On Tuesday, out of the blue, I got an email from Comcast that they identified a “problem” with my CPE1 and that because they are so awesome, they were going to just send me a new modem/router. Whoop-de-doo.
To be honest, the internet has been about a reliable as a candle in a hurricane lately. Flakey, drops, reboots of the router, etc.
The CPE that we have is the Cisco XB3 box. We are stuck with it because my better half insists upon having a land line, so there aren’t options. Boo. But with the swap, I was hoping that I would get something different, something not crappy.
Wednesday, I got the shipment notification.
Thursday it arrived. I opened the box, and …
It’s a crappy Cisco XB3. What gods have I pissed off to get this bad luck?
The install is easy. I just powered off the old unit, moved the coax, plugged in the 4 ethernet cables, and powered up.
Fortunately, Comcast has a decal on the side with the SSID and password. So it was trivial to get it started up.
The good:
- Once I started it up, it was easy to log in. I got my laptop connected.
- Upon connecting I got a popup to configure and activate. Cool. I log in with my user id and password.
- It found my old configuration (two SSIDs and passcodes for the WiFi), and gives me an option to just reset with my old bits (cool, I didn’t want to have to re-connect all the devices.)
The bad:
- While the configuration appeared to work, my old names and passcodes didn’t get setup.
- It is a crappy Cisco CPE.
- I still get 176Mbit down, and 6Mbit up. Bummer, I would like more bandwidth.
The Verdict:
It works. I got it set up. It wasn’t too difficult, and once I set up the SSID’s and passcodes. The devices are all connected. It all works.
The automation, while it is a nice touch, didn’t work. Not sure if it was my starting state, but it needs to be better for the masses.
1 – CPE is Customer Premise Equipment
