Motorola SURFboard SB5101U DOCSIS 2.0 Modem

Pros-

1. Easy installation and set up

Installing this modem is very simple. You hook it up to the power and attach the Ethernet cable to your computer and the coaxial cable that comes from your internet provider. Should take no more than 5-10 minutes. You then have to call your internet service provider and they will ask your for the serial number of the device. Once you do provide it they will do the rest for you. In my case it was a breeze. I was up and running within 10 minutes. Didn’t run into any particular problems.

2. Maintains reliable connection

I have had a couple of modems in the past that have had unreliable connections. This one is pretty stable. The old one I have is over three years old and it works like a charm and the new I just bought has been working fine. The only few times I have experienced connection problems has been with the Linksys router but not with the modem itself. It is very frustrating having an unstable internet connection. Rest assure this modem will not give you any problems.

3. Low price

Probably the thing I like the most about this router is how affordable it is. The recent one I bought I got used here on Amazon for $16 dollars. A modem is not usually something you have to change every year so I was comfortable buying it used. No sense buying a much more expensive modem if all you are looking to get one at home. If you have limited space you may want to invest in one of those 2 in 1 modems that come with the router included. They are more expensive though.

Cons-

1. Size

This modem is not huge by any means but I have seen smaller modems provided by Comcast in the past. It is really not a huge deal.

In conclusion, I would recommend this modem. It is cheap, reliable and gets the job done. If you are looking for a replacement for your house this model is a pretty good choice.

I bought one of these, and it kept rebooting, so I returned it for anther thinking that it was bad. The second one acted the same way that the first one did. I have internet service through time warner cable, and had previously had 2 different modems that I had received through them, both of which had loss of service problems, so, for that reason, I did not believe that it was a problem with this modem. When I contacted tech support, I had them come out many times to try to get this problem resolved, but every time, they kept telling me that they could not find any problems. They ran tests on the lines through my house many times, and found no problems. My service is 1 meg up and 15 meg down, not like that is needed though. While trying to get this problem fixed, when contacting them, I had also been told that they could see nothing on their end, and even had someone tell me that the problem was with the modem and had me contact Motorola’s tech support. I did and they said that there was nothing that they could do and that they could find no problems with the modem. The guy that told me that almost immediately told me that like their service was perfect and there was no way that it could be on their end. This went on for about 2 months. Then one day, I called while having problems, and they said that the data loss rate was at 30% at that time.. This is obviously very high. Then suddenly, it jumped to 50% and the modem would loose connection and reboot. With my old cisco box, I would loose connection quite frequently in the evening (and some times during the day) and at times, it would be out by the hour. 3 different brands and modems and all have problems. Obviously there is a problem, and it is not with the modems. At this point in time, I have called them up so many times that I am tired of calling. They even checked to see if the node needed split, and that did nothing too.

I had also previously had digital cable, and with that, i had tons of problems with connection or signal issues with the digital set top boxes too. Problems I had were things like, when you hit 33, sometimes it would go through as 3, but sometimes it would hang on one of the 3’s and hit the 3 2 times and then you would get 333 because of the one 3 hanging because of the signal not going through in time. 30 seconds to change channels from 38 to 39.. and I am not joking.. it litterelly took that long at times. So it was not just the internet that I had problems with. I found that when I took off their splitter, and replaced it with an amplifier splitter, with active return (amplifies the signal both ways, to me and to them), a lot of my problems went away, or were much less of a problem, but were still there. They even told me that the problem might be with the splitter I put on, so they tried taking it off. Obviously things got much worse so it went right back on.

Some of the things that they would have me do is do a ping test when it was working good.. huh?? if it is working good, then why would you get a bad ping result?? In case you are wondering about that, when the internet worked, it worked good, but when it screwed up, it did it in a major way. so It may work bad now, then in 5 minutes, be working perfectly.. One person just jumped to the conclusion that it was my UPS and not enough power (To humor them, I tried running it on an extension cord to another room that only had one light and a razor on it), so that was not the problem. The funny thing is that the one that said that said it could be loosing power because it uses less power then the last on that I had.. The problem is, it reboots because of lack of signal from them, not because the power from the wall outlet is too low, in which it should have effected the higher power drain modem, not the lower. and the list just goes on and one about their poorly trained tech’s. I am a computer administrator by trade, so I know to check all the basic things like that, but still can not get them to admit that their just might be something wrong with their lines.. and it is to my house. I am the only one on the drop (box that splits the connection to the houses) because neither of my neighbors has time warner anything. and going a few houses up or down the street, they dont have the problems like I do (that I know of, most dont have time warner). I had them even check the drop, and they said that everything is good and there was no problems up there. To me, it looked like it was acting like a bad connection, a little corrosion in there, or something similar that will effect the signal.

