Motorola SB6120 SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0 eXtreme Broadband Cable Modem
by Motorola
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Motorola SB6120 SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0 eXtreme Broadband Cable Modem
Customer Review: Using with Comcast and an Apple Airport Extreme
Summary: 5 Stars
2009 Dec. 8: The speeds have increased, not decrease in the past few months. I still receive a low of 20 Mb/sec and as high as 25 Mb/sec. I have never had to reboot the box. This is as low maintenance as I have ever had from a DSL box or my prior Motorola cable box. Friends who have purchased this have seen the same improvements in their home systems. They are also Comcast, but in Chicago. My family in Chicago also liked the no fuss setup using the Apple Airport Extreme for their all PC network and thrilled to extend their system with an Apple Airport Express on their long house.
2009 Oct. 9: I have had a great experience the first week of use with the new SB6120 modem.
The good: 20Mb/sec download and 10Mb/sec upload when it originally was 4.5 down and 1.4 up with a SB5100. This is a must buy for the bandwidth increase. Once correctly setting up the Airport Extreme, it is a joy.
The bad: I tried to substitute the SB6120 directly into my home system. But I realized that there were some problems with how the group of products were not working together well. My stumbling block started with a call to Motorola which gave advice in which they said that the SB6120 was not powerful enough to front end to a router. What? Anyway, after I correctly setup the system the next day; it worked beautifully.
Here is one setup for the Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (Simultaneous Dual-Band) (MC340LL/A) that allowed my system to be up and running in only 20 minutes, including the call to Comcast service to activate the SB6120: The Airport Extreme setup I used is...
1) Choose the configuration for the incoming data with the DHCP option.
2) Then share a single public IP address on the router, with the DHCP and NAT.
3) And the important part of the procedure: When switching between connecting a computer to your SB6120 and connecting your AirPort Extreme, be sure that you cycle power on the SB6120 so that it can reassociate with the change in unit. Why? Comcast will usually have you test out your connection of a new modem directly to a computer. Cycling the power on the SB6120 allows for hooking everything back up to the Airport Extreme, without the new modem not communicating to the router correctly.
Thanks to William Boyd Jr. for the correct information.
Customer Review: With so many reviews, does it need another? I say YES!
Summary: 5 Stars
So, my old modem died. Do you want to know how old my old modem was? When they tech came out to look at what was going on with my service (I have Comcast), he laughed and said "10 Base T? They don't make these anymore!". Now, I used to sell computers. I mean back in the day, when a 28.8k modem was pretty hot stuff. And I had my old modem for years (apparently) and I never thought anything of it. Well, between this kid and the girl at Best Buy, I learned a thing or two.
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Most modems handle up to 100 Base T. All you need to know is that 100 is a lot. Now, your service coming into your home, if it's Comcast, at least, is like 16. Yah I forget what the numbers mean. Just know that you're not getting a whole lot from your provider. It's pathetic if you ask me. ANYWAY so kid #1 tells me I need a new modem. And I thought they were all the same - I thought they just take that cable signal and turn it into a signal you computer can see, right? No. Apparently there's more to it. And I'm to dumb to explain. I went to Best Buy and bought this modem - it's the same price as it you see here (Around $100). Now, the girl there helped me out. She rattled on about some Doc Sys thing and how 3 is better than 2 but not everything supports 3 yet. Whatever. I'm just going to get laughed at again by another pre-teen in 15 years when this one dies. So I bought this one. It supports Doc Sys 3 or something. That means it's fast and can handle whatever future upgrade thing. Read other reviews- I'm sure some nerd explains it here. I'm just a regular shnook.
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I took it home, plugged it all in, called up Comcast to register the thing (they want the #s on the side of the box) and boom - it works. It's faster than my old modem, and all my stuff that's plugged into my router (which is only a year old) is faster, along with my wireless stuff now works faster.
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I like this modem a lot. One of the things I like best is that the lights on the outside change from green to blue when you're getting the faster speed. Or something. Something about the Doc Sys 3 thing. I know there's a light for the incoming signal, and mine's always blue, which if I read the instructions correctly means I'm getting the fastest inuput speed. Also I like blue lights.
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I would have bought a modem from Amazon, but so many reviews are so old (2007?) and I want the latest and the greatest. Well, I walked into an actual store and it's Feb 2011 and I got the Motorola SB6120 and it works excellent.
Customer Review: 15-20% speed increase from old modem
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently upgraded my aging cable modem because I believed a newer one would provide superior speed, as well as allow me to stop paying Comcast $5.00 a month to rent a modem. I chose the SB6120 after reading many reviews on Amazon and other places all of which highly rated this modem.
After a few weeks of testing the modem out, I can verify that it provided me with a 15-20% speed increase while downloading. I live in the Chicagoland area where DOCSIS 3.0 is active, so I expected to gain some speed, but I wasn't sure how much. Here are my test results pre-upgrade and then after the upgrade:
*****OLD MODEM*****
Download Speed: 15690 kbps (1961.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 4223 kbps (527.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
*****NEW MODEM*****
Test 1: (4pm local time)
Download Speed: 18236 kbps (2279.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 4227 kbps (528.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Test 2: (8am local time)
Download Speed: 19196 kbps (2274.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 4236 kbps (529.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Test 3: (9pm local time)
Download Speed: 18044 kbps (2255.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 4213 kbps (526.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
(All tests were through Comcast's Speed Test web-page).
