Cable internet? Or DSL? Or other?

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Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball

Your ISP will have requirements.

For example, Comcast requires DOCSIS 3.0. Which won't work at all with Verizon.

 
I just look at the available modems for rent on the ISP's website, pick one of those and then look for options to buy it online. Believe I got mine from Amazon for $50-60. You can also check craigslist, there are always tons of used options from people switching providers.

Most recommend a separate wifi router after the modem. I just upgraded to a dual band so it has two networks, one with 2.4ghz and the other is 5ghz. Only my newer devices work on the 5ghz, but it is 3-4 times faster than the 2.4ghz network.

Cable I think. It's time warner

I'm on Comcast, and have always used Motorola/Arris modems - they have always been flawless, and easy to set up.

I recommend this one - it's a great performer, and is about as future-proof as a modem can be right now.

ARRIS SURFboard SB6183

When you get it (or whatever one you choose), you'll most likely need to call TW customer service to get them to "provision" it for you (i.e. they connect it to your service), but that should be a pretty quick & easy call.

The cable companies don't really love it when you get your own modem (they lose rental revenue), so they used to make it unnecessarily painful, but these days, it's gotten so common, they aren't dicks about it anymore. Usually anyway!

When I hooked up mine, I didn't even need to do that though - I was able to get it up & running without contacting Comcast.

Good luck!

Cheers, Chris

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Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball

+1

Make sure you pair it with a decent wireless router. We had so many issues with our crappy TWC supplied wireless router/modem combo, that we bought the Arris and a TP-Link AC1900 Router. The key to getting a good WiFi connection in a home that could have a 5-25 wireless devices is the router, especially if you have kids playing online games.

Look at this article for securing your wifi router.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409751,00.asp


Most important are changing the admin username and password on the device. Then change the SSID (network name) from the default. Do that and you will stop most of the casual attackers that are just driving by looking for an access point to hop onto or your teenage neighbor.

+2

I have one of these and just bought one for my mom. Take a look at the open box or used items on Amazon I got a basically brand new one for my mom for half off and it works perfectly.

What this guy said. Every combo modem/router all in one device I've encountered is horrible at signal strength for Wi-Fi and can't handle many devices connected at the same time (it will start booting devices when there is more than a dozen so connections.....which is pretty easy with everybody's tablets, cell phones, laptops, gaming systems, smart tvs.....it keeps going). Even solid modem manufacturers are not exempt of this deficiency (Motorola makes an awesome stand along modem but their combo unit is horrible). Same goes for combo DSL Routers too....not any better.

Moral of the story, get a minimum of an AC1700 (if you are on a budget) or higher if you want faster speeds and handle a ton devices without bogging the network back to the first DSL 256k speed days (or sometimes if felt like that).

Resurrecting this a bit, but I was curious about the separate device thought process.

Switching homes soon and will be going with Cox Cable either 50 or 150 mbps DL speeds. The 150 is only 10$/month more than the 50 so it would seem "worth it" if we can actually take advantage of that. Every internet I've had since college has always been put through a combo modem/wifi router, and I've never had what I would consider to be wholly reliable internet service (as a result?). Cox requires certain modems, and I was looking at the Netgear CM500 (up to 680 mbps), although I have no real brand preference. Pairing that with a wifi router doesn't feel as straightforward, but would something like this TP-Link work appropriately? Am I mixing and matching the wrong stuff? Anyway, I don't know much about these kinds of things so any advice is welcome. Thanks!

As an aside, in our current house I tried powerline networking to get an ethernet connection into a 3rd bedroom/office but the electrical network in this house must be awful (quite a few outlets do not work, not that that necessarily means the electrical wiring is bad I guess). Would potentially be looking into the cable MoCa networking solution although that stuff is pricey.