Cable Modem and Wireless Router

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B16RacerN2NR

B16RacerN2NR

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I'm looking to buy my own cable modem so I don't have to pay the rental fee to my ISP and also need a wireless router so I have Wifi for my cell and my son's Wii.

We don't do anything that requires a ton of bandwidth so i'm currently on my ISP's 2Mbps plan but I will be upgrading to their 15Mbps plan because the 2Mbps is just a bit too slow.

They ( WOW! - Bundle Deals on Digital Cable and High Speed Internet and Home Phone Services ) are compatible with any DOCSIS 1.1 cable modem or higher for their 2Mbps and 15Mbps plans. Their only plans that require a DOCSIS 3.0 modem is their 30Mbps and 50Mbps plans.

Seeing as how I don't need the latest and greatest or do anything that requires top of the line stuff, I figure a budget of about $100 should be ok.

My house is a 1 story, 1400 sq ft. 99% brick. On 1/2 acre. All I ask is for excellent signal strength throughout my entire home.

So what would you guys recommend? Any modem and router in-one set up you would recommend?
 
I've never had any issues with the Motorola cable modems; I had purchased one before but don't know what happened to it; Time Warner no longer charges us "rental" so I've been using theirs now that also has Digital Voice....only "issue" so far is the optional back-up battery started acting weird(battery light blinking) but Time Warner gave me another battery for free.
 
Ive bought 3 used motorola surfboard sb5101:
Amazon.com: Motorola Surfboard SB5101 Cable Modem: Electronics

Paired with 2 ASUS RT-N12 in WDS wireless G mode (legacy devices) modded with Tomato USB:
Newegg.com - ASUS RT-N12/B1 SuperSpeedN Wireless Router with 2x5dBi Antenna / Open Source DDWRT Support IEEE 802.11b/g/n, IEEE 802.3/3u

Its rock solid and covers a 3000 (2500 living) sq ft property well.

However, I would trade the ASUS in for a Cisco E3000 soft modded with Tomato:
Newegg.com - Refurbished: Linksys E3000-RM 802.11a/b/g/n 2.4/5GHz Dual Band Gigabit Wireless Router

You would get dual bad 2.4/5.0ghz wireless N for more bandwidth, USB port for printers or hard drives and gigabit ethernet ports.

Lastly, when you use WDS or any type of "bridged" connection you lose half of maximum bandwidth. So wireless G is 54Mbps, but in WDS i can get only 13-14Mbps max on my laptop. But with LAN, I get max 18-20Mbps due to the remove limitation of half bandwidth in WDS mode.
 
oh yeah I bought 3 because one for myself, one for my parents and one for my brother, not because they died or needed replacement. and i set them all up with the ASUS setup because Frys was selling them at $20/pop new. Again, with the price of the Cisco E3000 dropping, I would pick those up instead of going with 2xRT-N12s.
 
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