using my cable modem in another country

[danc2heaven]

Hello, I am in China right now and I brought my Motorola surfboard 5120 modem from the U.S. to use because I heard the modems in China have some backdoors built into the hardware so it is possible for people to mess with your network. Anyways I talked to the guy at the cable service provider and he said I can't use my modem its not compatible. I told him it should be and he should just have to register the mac id. He said something about running on a different channel and that modems from different countries are different. I don't know if there is truth in this or not does anyone have any suggestions on this or if it is safe security wise to use the provided modem.
Thanks

 

[El0him]

Well, as long as china isn't using eurodocsis, it should work.

Hello, I am in China right now and I brought my Motorola surfboard 5120 modem from the U.S. to use because I heard the modems in China have some backdoors built into the hardware so it is possible for people to mess with your network. Anyways I talked to the guy at the cable service provider and he said I can't use my modem its not compatible. I told him it should be and he should just have to register the mac id. He said something about running on a different channel and that modems from different countries are different. I don't know if there is truth in this or not does anyone have any suggestions on this or if it is safe security wise to use the provided modem.
Thanks

 

[danc2heaven]

ok i will ask about this. thanks.

 

[calyn]

Not quite right. While DOCSIS is one standard, there are national deviations, for example there is Japanese DOCSIS, which is incompatible with DOCSIS used in the US. China is also likely to have some subtle changes in the encapsulation maiking it incompatible with a US modem while still maintaing the DOCSIS standard.

 

[danc2heaven]

Hello, I found out that the modem here uses euro docsis 2.0 so I guess I can't use my other modem. Thanks again.