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Forum Discussion
C3000 Unsatisfied
I am thouroughly unsatisfied with the Netgear C3000 Cable Modem/router.
We purchased this in June and have had problems with it since then. We have been working with Comcast all along to fix the problems until finaly they say they can do no more and to call netgear. Netgear only tells me it is a 90 day warranty and if I want help then I need to purchase the $80 a month help service.
We cut cable to internet only because we can't afford cable tv, what makes you think we can afford that!
So if anyone can help, here goes.
We have the Netgear C3000 cable modem/wifi
Windows 10
usually 1 tv streaming always
2 iphones occassionally streaming or searching internet
All firmware is up to date
I've re-arranged our office so that the modem is not near anything metal. I've purchase new RG6 cable that is supposed to reduce interference. I have put our signal on a channel in which we are the only ones on it.
At this point I'm at a loss.
Thanks,
5 Replies
You haven't described your problems, though it sounds it at least involves Wi-Fi speed. Are your wired devices also affected?
Has Comcast looked at the signal levels coming into your C3000? Are they low? If so, has Comcast sent a tech to test the signal and inspect the cable coming from the cable plant to your house?
Do you have coax splitters between the cable demarc (i.e. the point where cable enters your house) and your modem? If so, remove all of them. A 2-way splitter will cause a minimum of 3.5 dB of loss. 3- or more-way splitters are even worse. And unterminated cables will cause reflections that will degrade signal integrity.
Have you measured the Wi-Fi signal strength on your devices? Apple has a Wi-Fi scanner built into their Airport Utility app that will report signal strength. You can find instructions here, about midway down the page, for enabling the scanner.
- Sorry, I'm not all that tech inclined.
We have low wifi strength. We pay for up to 105, and get 75-85 wired, but wifi is 1-3. We often have dropped signals.
We did have a tech out, he said everything was fine, but I do doubt his abilities somewhat. He said he needed to go into the attic to find where it came into the house. Our attic access is sealed and has never been entered, we showed him where it came into th house, and he said ok.
I have only done speed tests, no strength tests.Give the Airport Utility a try. It's free. Use its Wi-Fi scanner to look at the RSSI of your Wi-Fi network. RSSI is expressed as a negative value, so larger values are worse. You want to aim for an RSSI of, say, -75 dBm or better. -50 dBm would be great. -40 dBm and you're probably standing next to the router.
On the opposite end, if you are seeing values like -80 dBm or -90 dBm, then either the router is putting out a weak signal or you have too many walls absorbing or reflecting the signal. Because of the high radio frequencies, Wi-Fi is notoriously sensitive to the physical surroundings. Moreover, the wavelength of a 2.4 GHz radio signal is about 5 inches, so even shifting by a few inches can affect signal quality.
- Thanks, it's coming in st -53, so I guess that's not bad. So I'm still stuck at why it keeps going slow and/or dropping
Ok, that's not too bad. Do you have any wired devices that you can use to simultaneously test the speed of the Internet access during those times when Wi-Fi speeds are slow? This may help determine if the issue is with Wi-Fi or with the Internet access. As you may or may not know, cable Internet is a medium shared by multiple neighbors. ISPs are notorious for underprovisioning their cable infrastructure to handle the advertised bandwidth provided to subscribers. If too many people are accessing the Internet in your neighborhood, the cable can saturate. I used to have 50 Mbps Xfinity and I would regularly see speeds drop from 50 Mbps to 10 Mbps or worse at night, when everyone was home. It drove me to switch back to DSL and eventually fiber.
