Not sure what the original adapter size is but have you looked on Amazon for DC plug adapter kits?
Like this:
Improving Comcast modem signal
Our internet service is Xfinity/Comcast or Verizon. Currently I have Comcast service and use their modem because I had trouble with Netgear modem compatibility with Comcast. The problem is that the Comcast modem doesn’t allow LPS. I don’t know about the Verizon modem. So, for people with modem tweaking experience, any suggestions that will make a notable improvement?
The modem is connected via house Ethernet cable to EtherRegen in my listening room, which is connected to Lumin X1 streamer via fiber optic listening room.
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I just replaced my Comcast provided modem with a Netgear CV1000, which is a docsis 3.1 model. I'm continuing to use my own separate Netgear router. Connected to the latter with Supra Ethernet cable is a Google mesh network with a total of 3 access points. Before swapping out the Comcast unit, I checked the speed: 290 Mbps (I pay for 300). After replacement with the Netgear unit, my speed is 90 Mbps. Still fast enough for 4k streaming, but certainly a lot slower than it was. Funny thing is, my signal strength is very good, somewhat better than before. I had to have Comcast CS assist with getting the new modem online, ran into a hard stop with their app. Wondering if another call to them could improve my speed...
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My ethernet speed is 25-125 mbps. I am using an old Apple router with Comcast rental modem. 5 years ago, I bought a Netgear modem (I don't remember the model) to replace the rental modem and it never gave me wifi signal, so I went back to Comcast. I don't use Comcast landline phone. I am going to try to get a new modem. Do you like Arris > Netgear? |
@chungjh You mention your issue with Comcast is that you have to constantly reset your modem? What is your normal ethernet speed with the Netgear modem and what version of docsis is it ? I had a similar issue with a Motorola modem until i updated my modem to docsis 3.0 and i just bought a new Arris T25 (docsis 3.1) b/c i have a gigabit plan and i'm only getting 500mbps on ethernet. Do you also use Comcast phone ? If so and you purchase a modem make sure you get one with the phone jack(s). i had the Xfinity/comcast router for a long time but got tired of the rental fee--never had any problems with the currrent Arris router and don't expect to with the new one. |
I totally agree, Comcast is brutal... customer service is a miserable endeavor whenever I need to call in but have found that their routers are fine, in my setup anyway. Maybe this could be all connected better but here's my signal path. I have an xfinity XB Gateway connected by Ethernet CAT8 cable to an Apple AE. That Airport then communicates with a second AE wirelessly in my designated listening room which connects directly (Ethernet CAT8 also) to my Elac, Discovery Streamer. Connection is seemless and works swimmingly using either my iPhone or iPad running Roon and being used as a remote. Elac then feeds a Line Magnetic, 502ca tube DAC then off to the rest of my system. Again, prob other ways to get the same/better end results, but this is a home run for me. 🤷🏻♂️ |
One other thing. Cable modems have a memory chip to buffer the incoming signal, and that is usually set to the maximum. For some reason yours may not be. If that is the case your modem may not be buffering the data completely before passing it on to the devices in your house. Simple first, detailed second. Detailed: |
@chungjh In general, Verizon’s FIOS speeds, latency and packet loss are not affected by what your neighbors are doing on their internet unlike the network at Comcast. But before you go crazy changing things, keep in mind the design of Ethernet and the internet is that it will tolerate a fair amount of packet loss with only a loss in speed. There’s a ton of error correction built in at the physical and logical layers of the internet protocols, and music, even lossless music, is not taxing your internet connection compared to say, Netflix or Amazon Prime streaming 4K video. |
Guys, I have read most of the posts on this thread and I can relate to many of the problems that have been mentioned. In a short phrase: COMCAST SUCKS. And in my case there is no alternative, AND they know it. The only reason to put this out is to suggest that only government action can change a company like comcast. They have no real competition in many areas, they are arrogant, they do not care how difficult it is to even ask them a question or report a problem. The service and equipment that I used to get with comcast was better five years ago than it is now and the cost is higher. To top it off, every service company is hiding behind COVID as an excuse for poor customer relations. In most cases only the owner of a new home with FO to the house has a chance of improved service; the rest of us are SOL with GOV help. |
I understand where you are coming from. Regardless, in most enterprise level (and hi end) home routers and switches, CPU speed does not matter that much. CPU maintains the ’control plane’ and programs the specialized switching hardware. Once that is done, CPU is not even involved in the switching. İt gets out of the way and lets the hw do the packet forwarding. So the CPU speed by itself is not that significant. The speed limits you are experiencing are 99% of the time, the limitations of your service provider and not due to your home router. İt is extremely unlikely that your PC will saturate a hi end home router, especially if you are using a wired connection I had a 600 mbit residential service which i upgraded to a 200 mbit business service and i now get much better performance. It had nothing to do with my home router but all due to the change in service by Comcast. |
