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Forum Discussion
Motorola or Netgear Modem WiFi Routers with the Orbi Mesh System
Looking to upgrade Xfinity modem WiFi Router and NightHawk R7000 Router. Will a newer Motorola or Netgear Modem WiFi Router work within an Orbi WiFi Mesh System? Or will the WiFi signals interfere ...
I would go with NG modem for any router. They work well. Just as long as the ISP service up to the modem is good. Any modem depends on good working signals from the ISP. Something the ISP is responsible for.
Good Luck.
Sorry for lengthy post. Being retireed now and medically on light duty this week I got more time to think and type lengthy post. I'll work on being more concise!
Posted by FURRYe38: "as long as the ISP service up to the modem is good. Any modem depends on good working signals from the ISP. Something the ISP is responsible for."
Agree. When I contact Xfinity, they check my signal from their service center thirty-five miles away. They find no signal issues on their end. But what matters is what the customer is getting on location at their modem. Using Xfinity’s app, and other online speed check apps, I can check that. I call when I am getting around 100 Mbs But then they want me to pay to have tech come out because every looks good on their end. After doing that several times only to get told they cannot find any issues I gave up on that. It is a farce.
I have around 150 speed tests in the test I mentioned above. I documented three variables and found the average Xfinity test compared to High Speed Internet's test to be:
Test Xfinity (avg)
Download: 59 Mbs
Upload: 0.6 Mbs
Latenacy: -3.4 ms
My thought is being as tight as the Upload and Latency average are it validates the download. As you cannot agree that two variables that are reasonably close are valid comparisons but rule out the third as invalid. And it showed in nearly every test Xfinity’s download was consistently higher than the High-Speed Internet’s download speed. And as mentioned above the speed test showed Xfinity’s service highly variable. Xfinity's test shows a StdDev of 128 Mbs.
I got off tangent here. What I intended to ask is if anyone knows of a signal data logger for like a hobbist? I know they make commercial ones. But I am not interested in investing in one like that. But I would like to find one that I could install that I could monitor and document the service, or lack of service, I am currently getting from Xfinity. As on Average I am not getting the service that I pay for monthly.
I had planned to put may data and analysis in a report and make an appointment down at Xfinity’s main office and have a discussion. Adjust my bill, and back pay a reasonably amount, for the service I had been and currently getting. Or update or increase my service data plan to the rate I'm have been paying. I have not been able to have this conversation yet as serval things have come up. And because internet service as actually improved over last serval weeks.
Why? I am not 100% sure why. But I find it curious though. Like I mentioned earlier Xfinity's monitoring systems monitor their customer modems. I have come to believe that their modems throw up a red flag when you run a speed test on your Xfinity modem. When I run tests regularly, I get replies/inquiries about my service. Or what led me to run the test and if the issue was resolved. I would receive emails from Xfinity within hours inquiry about my service and if I need any additional support. After running the test daily for I guess a month I started receiving emails for discounted offers to upgrade my service and receive knew equipment.
After about a month or so, driving out heading to town there were pole service trucks with a big "X" on the side regularly working on the lines. This went on for serval weeks. Then one afternoon looked out my front window and there was a service truck up on the pole on the road at my driveway. So, I went out and walked up to the road and talked with the service tech when he came down. And he basically said they had been chasing some "Gremlins" in this area for the last several weeks. And that they thought they had finally got all the issues worked out and that he was headed back to the shop. He said he was on the interstate heading back when another issue showed up and he was turned around to go back and check. Curious, he came to the service point on the pole at my drive.
And strangely enough, it was during this time I started receiving much better signal and more consistently. I started getting around 470 Mbs on good days. And so I stopped my daily testing and data recording.
It goes back to The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease!
But I'm still interested in a signal recording device to monitor to insure I'm getting what I pay for. There is no telling how long I was receiving poor service. It was a while as I heard about it every day when I got home from work. As I am the default "System Administrator” at our house.
Blue
Blueforester wrote:
I'm still interested in a signal recording device to monitor to insure I'm getting what I pay for. There is no telling how long I was receiving poor service.
This calls out for an internet search. The first product I found is a command line version of Ookla Speed Test that is available for Linux, Mac, Windows https://www.speedtest.net/apps/cli Download the zip file. Extract the executable to a folder and run the program from a command line to display the program options, i.e. in Windows:
speedtest.exe -help
After verifying that it does what you want, create a batch file and some sort of scheduling mechanism to run it as often as desired. For example:
echo off
Echo Speed Test %DATE% %TIME% >>speedrecord.csv
speedtest.exe -fcsv --progress=no >>speedrecord.csvThen schedule this batch file to run as often as desired. (Hourly?) This will create a csv file with one line for each test that looks like this:
"Nitel - Los Angeles, CA","12191","12.8024","2.8445","0","46223471","1446433","394807566","9823388","https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/646a1005-b522-416a-83ef-ca6602fb043b","1","231.011","70.9965","17.038","455.572","25.005","10.7329","12.644","305.68","10.162","16.987"
Open the csv file with Microsoft Excel or whatever program you like.
Mac and Linux have similar ways to run a program on a schedule and save the results.
Oh, gosh. There are so many fun things on the internet. Such as https://testmy.net
This requires that a web browser window remain open. I've now got it running using Edge (minimized) and will check it again in 5-6 hours.
Who knows? There may be even more useful tools to be found!
Looking more closely at Ookla command line SpeedTest, it's clear that it generates far too much detail to be practical and a better solution would be to write an application program to extract just a few key statistics from the json output.
"This calls out for an internet search. The first product I found is a command line version of Ookla Speed Test that is available for Linux, Mac, Windows https://www.speedtest.net/apps/cli Download the zip file. Extract the executable to a folder and run the program from a command line to display the program options, i.e. in Windows:
speedtest.exe -help"
That looks like one, of many, speed test I evaluated. However, writing scripts to have it run and record on a set time is above my System Administrator skill level.
Researching speed test, I found what many others had aleardy posted on various sites. That is the Ookla speed test blows away all other speed test by a good margin. Even compared agianst Xfinity's speed test. Many speculated that they are tied in with one or more ISPs or someone else. As there data ouput stands out when compared to most all other speed test applications.
Blue
