it in and exchange it for a new modem.
I couldn’t help think that it was weather related when the connection came back on the next day. I checked my cable on the outside and everything was clear. However, I couldn’t confirm this with anyone so I figured a free modem upgrade couldn’t hurt.
As I noted recently the network performance in the house is sluggish. The good news is that a new modem should help boost the speed into the house. i also re-oriented the antenna of the Buffalo router to get the antenna as high as i could, a few shelves above where the router was located.
I was given a new RCA modem and plugged it in. It turns out you need to get the modem authenticated against your Comcast account and this was blocking my ability to login to my Windows Live Family Filter account (which I need to do in order to use the web and authenticate the modem). Net net, i need another call to Comcast and they authenticated the modem over the phone. It also received a new firmware update over the cable.
The new modem and the tweaks worked. I went from one bar to two bars on the kitchen Dell XPS One, not bad, and my SpeedTest gave me about a 8 mbps throughput – almost double before the modem upgrade. Technically I should be getting 12 Mbps but I have a few more tweaks up my sleeve.
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