New modem anybody?Follow

First off let me start by saying that my modem was provided free by Time Warner with the cable Internet installation, so I have no warranty or any of that stuff.

So we finally got Internet cable service about 7 months ago and everything was dandy. Recently though my modem has been crashing. The cable is working because the TV channels still work. All the power and connection cables are still connected and working fine, so that just leaves the modem as the problem, as said by Time Warner(my ISP).

Apparently they could care less about our hardware woes as we always get stuck with on-phone wait times of 40+ minutes, followed by some recording of our connection getting reset on their end. Everything is fine for maybe 10 minutes and the modem crashes again.

I did a little research on my specific modem( the Motorola Surfboard SB4200) and found people giving good reviews about it being dependable and fast compared to other models and manufacturers, but I found one review saying it is fine for surfing the net, but bad for online gaming like Wow(which is what I'm playing now). The reviewer went on to say they recommend it for normal Internet surfing but would advise against it for online gaming. They even did a comparison with a RCA modem using the same comp and same ISP and the RCA performed perfectly.

So my question is this, is my modem actually bad for online play or could it be something defective with this one unit? My second question is what would you recommend for my set up of 3 computers running off a router with two of them playing WoW or other MMO's?



Edited, Dec 31st 2007 9:57pm by fuzzzywuzy

Edited, Dec 31st 2007 10:00pm by fuzzzywuzy

I had the same problem about 2 years ago with Time Warner (yeah for moveing!!! They had the worst service I have ever seen!!). Pretty much.. our bill got credited for at least 5 days of internet every month with how much their down time was in general... and I am not talking about 10 min outages.. I am talking 18-48 hours with them "working on it" at a time.

The time when it was either going soooo slow it was unbearable for weeks at a time, then amazingly working again by the time they got out there, we tried a TON of stuff in the end.

A quick question though, have you tried plugging the modem directly into one of the PC's and seeing if it crashes? That should deffinatly be the first step in self trouble shooting. Go for a "normal" amount of time before it crashed with just one machine going (might be a fight over who gets to test this though it sounds like hehe). If that goes fine, try it with the other machines just to be 100% sure. If it works for everything.. you just ruled out your modem, time for a new router!!! (I had this problem once, 3 internet heavy machines running, and a 6 yr old router didn't like it to much after awhile).

If they still crash then there is a good chance it is the modem. While I know nothing about them, I won't offer advice there (same modem, higher model # came with my Comcast). So you can always replace that modem if you choose.

Now.. all that happened before when I was in TX. Since moveing back to PA, we had to get hole's drilled in my apartment wall and everything for my modem here. We started haveing problem like you are (and I was before) about 9 months after it was installed. Nothing "we" could do would fix it. I finnaly had enough after almost 3 weeks of paying for no internet connection (btw the TV and all that was fine in BOTH cases) I ended up getting them to send a guy out on a Sunday.. when I called on Saturday (and the CS i talked to.. told me to REFORMAT my PC.. thats when I decided I wanted to talk to a manager..) The guy who installed it... left out a few.. pieces and part's.... of the wire's that came in the walls. We ended up haveing to run a whole new line threw. Luckly.. since the good tech decided it was the other guy's fault.. we didn't have to pay the $45/hour for the 3 hours it took.

reposting from the WoW forum's as I don't know which the OP will check more