Really bad modem + router combo causing slow speed or TWC at fault?
Adrian Grech asked 7 years ago
Hi Marcel,
My roommates and I supposedly bought a 100mbs plan from twc but we rarely see anything about 3mbs and this has been going on for several months! We have called twc many times, but they refuse to do anything about it, simply saying that they are “giving us our promised speed”. The modem we are using is an Arris 1670A and we are using a Linksys WRT54G v1 router. I think this is a bad combo considering how the router isn’t meant for multiple people to use at once and how both products are as old as a dinosaur. The internet connection has gotten so bad, I’ve list connection 4 times thus far during the 2 minutes it took me to type this. I think this might be an ip address issue caused by the modem but I amn’t entirely sure either, and twc won’t assist us. Could you please tell us how we can fix our internet speed and get at least 90mbs from the 100mbs we’re supposed to have? None of our devices have malware and the only way we can get even a remotely decent speed is by connecting to the modem through an ethernet cable, but we only have one. We are 3 people in total. Thanks for your assistance!
Marcel Brown Staff answered 7 years ago
The router could definitely be a bottleneck. By my quick research it is at least a 4 year old router technology (probably closer to 6 years by my estimate) and older routers are definitely not up to the task of the newer high speed broadband services. However, 3 Mbps is very low and I’m thinking your router may not be functioning properly anyway. So I would definitely get a new router, such as the Linksys EA6350 or similar which is more than plenty powerful to handle a 100 Mbps connection.
Your modem shows itself to be DOCSIS 3.0 compliant, which in theory should be able to handle 100 Mbps connections with no problem. However, if it is older, then it may also be not functioning as well as it could when it was new. I would start with replacing the router first, then if that is not satisfactory, replace the modem next. Does TWC not give you a modem as part of your service package?