Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsDead on arrival, no documentation, no routing, no go
Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2017
Update August 16, 2017:
I ordered another modem to see if the commenters of my review that were hinting at a user error were right.
This modem got connected within 5 minutes and I got a public IP through DHCP from Comcast. Activation worked fine.
I did get a dead on arrival modem the first time. I guess the quality check in production is not quite there.
I will run this for two weeks and report back.
PS. the ports labelled LAN ports are not LAN ports, they are ethernet ports. The is no internal network on this modem.
Update June 29, 2017:
Many comments on my review. Let's be clear about the rating it got.
1. The modem received a rating of 1 star because it didn't work out of the box. That is expected.
2. The modem would have received a better star rating had it worked.
One gentlemen commented that he had to install a configuration file himself in order to make it work with Comcast. Instructions for this is mentioned in the documentation nor was I able to verify this online.
The irony of naming 4 ports LAN, as in Local Area Network, seems to fall short on some angry commenters. These are not LAN ports.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_area_network
Original review:
Signal connects fine to Xfinity/Comcast over 1Gbps, but I don't receive an IP address. We tried three different devices. Comcast tech device, Apple Macbook Pro and ASUS Router.
You will not get an IP address over DHCP or any other protocol, external nor internal. You can connect to the modem directly to check the status but you will not find out anything. The web interface is completely useless. Nothing is exposed. It's like half the model is missing in hardware and software. At this price point, I'd certainly hope the modem would do a bit more than just modulate a signal over four ports.
I would not recommend this modem. While Comcast will work with you to make it work, there is nothing they can do if the modem itself doesn't work. We had Comcast try this modem and declared it non working. No external IP is received. Our tech spent 30 minutes and then finally gave up. The Comcast provided modem connected in 5 minutes.
You can tell this is a brand new product. There has been no effort creating a working interface when you login to the modem. Nor does the documentation help you with expectations.
UPDATE JUNE 10, 2017
I had two gentlemen comment on this review saying that the modem doesn't have any router functionality what so ever and that a separate router was needed. I stand by my 1 star, because this product is sold as a consumer product, and one without documentation. To claim that a device with 4 internal network ports doesn't have routing capabilities is a bit naive. So instead we have a four port switch on the back. While two of them can be used to bond two ethernet cables together to achieve over 940Mbps download speed, documentation says that any of these ports should work if you just want to plug in a single computer or a router.
1. The modem has absolutely no documentation, for a consumer product this is somewhat surprising, If the modem should not be used for routing at the layer 3 IP layer, then how should it be used? Clearly the modem acts like a signal switch and nothing else. For this price point, a bit more functionality can be expected.
2. The modem provides 4, not one, but four Local Area Network connections. The sparse documentation even calls them this.
That those connections would provide some very basic IP capabilities. What kind of Local Area Network connection would this be if I couldn't do basic routing. Why are these ports called LAN ports, if they are actually WAN ports. These ports do NOT separate you from the WAN. In fact, in the expected setup, you'd have a WAN IP address. Maybe my terminology is off, but in most environments I've seen, a LAN is separated from a WAN by using a private address range in the LAN. One would have hoped that the modem provided this very basic capability.
3. My home routers will support different types of WAN connections. Static IP, DHCP, PPPOE, PPTP, L2TP. If the modem doesn't support the two first IP based protocols based on Ethernet, the document doesn't even mention any other. This alone makes the product not ready to be shipped to anyone.
Should I have tried one of the other three protocols? If so, which one? The product gives you no guidance for how it is supposed to be used. I believe Comcast just dishes out IP addresses over DCHP in its simplest form. But we're not able to confirm that. Modem didn't work
From a consumer stand point, this product is not ready to be used. Lack of documentation and lack of user interface from the 192.168.100.1 web server, makes it, once again, totally useless.