Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I just got everything connected! I spent about a half hour on the phone with Comcast support and was able to get the gateway setup with minimal issues. I was renting the exact same thing for $10 a month. People might worry about limited support if they are not renting, but Comcast is not going to leave you hanging unless the unit is completely dead. And to that note, I am an IT guy. I can tell you that you are rarely going to have a hardware issue with something like this. There are no moving parts, so save yourself some money if you have the triple play package. It will pay for itself in less than 2 years. Now to address some of those reviews about a poor wireless signal. They are correct! My wireless gateway is in my basement, so I have connected my old router upstairs to extend the wireless range in my house. Before triple play, I had a separate modem with a Netgear router. It had a much stronger signal than the Arris modem has. This isn't all bad, and here's why. If you haven't figured it out yet, Comcast uses a portion of this router to broadcast their "xfinitywifi" hotspot for anyone to use if they are a current Comcast customer. Even though it is completely segregated from my internal network, I don't want every bozo in my neighborhood sucking up my bandwidth. It sort of reminds me of buying a car. The dealers plaster their names all over the back of the car without asking. I didn't get a good enough deal from any dealer to give them free advertisement, and I am not getting that great of a deal from Comcast to offer up a free hotspot. As a matter of fact, if it was in a spot for everyone in the neighborhood to use, I would build a faraday cage around it (Look that one up!!). I am giving this gateway 4 stars for one main reason. Comcast has locked out the settings for the external DNS servers. They want you to use theirs (of course). Not a big deal to most people but prior to triple play, I was using OpenDNS for filtering out some of the garbage the internet has to "offer." There is a parental control option that you can turn on in the gateway, but it is terrible! Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Comcast support told me there is no way to change it. Anyway, I am looking forward to dropping my bill another $10 a month. I hope this review helps and don't be scared to drop the rental fee!!