@chungjh iFi has product that fits between a power supply and component: DC iPurifier2. Site says that it supports "5-24v DC (up to 3.5A, 84W)." I might try it for myself. It's already pretty affordable by HiFi standards, but if you don't like the results when using it with your router, you can always place it on another component where it has a greater benefit. I'm considering trying it for myself. iFi even advertises using it with a low noise power supply. Might be worth a shot
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It is extremely unlikely that a PC, even one of the fastest ones, will ever outperform a well designed modem/router. Those devices employ special purpose hardware which utilize TCAM lookups at hardware speeds and encrypt/decrypt hardware, which no PC is ever likely to match, unless the said PCs also have them, which i have not seen any of yet. |
One thing I’ve thought about, but haven’t yet tried, is breaking down the router into its separate components. As you may know, ISPs will supply consumers with all-in-one modem-routers. Lay people who tinker with their home network will usually get as far as breaking down the AIO modem-router into into separate modem and router. But, the router itself can be broken down into another 3 components: routing, switching, and wifi access points. The benefit to breaking these down is network performance--an old computer with routing software installed is going to outperform an off-the-self router from Best Buy--and components can be upgraded separately. Now that consumer mesh router systems are starting to cost upwards of $700, separating out routing from access point management might make sense from a cost perspective too. Anyway, I don’t know of any audiophiles exploring possible sound quality improvements with commercial-grade or DYI networking solutions. But you could create an amazing home network in the process at least. I have just started to play with Roon Cores/music servers. It seems to me that in as far as the a music stream passes through a router, access point, or switch, that those components may audibly affect the stream. |
I chose to supply my own modem and router with my internet provider. I did place low noise power supplies on both the modem and router--I used iFi power supplies. I didn’t hear a difference when I placed them into the chain. However, I haven’t tried removing them from the chain, and sometimes I only hear a difference after removing something. Also, my total (retail) system cost was about 2k at the time I introduced iFi PSs to the modem and router, and now my total retail system value is about 5k. It’s possible that my system wasn’t resolving enough at the time to hear a difference, but that it might be now. Like you, I’m looking for upstream solutions to improve sound quality. Here’s the short list of obvious audible upstream improvements I’ve had: DAC upgrade, streamer upgrade, reclocker/master clock, power cables/supplies for the DAC/streamer/reclocker. I am currently flirting with upsampling, upgrading coax internet cabling to solid core copper coax, and converting the internet coax cable to optical right before the streamer. All of these projects are still TBD. I’m anticipating a nice improvement from converting to optical. My recommendation to you would be to look at optical conversion first, if you haven’t already. Your EtherRegen switch has an optical-in. You don’t necessarily have to run optical through your walls to start. You can start by just converting to optical right before the internet enters the EtherRegen. That way you can play with single-mode and multi-mode SFP transceivers and optical cable to see if one option sounds better than the other. You can also control for media converters (by EtherRegen or Sonore e.g.) and their power supplies. There may also be audio-grade SFP transceivers and optical internet cable I don’t know about. |
The pic I posted of the Gateway evaporated. Here's another. But now I can't find one with the external power supply that's bundled with it, so this is what an after-market one looks like.
I wonder if it's any better than the original. FWIW, I spent half an hour this morning in the weeds of reviews on Amazon: Netgear, Motorola, Arris, etc. And while 85% were happy campers, it seemed like every model had its problems. |
Reading this reminded me of what Mike over at headquarteraudio does:
Some here are gonna go ballistic and say it's overkill but it's just only another perspective to be considered. All the best, |
"Verizon is now pushing a white cubed wireless 5G device to feed signals to everything with no cables at all." They've had this for probably two years, although as you say, they've been pushing fixed 5G signals lately. If you can get Verizon fiber (FIOS), you'll still get faster and more consistent internet than a 5G wireless signal Within your house, you'll get a more consistent and faster internet if you used Ethernet instead of WiFi, although it becomes a problem if your house is not already wired for Ethernet. |
@steakster is right. I misread and answered your question thinking you had an issue with your home router. For a cable modem, it has to be compatible with Comcast and that its mac address must be registered with them. I had done the same thing with an Arris modem I had, before I switched over to business service with Comcast. It is more expensive but business service gets higher priority and better customer service over normal residential service.
