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Comcast recently sent me a brand spanking new cablemodem, a Ubee DDM3513, to replace my Toshiba PCX2500. I haven't set it up yet, since it occurs to me that this is Comcast we're talking about and the odds of them spending money just because they want to improve my day are, uh, let's say slim.

So: if I install this new cablemodem, am I enabling Comcast to enforce super-new, super-secret bandwidth caps / rate limits that my old cablemodem just didn't have the technology for, or something equally Comcastic? Is there a catch?

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You should change Comcasty to Comtastic! But seriously I have Comcast and a fairly old modem and they haven't sent me anything. Is your modem REALLY old? – Kyle May 3 '11 at 21:41
@Kyle: Not really. I got it around three years ago. – chaos May 3 '11 at 21:43
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@Kyle: Comtastic, lawl. I decided to go with Comcastic. :) – chaos May 3 '11 at 21:45
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closed as not constructive by Linker3000, squircle, Majenko, Nifle, studiohack♦ May 5 '11 at 21:03

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2 Answers

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I can not find any information on the Ubee but looking at the information on the Toshiba makes it is clear why they are sending you a new one.

The Toshiba is only DOCSIS 1.1 compliant which is a suprise you should already have one that was 2.0 compliant if it was only a few years ago. They are starting to push DOCSIS 3.0 to increase speeds and phase out 1.0 altogether because lack of features. Some of those features that are missing force them to lower their security on the CMTS to be backwards compatible. This allows people to get on the internet for free, uncapped, and damn near untraceable. So you can see why they are moving away from the old DOCSIS.

As for the super secret bandwidth cap... they don't need you to have a new modem for that they can just push a new configuration to your current modem and it will limit to whatever they want.

So in conclusion you can only benefit from a new modem which you will have to use when they completely phase out DOCSIS 1.0/1.1 in your area.

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up vote 3 down vote

Keep in mind regardless of how unscrupulous they are, Comcast is still your ISP if they want to pull some shady business it's much easier for them to do it down stream. Possibly they are providing you with a modem that supports IPv6? I heard they were doing trial runs in certain areas. Also June 8th is IPV6 day and Comcast said they were going to have Alot of customers participating in it. From Comcast:

Comcast and the Internet Society today announced that Comcast will participate in World IPv6 Day on June 8, 2011. We anticipate having our IPv6 trial users participate in this event, which will give them the opportunity to access many more sites natively over IPv6. In addition, we plan to have more of our websites available over IPv6 (the current list of IPv6-ready sites is here).

I suspect this modem simply provides support for dual stack lite.

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Pretty sure the modem has nothing to do with IPv6 as it acts as a hardware bridge to your router or computer which handles that layer of the stack. – Arctor May 3 '11 at 22:24
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