Cisco E2000 vs E2500

[Gibson486]

Well....the time has come my. My DDWRT flashed Motorola router has finally called it quits. After getting wall gardened from Comcast over and over again, my latest efforts to keep mt router came to an end as not even MAC cloning or switching the DNS would let me get through. Usually it requires a phone call and 1 hour of talking to their tech. This time, it was a full 2 hours and the tech was not able to anything this time.

My budget is on the low end, so I see I have two choices....

Cisco E2000 or E2500. Both are $45.

Is simultaneous dual band worth having over Gigabit ethernet?

Or should I try to keep my current router and keep trying to get through? Also, people keep saying the e2500 has less antenna than the e2000, but I have not seen any documentation that supports that.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wierd. Never known anyone with Comcast to have problems running their own router connected to their modem. I honestly think that you might have other problems, perhaps a defective cablemodem, or perhaps a defective router? (Did its NVRAM get wiped, and end up with a zeroed-out MAC address?)

Usually you get the walled garden, when Comcast doesn't properly have the MAC address of your CableModem registered with them and your account. It generally has nothing to do with the router.

Did you try powering everything down, waiting a minute, and then powering up the cablemodem, router, and PC, in sequence?

 

[Gibson486]

That is what I thought. I tried a new router that I borrowed from a friend. It works all of a sudden. So, time is worth more than money to fix this IMO. I lost too many hours dealing with this.

As for the NVRAM, I accidentally uploaded the robust version years ago without seeing the warning the moto routers have to use the non robust version or you can't flash back. So, there is no way to upload the original factory state back. Even if the MAC address is weird, shouldn't it work if I mask it with the MAC from a PC? That solution worked, but only for about 2 weeks. This has worked fine until a few months ago (running the same set up for over 5 years).

It seems like once I take that router out of the equation, everything works fine again. However, what will really piss me off is if I buy a new router, then find out that it was indeed the cable modem if/when I get garden walled in two weeks. According to the tech over the phone, my cable modem (SB5120) is fine, but as most know, you take what they say with a grain of salt.