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Be warned that cable modems are soon to be useless - Verizon is now pushing a white cubed wireless 5G device to feed signals to everything with no cables at all. If this works, and I have no doubt that it does, we luddites using pcs and flip phones will be forced into smartphone land whether we wish to be or not. |
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@william53b agree 100%. I would go further to say a few choice words. In my area, it is the only option for anything “high speed”. I tried to cut the cord completely a couple of years ago. No avail. I use a Motorola VOIP modem, about as good as it gets based on industry reviews. It’s the easiest solution. I think the Comcast phone system is garbage, and causes a good majority of the issues. Problem is, to “unpackage” the plan, Comcast bends you over without any roses. They limit bandwidth options, or they make it ridiculously expensive to have higher tiered service. The best bet is to use the highest quality cables you can find, optimize the network as a whole as much as possible and hang on. One thing I will say about Comcast, is overall the service is pretty reliable, at least in my area. Rarely is there a full on outage. Speeds that suck at times, but rarely an outage outright. |
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Comcast is a joke. I have used Netgear modems for years, and I can assure you the problem isn’t with them. Last year they, Yfinity, offered me gig speed, only to slow down my connection from about 550mbs to 270. Then they told me that even though they lied about their promise to us, the "package" we had was no longer available, so we’d have to switch to a more expensive plan and live with the slower internet speed. ps, I live in FL, your state may differ in what they allow the cable companies to do to their citizens. Of course, having dealt with them for decades, I recorded all of my conversations with them, and at the end started to play the earlier promissory recordings back while I was talking with customer service. (An apparent code phrase for taking care of the livestock.) We cut the cable cord, and they haven’t asked for their boxes back yet, and are charging us less than the price of our now correctly charged 250 speed. So, how to slay these demons? First, they may insist they be involved with resetting your modem, but you can do that with your modem app or through terminal/web browser…. But you can also do it the best way: Disconnect the cable and all other connections to the router, including power. Depress the power button for 30 seconds with no power connected, doing a clean state reboot, then reconnect the modem and attach the power and turn it on, giving it a minute or so to reboot. I have found that this always solves any problem that I am financially responsible for. I hope this helps, regardless of brand.
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The Internet and the router are digital signal things. Am I wrong to think they don't introduce noise into the bitstream? Now if a power supply is near some analog device in your setup, the solution would seem to be putting some distance between them or a similar action. We never had Comcast. On AT&T and now our superior local ISP, Sonic Fiber, I have used a cheap TP-Link Archer 8 modem. It works fine. AT&T requires its gateway device, so my router was behind it as an access point. Sonic lets customers connect their own router to its ONT gateway. |
I've used my own Arris modems with Comcast/Xfinity since 2014. They work fine. If there is a problem, Xfinity will say it's your modem every time. So far, it's never been the modem - instead an Xfinity service problem that is solved on their end within some period of time. If you need tech onsite, they might charge for that. I've spent $325 on 3 modems 7 years (I like to keep them up to date), so even with a tech charge, I would be many $$ ahead. Currently using an SB8200. No GL, no LPS. |
Thanks. I don't have any noise now with 93% efficient speakers. No mater where I plug mine in the with an external PS it has a ground loop issue. The only piece of gear that does that. It's less than a year old. Great transfer speeds with Cat 8 from Cat 5. The GL eliminator shut the stupid thing right up. I've tried 3 of the neighbors PS too. Same thing. You should hear it with Klipsch 103s they will run you out of the room. Neighbors rig.. GL eliminator fixed it right up. Thanks Ay.. Regards
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@chungjh yes my modem/router has the internal power supply. As for the grounding box, since I'm a dealer I don't promote it on this site, feel free to PM me. |
@oldhvymec no noise whatsoever. It's actually on a separate circuit and besides my dedicated listening studio is grounded with a wonderful grounding device. Noise floor is basically non-existent. |
