Purchased yesterday and set it up without any problems. It is now compatible with Comcast. This was an issue previously, but Comcast has now certified its use. Performance is great and very convenient having build in wireless, no need for a separate router, especially if you are mostly wireless, which my family is. I also ran several speed tests and got up to 20Mbps download and 3.4Mbps upload. Very pleased and a dramatic improvement from my older Comcast supplied Scientific Atlanta Modem. Highly recommended!! Motorola SURFboard Gateway SBG901 DOCSIS 2.0 Wireless Cable Modem
I use Charter cable and this is the personal-use version of the SBG941 that Charter leases for an additional per-month fee. For what I paid this item will pay for itself in 8 months with the extra money I won't have to pay in lease fees and it was ready to go right out of the box with a pre-shared WPA key and so no real advanced setup needed.
I have used so many wireless gateways over the years with average performance I expected this to be little different. My brother bought a sbg900 which he likes, but I wanted better encryption options. I took a chance on the sbg901 and have been very, very impressed. The built in firewall and optional security features are easily used, or bypassed. Port forwarding and control is really well integrated. The signal itself is the best of the wireless gateways I've used, including Netgear, D-link and others. The signal throughout the house, (two story w/basement) is a full 5 of 5. It has not dropped, or needed to be reset after a couple months. As stated earlier I love the security options compared to the sbg900 as WPA2 and better is supported. The compact design incorporating dual antenna configuration is also a huge advancement over the 900 model. If your cable system supports this unit, buy it.
I just bought two of these, for my Mom and Dad (both of which had aging 802.11g routers and DOCSIS 1.0 cable modems). Set them up this weekend with Comcast here in Oregon and no problems there, but the reason I'm coming back to Amazon to rate these is because of two really cool wireless features I've never seen on any other wireless router with the factory firmware.
First, in addition to the normal "Primary" wireless network, the SBG901 gives you the option of setting up a "Guest" wireless network that's completely segregated from your primary network. It can be open and unencrypted, or locked down with encryption and hidden so only guests you trust with the login info can connect. Guest users will have full access to the Internet (within the limits you can set in the firewall, parental controls, etc), but will not be able to see your home network computers. Neat! I've only ever seen that in hacked firmwares before, never in the factory configuration. One scenario I thought of where this could be useful is if parents used this Guest network as a way to provide access restrictions on their kids' XBox 360 without locking down the entire network.
The second feature that I really liked was in setting up the wireless encryption settings. Most wireless routers and access points make you choose your encryption framework (WEP/WPA/WPA2) and protocol (TKIP/AES), and then you have to match that exactly on the clients that connect to your network. This can be a problem when old machines can't support the newest WPA2/AES encryption standard and so you normally have to scale it back to WPA/TKIP in order to be compatible with a wider client base. I was VERY surprised to see that the SBG901 allowed me to enable both WPA and WPA2 at the same time, and support encrypting in both AES and TKIP at the same time, allowing any client I want to connect to the gateway to use the highest level of encryption that they can support. My Windows 7 laptop can connect with WPA2/AES while my Dad's old WinXP laptop connects using WPA/TKIP, to the same network using the same authentication credentials.
An added bonus, though much less important feature-wise, was the ability to change both the username and password from defaults. Usually you're allowed to change the password only, which is not as secure (because anyone who's read the manual for your router already knows one half of the username/password authentication pair - what's the point of a username if it's always "admin"??) So that was nice to see.
All in all I'm very impressed with this cable modem/wireless router. As soon as Motorola releases their SBG6580 DOCSIS 3.0/802.11n wireless cable modem this summer, I'm absolutely going to buy one for myself, on the assumption that it will have the same build quality and features this one has.
Installed the SB901 wireless cable modem with Comcast ISP in the Bellevue region, and struggled with it for a month. Two laptops, one running Windows XP, another running Windows 7, would sporadically lose wireless Internet connectivity on almost every session (every day). The wireless access point would remain connected to these laptops, but Internet access would fail. Restoring access involved 'kick the box' measures like re-booting the laptop, or disconnecting from and reconnecting to the wireless access point (no real idea what was restoring access). A Mac OSX laptop seemed to fare better for reasons unknown -- but this is not an endorsement of OSX over Windows (we use everything).
With a little quick & dirty research, found the following (which you can take with a grain of salt):
(1) Some users of Motorola products that combine both cable modem and wireless router functionality (such as the SB901) report having wireless connectivity issues (see the 1 and 2 star Amazon reviews for this product - you can also find similar reviews for other Motorola combo products).
(2) Unsubstantiated rumor: Motorola has a reputation for making excellent cable modems and mediocre wireless routers. Linksys and Netgear have a reputation for making excellent wireless routers, but not so good cable modems. Hey, it's a rumor, so nobody should get bent out of shape over this.
(3) More unsubstantiated hearsay: Products combining cable modem and wireless router functionality in a single unit tend not to perform as well as separate, dedicated products. Dedicated, separate products make technical support and diagnosis of connection problems easier. Separate products also enable the customer to choose best-of-breed solutions from the best vendors.
(4) We have returned the SB901 as defective, and based on Amazon reviews replaced it with the following:
i. Motorola SB6120 DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem (over 500 raving Amazon reviews)
ii. Netgear N600 WNDR3700 Wireless Router (over 350 strong Amazon reviews)
(5) Above combination is working well -- no more spontaneous loss of wireless internet access. It's blazing fast, and the Netgear wireless router is full-featured and easy to configure -- it enables the user to set an SSID and password, whereas the SB901 went the simpler route of providing a pre-defined SSID and password. Only downside is the SB6120 + N600 WNDR3700 combo was 3X the price of the Motorola SB901 unit. If we had the time to identify a more economical product set, we'd consider alternatives. Meanwhile, I can admire all the fancy LED lights on products we did buy, while enjoying reliable 24/7 connectivity. - Home Network - Modem - Surfboard - Internet'
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