Modem or Router Upgrade?

admiraleddy24 · April 20, 2016

So I was paying for 50Mbps/5Mbps speeds. My company has increased my speeds for free to 300Mbps/20Mbps. With my current setup of modem and router, my computer with an intel 8260 chip I get wireless speeds on my computer of 117/11 with about 3/5 bars of signal. But I get the same speeds wired.... I have a Motorola sb6141 modem with max transfer speeds of 343 Mbps. A netgear r7000 router an AC1900 router (600Mbps 2.4ghz and 1300Mbps 5.0ghz). I have about 20 some devices or more in my house. Should I invest in a better modem? Or router?

Donut417 · April 21, 2016

2 hours ago, admiraleddy24 said:

So I was paying for 50Mbps/5Mbps speeds. My company has increased my speeds for free to 300Mbps/20Mbps. With my current setup of modem and router, my computer with an intel 8260 chip I get wireless speeds on my computer of 117/11 with about 3/5 bars of signal. But I get the same speeds wired.... I have a Motorola sb6141 modem with max transfer speeds of 343 Mbps. A netgear r7000 router an AC1900 router (600Mbps 2.4ghz and 1300Mbps 5.0ghz). I have about 20 some devices or more in my house. Should I invest in a better modem? Or router?

That is a lot of devices Im not going to lie. I would tell you to pull up your modems logs, but as of right now there is a security issues with the SB6141 which can cause hackers to gain access to the modems config pages and reset your connection. I know for a fact Comcast has us blocked from accessing them pages. Im sure your ISP might also. Im not familiar with that router, but I am with the modem.

Did you reboot your modem? And Router? Because According to the DOCSIS 3.0 Wikipedia page With 8 down stream and 4 upstream you should be able to handle that. You could try direct connection between the modem and a computer. Then run the speed test. This way you can pull the router from the equation. IF you get max speeds then you know its the router. Also check for firmware updates for the router. Maybe its a software bug. If all else fails call your isp. Maybe ask about the downstream and upstream signal stats.

Im very certain it should not be the modem. Only because we pay for 75/10 and we get 90/15 because Comcast over provisions about 20% or so. So I know that modem is capable of better speeds at least on the upstream. But I would take the router out of the network equation and do a simple test with just the modem.