EDIT (1/25/07) – I’ve received a lot of comments and emails with questions about what I did to get my Comcast internet to work properly. I actually wrote a follow-up entry, Follow-up On Comcast’s Netgear CG814WG. If you read that entry, I list two products I currently use in lieu of the Netgear piece of crap. My internet has been flawless since I posted that entry (the end of October) and I haven’t had any issues at all (other than someone unplugging the router on me or something.) If you still are having problems or need advice, leave a comment on either entry and I’ll be more than happy to try to help you out.
In August we finally made the switch to Comcast for our internet, tv , and phone. And unfortunately we’ve been having horrible problems with Comcast’s internet service then I care to think about. The problem was originally both tv cable and internet cable. The cable on the TV would skip, scramble, lose audio, and just time out when trying to open up on-demand. The internet would lag, die off, then connect again. Turns out we had a bad line coming to the house. No problem, Comcast came out to fix the issue with a brand new line, and things were back to working properly.
For the past two months, the new problem has been this piece of crap cable modem gateway (cable modem + router). According to their support page, Netgear doesn’t even support the model, CG814WG, because the vendors have flashed their own firmware onto the hardware. I knew that before hand though, because I went to log into the router and was greeted with a GUI for dummies. Essentially the only options I could change was the WPA/WEP key, port forwarding, parental controls, and DMZ. I couldn’t even change the IP of the unit itself, which was conflicting with another computer on my network. Ridiculous!
Anyway, the problem I’m having is that the router will continually drop a signal, and then pick it back up again. Talk about annoying! I know when it’s going to happen because I’m not able to open any websites–they all just time out on me. It gets worse when there are more people are on the internet, and we usually have about 3 people connected, which is a paltry number, but nonetheless.
Googling around for the CG814WG model shows that it’s a piece of crap in general. When you google for “Comcast CG814WG” the results are all about how the piece of crap isn’t working for them. They all have the same problem. It reboots itself constantly leaving problems if you’re connected to a game, say Halo 3 (which has been my problem. I’ve lost 9EXP and ranking from dropping out of ranked games because of the connection.)
Today I have finally had it with the piece of shit. I wanted to hop on the 360 before work to play a quick game of Halo 3, and things were fine at first. I got matched with a team, and just as we got the map to play on, the other players dropped out which means that my connection lagged and I got kicked from the ranked game. Bye bye EXP.
Later on I’m going out to buy the D-Link DCM202 and I’ll just hook up my old Linksys WRT54G to get going. Instead of going wirelessly for the Xbox 360, I think I’ll just go ahead and return the wifi adapter. I’ve ordered two Netgear XE102 Powerline Adapters so that I can go wired with the unit. Even though I know the wireless issue will be resolved when I replace the unit, I’d rather go wired for the Xbox 360. I can’t handle losing any more EXP points when I’m not even leaving the team.
Here’s a big Fuck you to Comcast’s shitty firmware that ruined the hardware and rendered it absofuckinglutely useless.
Leave a Reply