Thanks Coded-Dude.
I've been out of the IT loop for over 10 years, but back in the day Cisco was the king on speed, security AND reliability. From what I can tell the Surfboards modems are good. But according to the Cox compatibility page the 6121 is only good up to the "Preferred" speed tier. That just has to be a misprint or be something up with Cox's service because the specs on the modem clearly go past that. Bump up to the 6141 and you can do all the speed that Cox offers. The Cisco DCP3010 goes all the way as it is. This kind of weirdness is why I don't do IT anymore.
It's a function of the number of channels times the channel width. The 6121 can only run four channels while the 6141 can do 8.
The bandwidth of a channel is a factor. Other existing services can mean less bandwidth for data channels.
The decision for me to pull the trigger on a third party modem was simple. Reading reviews of people who leased first.....they noticed faster speeds on purchased third party modems rather than leased modems(maybe COX is installing custom firmware or something similar, but that is pure speculation). Either way, if you plan to keep your service for more than a year, it makes sense to buy a decent modem rather than lease one(at around $5/mo, a $50 modem will pay for itself in the first 10 months). YMMV I'll have to check the bill to see what service I actually have, but if I do have "Preferred," I am still getting 10Mbps faster than what they are offering(50Mbps). I'm sure the speeds change during peak hours, but I still have enough bandwidth to VPN into a CA server and get my work done on a remote virtual machine. Nver really tried doing hourly speed tests to see what I am getting on a regular basis.
I've had several failures in the last couple of years with Asus products. A couple of wireless units, a motherboard and an optical drive. Asus was always my first choice, but now I pass right on by the Asus product offerings. I'd like to find a good wireless unit that will accept open source code.
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