*****Results*****
As you can see, upload speed was not improved, but download speed was on average about 15% faster. The other thing I noticed is that because of DOCSIS 3.0, even at high usage times (morning and mid afternoon) speeds were not affected. I didn't gain anything on upload speed, but that isn't that surprising.
Installation was easy. I unplugged the old modem, powered down my computer, plugged in the new modem, and then booted up the computer (Make sure that the first time you use the modem, you connect it DIRECTLY to your PC, NOT your router!). I then called Comcast, gave them my modem's mac address (which is found on the backside of the modem) and 5 minutes later I was up and running. Once your modem is activated with Comcast, you can then plug it into your router.
This was a timely and well worth it upgrade. The modem will pay for itself in approximately 18 months (vs. renting a modem from Comcast), and will provide me with superior download speeds during that time, so it's a win/win.
If you want a cutting edge and incredibly fast modem, this is the one to buy.
5/5 Stars.
Customer Review: Better than the old Comcast RCA/Thomson leased unit
Summary: 5 Stars
Have a friend who had been leasing their cable modem from Comcast for quite some time, and of all modems it was an RCA/Thomson cable modem. Connections started getting flaky and sure enough, a check of the cable modem's diagnostic page showed it had difficulty with acquiring the downstream signal and ranging. I used to work for Comcast doing contracted HSI installs and the RCA modems always gave us techs issues; I never had issues with Motorola modems or installing a customer's provided Linksys "DCM" series. I chose this SB6120 for her since I have one my self and the connection has been rock solid and it's also DOCSIS 3 which our area is dishing up. I used to have a SB5120 which started acting up after 6 years in use which is why I bought the SB6120. I think of cable modems as consumables, something is going to wear on them, either a component inside or the power supply, and that newer technology always comes out so its not a huge deal to me to buy a new one every 6-8 years.
Got this modem for her and setup was well, rather boring. There's not much too it considering you hook up the modem and call the cable company to have them provision the new modem.
I will give this one tip about this modem. When you first plug in your SB6120, let it sit for about 10 minutes to download any new firmware being pushed by your cable provider. At first it may seem like the modem is not connecting because it is ranging/acquiring channels/frequencies, as was in my case, but I then decided to just leave it plugged in for some time and after about 10 minutes all the lights stayed solid not blinking (and yes I thought the modem was having troubles so I did power cycle it a couple times) Sometimes it may take longer. In my particular instance, Comcast was pushing a new firmware and also the "wallgarden" config which made the modem appear it was never acquiring a signal. Once I got the wallgarden, I called Comcast to have them provision the modem. The modem did a restart and I restarted the computer and had connection to the internet. I don't like that you are asked to download and install the stuff from Comcast so I just called them no problem.
Customer Review: SB6120 is way to go...
Summary: 5 Stars
I have had the Motorola SB6120 installed for a couple of weeks on my Earthlink through Brighthouse, and now on my Brighthouse (Road Runner) Turbo account for over a week. It is rock solid, as was my SB5120 for OVER 3 YEARS when I swapped. I use idrive.com for backups, and though speed tests on my connection show an up speed of almost 2mb which is spec., it gets around 1.4 to 1.6 uploading my complete hard drive of 70 gig. Down is 15 to 20 mb down. Once upload completes, it is only incremental and new files, so only a matter of minutes to back up. SB6120 uploaded for 3.5 days SOLID, and completed without a hitch, and with fast connection, I could hardly tell it was running. I normally don't buy Motorola phones, but their cable modems are great. SB6120 seems to have faster chips. It is docsis 2.0 and 3.0, no usb. Should be compat. with any current cable system using current docsis 2.0, and when 3.0 multichannel arrives. Bought SB6120 from Amazon. Fresh product. Brighthouse swapped the MAC address in same day, and called to cut over (they have to load personal cable modems into their inventory before use) that night. I'm in Birmingham, Alabama. Blazing fast, rock solid after they found a feeder fitting loose up the pole several years ago (had them out 10 times before they found it). Go figure. Note: Check your routers. Old routers are slower. Also, To swap the modem to another PC, or a router, make sure to unplug the modem power for 15 or 30 seconds, and plug back in. Routers also. Otherwise, you can get hangs. I swap 100' cat5's for my backup pc, and do this. Took out the router. Keep it simple.
P.S. If you are using wireless, you are subject to all sorts of RF interference, and others on your connection. Try the modem straight wired, then don't blame the modem. Also get SB6120 which is cheaper and better than the SB5120 (no USB no old code in SB6120).
Also, if you have old foil shield (not braid) coax coming to house from pole, or outside to mode, it will give you fits from time to time with no warning. You won't know why everything stopped. Replace it. Good luck! I'm picky. Love this modem!