buying a cable modem...any recommendations?

[jakol]

hi,
im planning to get a cable modem, wat brand would be best/reliable? ill be using cox communications as my provider they recommend Toshiba..<is this good? and also any specific features in the modem i should be looking for? like built in firewall etc.
thanks for any help.

[redwudz]

I have Cox and use the supplied modem, a Motorola cable modem. The Toshiba seems to be popular.

As far as firewall, I use a router/switch that acts as a hardware firewall. I would recommend this even with a single computer tied to the modem. I have a D-Link 704UP with a print server, but many others will work.

[kosekjm]

Hi there,

Hopefully your cable co is using the docsis standard, so you should be able to use just about any brand. I had an old com21 that I recently replaced with a Motorola surfboard (SB5100) that was about 45 at best buy. This was the recommended modem from charter (My cable co). So far this modem is great. Haven't had the random outages that I had with the com21 (The provided modem by my cable co). Synchronization with the cable company takes seconds as opposed to the minutes that the com21 used to take. Plus the modem has a seperate standby mode, so if you want to cut access to the internet, you press one button and it shuts off your connection to the pc, but keeps the internet connection open so you don't have to resync again, kinda nice feature to have when doing a reinstall of the os, you can shut out any possibility of an infection before you have all of your protection software in place (av, fw etc)

As for the Toshiba, not really sure. You might want to do a google search though, because when I was looking at modems, I'm almost positive that I saw a few online articles that claimed toshiba was getting out of the modem business.

As I said, I'm very happy with the motorola, very easy to setup has both usb connectors and regular network connectors (At least the 5100 does) I don't have any regrets in purchasing it.

kosekjm

[offline]

I'll second kosekjm on the Motorola SB5100. It's the weapon of choice
for the Austalian cable market at the moment. You will need
firmware 2.3x or higher as there were some minor issues with 1.1x-2. 2x

[jakol]

hi ,
thanks for the replies, i will look into the motorola sb5100 if its compatible with my provider.

[Guest]

I have an extra one the cable company didnt take back.You can have it if you want.I dont know what kind it is.Worked fine though.PM me if you want it.I'm going out of town and wont be able to see what kind it is until tomorrow afternoon.