Motorola MB8611 DOCSIS 3.1 Cable Modem

WARNING: THIS IS A LONG REVIEW, BUT I MAY HAVE SOME ANGLES ON THIS OTHERS DON’T 🙂

Wow. I really like this modem. This is a barebones rock solid dead simple workhorse.

It’s got a plug for the cable and one ethernet (RJ-45) port out and I think an on/off switch.
That’s it. It makes a connection. And hasn’t failed since I got it a month or so ago.

All I had to do was call my ISP and give them the MAC address (on the sticker on the device)
and they updated their tables and that was it. Turn it on. It goes through the startup cycle. Takes a few minutes to connect like they all do and that’s it. Set it and forget it.

What prompted me to get it, is I don’t like having to rent the modem from the ISP @ $10.00/mo forever. This literally pays for itself in 16 months, and most people will have their Internet connection for many times that long, and time flies. So it’s a good investment.

It doesn’t have phone connection like the ISP’s modem did. So I called the company/provider that owns copper phone lines in the area and ordered landline service. I’m a nerd/techie and don’t care what people say about landlines being for old fogeys, it’s like having a backup generator … I know I can use that landline if the power goes out or if the cell tower gets overwhelmed (too many calls or cell traffic at once), or there’s radio interference in the area. Technically cable phone is a ‘land line’ (hardwired cable connection to provider) and the battery backup in the modem (which the ISP charges more for), could give you emergency phone service in an outage, but a cable phone connection can (and does) fail for more reasons than copper wire phone service does. (Those copper wire connections are called POTS – which stands for Plain Old Telephone Service), and copper wire phones are the most reliable.

Having a separate modem from a router is optima for a few of reasons… Generally hybrid units of anything do everything okay, but nothing optimally (for example combination modem-router units like my ISP rents out). Better to keep the modem separate from the router. Then you can swap either out independently to upgrade as needed, disrupting less of your own network configuration doing so, and also help avoid a single point of failure. Plus, you might be able to score a router in a pinch on shorter notice than a cable modem if the router is the component that fails. Then you can choose the router you actually like, for whatever reason, and don’t have to settle for whatever bundling du jour your ISP decides is right for you (even if it isn’t).

That gets me to the other point. What DID the ISP decide was right for me (but wasn’t)?

For awhile my ISP modem connection was dropping briefly in the middle of the morning. My computer came back up connected to the ISP’s ‘general public’ wi-fi connection to their router which did not work for me and I’d have to keep manually switching back to my own internal Wi-Fi LAN (network). That was not only inconvenient but it forced me to investigate was was going on there.

I learned my ISP gives lets passersby connect to their rental-modem’s Wi-Fi signal, without giving me any way to disable that service! That really pissed me off to learn. The idea is that people driving around who have accounts with the provider can get internet access around the neighborhoods. If I was a passerby, that could really help me, so at first glance maybe ‘why not, be a good samaritan’.

But wait! There may be more too it than that.

Besides the fact that I don’t like it (for good reason), they give me no control over that ‘feature’!
And I see some downsides. What’s good for the ISP isn’t necessarily optimal for me.

What I don’t like about that ‘service’ is that one or more people could sit outside and suck down bandwidth (e.g. slow my connection down), unbeknownst to me. It also might cause the unit to use more energy and put out a stronger wi-fi signal than it needs to. Which health conscious people are well advised to be aware of. Wi-Fi is radiation. Not strong and may not ruin your life, but it is a stressor at a cellular level, this is known. And strong signals, persistent signals and people who are more sensitive or have immunity issues can be more vulnerable (headaches, sleep disruption, or worse). But I like Wi-Fi so I settle for whatever unknown health consequences I may not be aware of.

Also it makes me wonder if a hacker might be able to use it as an additional point of access to my home network.

I also wonder if it’s 100% clear to law enforcement at first glance who might be visiting sites or doing something nefarious from the connection point. Might it look like the owner is doing something that a passerby did (and even if they can sort it out later, what if it takes awhile to figure out and they make a bad assumption?)

Anyway, I don’t have that problem with this modem and I’m just much happier with it all the way around.

Plus it’s blazingly fast.