Customer Reviews

Motorola Surfboard SB5101 Cable Modem

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought the Motorola Surfboard 5101 a couple of weeks ago on Amazon. Think they must have gotten a new vendor because the price was about $15 cheaper and there were hundreds of reviews for this cable modem.

I just wanted to point out some things that I picked up from the other reviews. I am a Comcast customer and I wanted to avoid paying the $3/month rental charge for their RCA modem. When I connected the 5101 even though I had all green lights I still had no internet connection. That is because you have to call Comcast and tell them your new MAC ID number that is shown on the modem. This is not pointed out anywhere in the instructions. The Comcast tech did not ask for my serial number. After a few minutes he made the change and said everything was OK.

I rebooted the modem and computer but I still could not connect to the net. I remembered from other reviews that it takes about ten or fifteen minutes for the change to take place. After 15 minutes I rebooted everything and I had my internet connection.

Also there is no mention that the 5101 works with Vista. Thought I might have to download some drivers but I didn't. It works just fine with Vista.

After two weeks the 5101 modem has been working with no problems. I do use that Standby button when I am not connected to the net just because all those green lights are a distraction.

Hope this helps.

I purchased this cable modem to replace a combo cable modem/wireless router from my internet provider to save money as I already had a wireless router. I use Charter Cable and the installation was very simple with them. First I plugged up the Surfboard modem, and powered up and connected the cable, and then plugged in my laptop and started IE. Charter loaded up a simple page where you indicated you were replacing their hardware, and all you had to do was enter your account # and their modem's MAC address and that was about it. I did install the Charter browser applet just to make the setup easier but that's all there was to it (I'll uninstall that later). A couple of reboots to the modem and reloading the IE browser and it was up and running with internet access. Then I plugged in my Netgear WGR614 wireless router to the modem. That took a couple of reboots to get all the IP addresses worked out between cable modem and wireless router and laptop, but it pretty much came up on its own with minimal effort. And all worked fine together with no added or installed software or patches. I will try and remember to update this post after it's been up and running a while with new info on how it performs over time. But initially I can only say good things about this modem, and connection speed is very good as well.

It's a simple cable modem and only has one ethernet connection at the back so if you want to connect multiple PCs/laptops then you'll need an additional router. It does have USB connection available as well.

For the price and ease of setup and installation it's great and all that we needed for our house.

Arrived on time and worked exactly as it should. Takes 5 minutes to set up with your local ISP.

I purchased this modem so I would not need to continue paying Comcast the monthly "rental charge". It runs well and has been trouble-free for a couple of months now.

Follow-up: After 5 months - still working great!

I recently signed up with Comcast but didn't want to be a sucker for their monthly modem rental. At $6 per month, I'd rather buy my own modem. This is the exact same surfboard SB5101 that Comcast uses. Installation was so easy! Plug it in, screw on the cable line, wait for all the lights to blink on, go to your laptop to access the web and a Comcast window will automatically pop up to guide you through the self-installation process. All it took was just a few clicks plus some wait time while data was updating. I couldn't believe how easy it was!! By the way, this works with Windows 7, Vista & Windows XP. I have this connected to a wireless router and it broadcasts fine to all 3 of our laptops at home that run different operating systems.

I wanted to save myself the $5 a month I was spending renting a modem from Charter (in Michigan). After reading the reviews I purchased this about a month ago. It was easy to hook up, and I didn't even have to call the company. Their site recognized that there was a new modem and a window popped up to guide me through the setup. A few days later I reduced my connection speed to the slowest they offer, 1Mbps. I was expecting I wouldn't be able to watch video anymore, but I was pleasantly surprised that I have still been able to watch Hulu and shows on the network websites without too much trouble. Its been about a month now since I started using this modem, and so far its worked perfectly.

Great Item
Works very fast and smooth, easy installation.
Like new condition with required parts and instructions.
I am very pleased Thanks
Larry

Don't have any problems since connecting it. The problem has been always on the cable company side. Sometimes resetting it is not enough but you to disconnect it and connect again.

This was the modem our cable company provided us for our internet in 2006. Without realizing it, I paid almost $300 to rent it since then! I purchased the same model from Amazon to stop paying for a rental because I knew it worked.

We had the rental modem for five years and it was knocked over, dropped, moved, etc, and we never had an issue with it. Very happy with this product.

I was worried about the second hand product off this kind in the beginning but when I saw the working of the device it is perfectly fine. Only a few scratches were there whereas it was claimed that it is like a new but it was not. they sent a new new ethernet cable with it but the adopter was looking quite used. Fortunately Comcast had not objection with my device and they did their job without any objection.