the other problem is I have only found one tech that has come out that I think is actually good,so that makes things worse too. I always love “know it all” tech’s that have the thought process that they are always right, no matter the circumstance, and can not admit when they are wrong. that is the case of most of the techs, or that they just dont know, that have come out to my house. All I can say, use your own judgement. My opinion, If you have 2 modems, both brand new, and both are having connection problem, and every other modem that I have had has problems, and all of different brands and models, it does not seem to me much like it is the cable modem. Oh yea, we have also tried running a brand new RG6 cable back to the cable modem too. that fixed nothing too. They even checked my neighbors for reboots on their modems, and found very few on them, only on mine. This comes down to one of two things. Either they do not have modems that will reboot when they loose signal, or it is a problem just to my house.

After all of this, I then had time warner shut off the cable, but left on the internet. When I did, they had to come out to the house, disconnect the cable from the pole to put a filter on to block the analog signal from going through, and then reconnect it.. Guess what.. now my internet works with no problems. The problem, from what I have seen, was that the connection, which was put up and made many years ago, had developed a poor connection, from weather changes, or something else, but basically, all they needed to do was disconnect the line, and reconnect it to re-scratch the surface to make a good connection, but this was never done until I forced it by having the cable part shut off. The sad part is I even said something about it to the techs, and they would not do it. They would only check to make sure that the connection was tight. This is a common problem that i see on computers every so often, so it is not like it is a rare occurrence for it to happen too.

In the end, I found that when the modem reboots, it is usually because it looses the connection with the service provider (in my case, time warner), and what this modem does, is reboots if it can not make a connection immediately so this was it can force a reconnect. If you go into your cable modem log, you can even verify this. To get to it, just type in 192.168.100.1 in your internet browser bar and your settings will come up. the logs tab will be the second tab from the bottom. You will see errors like “T*-time out errors”, and “Failed to acquire…..” errors. These are due to problems with the connection, or loss of connection to your ISP. If these are your problems, then the problem can stem from multiple things, from bad connections to your ISP, shorts in your wiring, too old or small gauge of wiring, bad splitters, or other things that would effect your connection. In my case, I tried everything from a different line to different splitters before I contacted tech support. That is why I new that it was on their end. And what I found was it was not a good connection up on the pole, which got corrected when they put the filter on which re-scratched the connections to make it a good connection. In case you do not know, I know it was not the filter that helped because all the filter that they put on does is blocks the analog signals, and majorly degrades them before they come into the house. The internet and digital cable is a digital signal, not analog. And the reason that the amplifier helped was because, even though it was having a problem with the signal. the amplifier boosted the signal high enough so that when there was a problem, more of the signal got though to make it run better.

All of what I just put has happened over months. I am deleting the original post because this sums up what has happened and shortens the review (by about 1/3), but still tells what went on. Overall, it has now been about 3 or 4 months since we had the cable shut off, and pretty much flawless service since they put the filter. So yes, i do recommend this modem, no, I do not recommend tech support through the cable company because if they would have done what I said, where I said the problem was, in the first place, then they would have saved multiple trips out to my house, many phone calls to them, and a lot of aggravation.

I brought this modem to replace the one I had from Time Warner Cable after the free lease period ended. I am glad I did that since Time Warner recently announced that it would be raising those lease fees from $2.50 to $3.95. So far, so good. The modem was very easy to install. I just swapped out the old modem and connected the power card, coaxial cable, and ethernet/USB cable. (Note that the modem does not come with coaxial and ethernet or USB cables, so you will need to buy those unless you have them; you will also need a coaxial cable splitter if you want to connect a cable TV and cable modem to the same jack). The hardest part of the install was getting through to Time Warner Cable to provide the MAC address (long wait time) and then waiting for the registration to work its way through their system and become active (several hours). So far, I have been very pleased with the device. The modem works perfectly with my wireless router, and I have had very stable and reliable connections on all of my wireless devices. I also have not had to reset the modem once over the past week, unlike the one I had from Time Warner, which needed to be reset every other day or so. I returned the old modem to the cable company today. With the higher lease costs recently announced by company, I will recoup the purchase price in a year and avoid the feeling of being ripped off by the cable company when my bill comes each month.

UPDATE FEBRUARY 2013: Six months after purchasing this product, I remain pleased. It is much better and more reliable than the one that Time Warner Cable had provided previously, and I only have had to reset the unit three or four times since purchasing it six months ago.