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Comment by geocrasher | Hacker News Reader

I rent the router/modem/telephony gateway modem from Comcast. I have set up probably hundreds of wifi networks for home users over the years, and so it might seem odd that I spend money monthly with my ISP (Comcast) for something I could easily replace for a couple hundred bucks or less. But I have reasons.

1) I work from home. When my internet goes down, everything grinds to a halt. When I call my ISP, I want their first words to be "we are having an outage" not "we can't help you because you're not using our supported hardware."

2) When the router inevitably dies, I can take it down and get another one without too much trouble on the same day.

3) It actually works. Nicely. Why would I want to screw that up and give myself one more thing to configure/tweak to death? No thanks. I have real work to do. Until this thing gets in my way, it stays.

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Comcast has a list of "supported" modems and routers. I've never had issues with those. They cost $100 ea, and I've had them for 3 years now.

Also note, if you use a comcast-provided modem, it will by default have an "xfinitywifi" network that it also broadcasts, which anyone with an xfinity account can connect to, using your bandwidth. You can opt out, but this is "one more thing to configure/tweak".

The "xfinitywifi" uses bandwidth provisioned for its use and not the bandwidth provisioned for your use.

Fair. It does not contribute to your data caps or your provisioned speed with comcast. It does still use your router channels and provides the owner with zero benefit, so I don't understand why you'd ever allow it.

Zero benefit how? As a Comcast customer I can travel all over the place and connect to WiFi at high speed as long as I simply sign in once with my device, which authorizes my MAC address.

Yeah but you'll never connect your own xfinity wifi point. Even if you use xfinity wifi there's zero reason to not turn off the feature from your home router. Tragedy of the commons, etc etc

Because you like to use xfinitywifi and would feel bad disabling it while freeloading off of those who left in on.

If there was some sort of social pledge to create a system of free public wifi networks for passers-by, I could get behind that.

But xfinity-wifi is not for the public, it's only for people who pay Comcast. You're using your own airwaves and electricity—the latter of which costs you money—to provide a paid service, but don't get to share in the profit.

I'm an xfinity customer, so I am getting the benifit of their xfinitywifi program.

If they modified their program so that accessing xfinitywifi requires using your router to host one (and it was compatable with my hardware, or they offered me theirs at no additional charge), I would sign up. As it turns out, they are offering a more generous program, where people can still get the benefits even if they opt out.

I don't know what "your own airwaves" is suppose to be. The electricity being used was already going to be used for your own use, so there is no additional cost to you.

> I don't know what "your own airwaves" is suppose to be.

Sorry, I meant it's using channels/spectrum and creating interference. Admittedly less of a concern than power IMO, since a stranger could easily broadcast their own network too—they're open airwaves.

> The electricity being used was already going to be used for your own use, so there is no additional cost to you.

But that's not true, is it? Surely, if there's someone else using my router to download and upload data, I'd expect that router is going to be using more power and increasing my electricity bill by a small amount.

It also uses your electricity.

Are you confusing "bandwidth" with "data"? Or are you using "bandwidth" to mean actual EM spectrum? If the former, then you might be wrong about parent's point and "bandwidth provisioning" isn't even possible in many cases anyway. There is a maximum bandwidth a given modem and location can support for cable, and if someone is already paying for it that's that. Other people will in fact be eating into that bandwidth. Which may or may not matter for many customers who aren't actually pushing it anyway, but it's a real thing (unless Comcast has a good enough prioritization implementation that the owner can always get 100% on demand, though even a rough cap on guests would be good enough to at least make sure the owner is never starved).

If the latter it's definitely an issue as well, a major complaint about it in congested areas is that it can take up the best channel itself.

My provider does something similar.

I don't mind, as I have a 1GBPS down / 200mbps up FTTH internet connection.

In exchange for that I can get free and safe (no dumb open network with html login pages -- it's radius login based, tls backed authentication) wifi connection almost everywhere in my city.

But I live in Europe.

Edit: oh, and the modem rent is free.

> When I call my ISP, I want their first words to be "we are having an outage" not "we can't help you because you're not using our supported hardware."

I grew up in a Comcast house, and now live in a Time Warner apartment. Both with their own modem and router.

I have never had either ISP say "we can't help you because you're not using our hardware." This includes one time when it actually was my hardware—the modem was bad—and Time Warner sent a tech over, and I was somewhat embarrassed.

I almost don't want to post this because I don't want to give them ideas. :)

I worked for a Comcast contractor once. I've seen the ugly side of it, and don't have the time/energy to worry about it.

>When the router inevitably dies

Is this a common occurrence for people? I literally have 0 routers/modems break on me. I upgrade them before they break, and I'm not replacing them a few years either. The router before my current router was a 802.11g router.

The primary reason my shop keeps basic routers in our stockroom is because we have plenty of customers whose equipment died. Sometimes it's ancient, sometimes it's a year or less old.

Is it common? Maybe not, and you're right there, especially not compared to some of the other stuff we sell (hard drives, oh boy). But it's definitely not unheard of.

Even if it doesn't die, customer support will claim that any problems with the internet, are with your router. That's how they keep me paying for the rental.

Yeah every $100 router+wifi+modem combo I've ever bought starts dropping connections after a couple years. I spent 3x as much money on my current setup and am having no issues with it after year 3.

In general,1 modem per year dies on me. The rep considers that normal. Now these things run hot, so one year I put a timer in there so it was only powered on when I was home and not sleeping. 6 months and 4 modems later, I decided to remove the timer.

Oh yeah. If you have a device that runs hot and you power cycle it a lot you're going to stress the heck out of the connections on the board. Every time it heats up or cools down you're putting pressure on the connectors until they eventually break.

Yep. Far better to put a small cooling fan pointing at it.

I know. But to be honest, I get the modems for free, and I thought it couldn't get much worse. A small fan costs money, is potentially noisy.

Besides it turns out there is a telnet script that tunes the automatic update to once every few minutes instead of every few milliseconds in an no sleep endless loop, which frees up a ton of CPU and lets the thing cool down. Telecom provider knew but didnt't want to change their config.

In my case, I just switched ISPs.

My first generation Apple Airport died on me a couple of years ago. Straight up just turned itself off and wouldn't power on again. Might have been a power supply failure. Since it was 802.11b and I only used it for some really old devices that only support 802.11b it wasn't a huge loss. I ended up replacing it with a Raspberry Pi running hostapd.

> When the router inevitably dies, I can take it down and get another one without too much trouble on the same day.

Which is typically more frustrating than going to a local store and buying a new one.

> It actually works. Nicely. Why would I want to screw that up and give myself one more thing to configure/tweak to death? No thanks. I have real work to do. Until this thing gets in my way, it stays.

There are plenty of routers that require minimal configuration to "just work."

> Which is typically more frustrating than going to a local store and buying a new one.

Not here. I call in, explain the troubleshooting I've already done. The rep agrees that It's Dead, marks my account. I go to the local store, hand them my old one, they hand me a new one, and I come home and plug it in. Couldn't be easier, all things considered.

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