[SOLVED] Router Compatibility

[Sulerium]

Suddenlink has been screwing us over for the past 5 years so we're going to change our Internet 200 plan to an Internet 400 (maybe even a gig) and getting our own router and modem so we're not spending an extra $10 for the ARRIS we're "renting" from them. The issue is that when looking at Suddenlink approved Modems they're all extremely limited and anything above 680 mbps can't be found because of the "Intel Puma Chipset Defect." I'm wondering if it is possible to get a modem that supports 1 gig connections without having the Puma Defect, and if that isn't possible then is there a router with the defect that doesn't actually cause any issues with the internet connection.

Also, by any chance is there any way I could check the internet speed of the in-house wiring without moving my computer closer to the router, because if the internet through the cabling is as bad as I believe, then we're thinking about purchasing a Google Wifi system since we're changing from cable and DirectTv to streaming services (Hulu and Sling).

Finally, because we're now switching to streaming services, I believe that would raise a need for more mbps for nice streaming, we've been fine with the 200 mbps internet with light streaming and just me playing games on it, but with the introduction of these new devices should we go with the 400 mbps or go up to 1 gig (we stream in 4K)?

 

[bill001g]

You are reading old information on the puma problem. They patched this years ago. The tools still shows a problem but actual user traffic is no longer being affected. So pretty much if you run a very special program that sends a very unusual data pattern you can see this but real traffic is no longer impacted.

You really have no option but to use modems the providers supports. They are the ones that actually put patches on the modem you can not even do it yourself even when you own the modem. People where complaining that some ISP were slow to push the fix to the puma issues.

Make sure you buy a modem and router as separate devices unless cost is a huge factor. It give much more options on the router you choose.

200mbps is a lot actually. It mostly depends on what you are doing. If you had 5 people watch 4k netflix it would use about 20mbps so 100mbps. Almost any other activity other than download takes far less. Games only use 1mbps. So unless you have people doing crazy stuff like watching mulitple 4k videos at the same time it is hard to use large internet connections. Faster game download speed is kinda a joke. Sure it now downloads in 2 minutes rather than 5 minutes but it still spends another 20 minutes installing and moving files around even on a fast ssd.

The bandwidth you need to watch a little more closely is the upload bandwidth. Mostly it is people that are streaming video or using video chat software that can hit limits.

I am not sure what you mean by the wiring in your house. The connection to a cable modem depends on the DB loss in the cable. You should be able to see this on your current modem if you move it around. There are tables that show what good values are for different types of docsis encoding. If you mean ethernet it only runs at certain fixed speeds. It will run 100mbps or 1gbit. The actual data being passed runs at the full speed or zero so rates you see are average rates not the actual transmission speeds.