Posted: 5/15/2007 6:42:41 PM EDT
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I have a older Toshiba PCX 1100U cable modem. Seems like I have had this thing for 6-7 years. Lately my speed has been terrible, with some timeouts and disconnects. If I power cycle the modem by unplugging it, it will run like a champ for an hour or so. I was wondering if the newer Motorola Surfboards would make a noticeable difference in my speed? I just did a speed test, and it is fluctuating between 250 KBPS and 850 KBPS. I am sure cable used to be allot faster than this. Anybody know if this Toshiba is outdated? |
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Honestly I would suspect the service provider is having a problem. I have had my SB4200 for almost 6 years. It has been rock solid other than service problems. Another thing I noticed Comcast here will start bandwidth throttling not long after starting torrent downloads. The speeds will get so slow the modem will lock, then you need to power cycle the modem. As for speed (not bandwidth) I have seen downloads as high as 1.3 Megabytes per second (Not megabit) Bandwidth is around 13Mbit on a good night. A good way to check is to see if you have a friend who has a cable modem you two could swap for the night. |
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I had my cable modem (Motorola) for over 6 years before Comcast sent me a free, modern replacement about two years ago. The old one worked fine after 6 years, but Comcast had upgraded their equipment and could offer higher speeds, but this required newer modems. I currently have their highest speed residential service, at 8Mb/s down, 768kb/s up. My download speed is over 5 times faster than a T1 line, and my upload speed is half the speed of a T1. And I can (and DO) sustain those speeds for days at a time on occasion, with no interruption of service due to usage. Having said that, Comcast has been ripping all of their old hardline cable out of the ground and pulling in a higher grade of coax that, according to the field supervisor of their contracting crew, should allow for higher speeds and more bandwidth for digital HD TV channels. Which is fine, except that I've had several day-long outages over the last couple of months due to this work being done. Fortunately, I had cellular backup, so I could continue running my company. -Troy |
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If you do not change the modem oil regularly, every 1TB of data or so, the internal processor will gum up and slow down. Then you have a real problem on your hands. A modem flush is a very expensive so you are probably better off getting a new one. Also make sure the cable connector is on tight as some of the data could be leaking out.  Seriously though, unless your cable provider has upgraded their system to new speeds above 6mbps or so and a DOCSIS version that the modem does not support, such as 1.1 or 2.0, there is probably nothing wrong. I had a Motorola SB4100 from 2001 that I used without any problem on Optimum Online's 10mbps/1mbps service. However, when they upgraded to 15mbps/2mbps last year and required DOCSIS 1.1 support to get the full speeds, I had to do a free modem swap. |