Walmart has Motorola SB6121 on clearance

[BigD1]

My cable modem died today, and I went down to my local Walmart to get a cable modem. The Motorola SB6121 was $70 bucks at Walmart and Amazon's website. It was marked down to $52 at the store. I asked the associate to scan it, and she said it was now a clearance item. I chose the SB6141 anyway, but thought I would mention the low price on the SB6121 because it's an excellent price.

The SB6121 is a 4 channel down and 4 channel up. The SB6141 that I ended up buying is a 8 channel down and a 4 channel up.

 

[michaelluscher]

The 6121 is a false economy these days

 

[BigD1]

At $8 to $10 a month rental fee for 6121, I would call it great economy for the cable companies!

Check the 6121 at Comcast speed tiers, and you will see the modem still is a lot of bang for the buck. It's good all the way up to Extreme 105 tier.

http://mydeviceinfo.comcast.net/

 

[Subdued]

Originally Posted By: michaelluscher
The 6121 is a false economy these days

No it's not.

At that price you made your money back in 6 months by not having rental fees.

It will still be an accepted "current" modem for carriers for years to come.

It's a DOCSIS 3 modem that gets 160/120mbit speeds, which still far exceeds any packages most carriers have, nevermind the fact most people don't sign up for the maximum speed package.

Overkilling transport equipment "just because" isn't generally an economical idea.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

Can I use this one with Crime Warner?

 

[Rand]

yes it works fine with time warner
I'd recommend it upto their 30mbit tier.

at 50mbit I was having dropoffs.

the bandwidth chart looked like a mountain range
between 45mbit and 60mbit on speedtest.

Timewarner also only recommends it for 50mbit and below.

I replaced with a 6183 now my bandwidth chart looks like a horz.line at 62mbit.

In real world use you never get the theoretical max from each channel.. but 4 channels is plenty for 30mbit and below.
and barely adequate for 50mbit depending on congestion etc.

If you have 50 or 100mbit the 6141 with 8 channels is sufficient.

Most areas don't have 16 channel bonding even turned on for the 6183 but it is future proof and on sale for 112$ right now.

but the 6183 is required for all areas above 100mbit. and is recommended(by me at least) for 100mbit service.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

I have the 2mbps plan ... So it should work fine for me. I think I will see if they have one on lunch!

 

[BigD1]

About the warranty on the Arris/Motorola 6121 and 6141. Most websites that the modems are listed say that the modems only have a one year warranty. Don't know about the 6121, but the 6141 has a two year warranty just as long as it's bought from an authorized retailer.

I registered the 6141 at the Arris website, and put in the serial number, where it was bought, and the date it was bought, and Arris gave me a bonus 90 days extra warranty for a total of 27 months warranty. Why I got the extra warranty I don't know.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

Just bought it - going to activate it tonight so I can use my own wifi router. That will save me ~20 a month..

Time Warner won't give me a non-wifi router.

 

[michaelluscher]

Originally Posted By: Subdued
Originally Posted By: michaelluscher
The 6121 is a false economy these days

No it's not.

At that price you made your money back in 6 months by not having rental fees.

It will still be an accepted "current" modem for carriers for years to come.

It's a DOCSIS 3 modem that gets 160/120mbit speeds, which still far exceeds any packages most carriers have, nevermind the fact most people don't sign up for the maximum speed package.

Overkilling transport equipment "just because" isn't generally an economical idea.


Do you know how channel bonding and node congestion work?

If you did, then you'd know that irregardless of what speed you have, you'd want to have as many channel's (on your end) as possible.

With the FTTN and DOCSIS 3.1 tech coming, you want to wring as much as you can out of what bandwidth is available.

 

[Subdued]

you lost me at irregardless

 

[BigD1]

Originally Posted By: Miller88
Just bought it - going to activate it tonight so I can use my own wifi router. That will save me ~20 a month..

Time Warner won't give me a non-wifi router.


Did you get the clearance price?

Don't worry about what firmware that is on it because the cable company should push what ever firmware to it that they have tested, and works good for their system. At around midnight on the same day I bought the modem, my cable company pushed updated firmware to my SB6141 modem. I checked the logs the next morning to see if it had any reboots, and sure enough it had rebooted because of the new firmware.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

I got it for $52. There were probably 10 of them on the shelf but there was no label. It did ring up as clearance, though.

It's nice being able to use my own router with my own security settings again.