Customer Reviews

RCA DOCSIS External Cable Modem (DCM226)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Quite frankly, this is a horrible piece of hardware. I've had it for about 14 months now and it's given me nothing but headaches. For one thing, it consistently drops the cable signal about once every other week. How do I know this is not a problem with the cable company? My girlfriend has the same ISP, same LAN setup, the only difference is our cable modems (she has the a Zoom 5011 cable modem) and she NEVER drops her signal.

In addition to this, the incredibly poor design of the power dongle that attaches to the modem will cause you headaches to no end. Mine is so sensitive, that even slight movement of my desk will cause the modem to physically reset. This is absurd! I can't even touch the modem without having it reset because the power dongle is so sensitive to disturbances.

On top of all this, it tends to lose the connection when there is heavy traffic. For example, I've had many LAN parties at my house where we've played online games with 4-6 machines. After about 1-2 hours, the connection will simply die and the modem will require a reboot.

It's causing me more headaches now as I am running an in house server that I'm using as the development server for one of my classes. It is consistently dying due to the aforementioned power dongle issue, thus causing problems for the rest of the group memebers who need to access the server to develop on it.

Bottom line, you're better off getting the Zoom 5011 or Toshiba PCX2200. My RCA modem is getting replaced ASAP! I don't know how I put up with it for so long.

I've had the misfortune of owning this modem for 3 years. That power supply connector and the ethernet connector on the back are both junk! Breath on it, touch it, or have any stress or vibration on those cables and the unit will constantly reset itself. One day, I got so angry at it, I grabbed the unit by the power cord, swung it around and smashed it onto the floor. The plastic around the power plug cracked apart exposing the metal pins. After that the modem stopped reseting itself nearly as often.

The only reason, I kept the modem so long was because the cable company screwed up the configuration and gave me a 3 Mbps connection for the cost of a 256Kbps connection. Eventually even that benefit wasn't enough for me and I purchased a used Com21 modem off of ebay and that one is more reliable, although unfortuantly properly configured.

If you see one of these things on ebay, DON'T BUY IT. It's a terribly unreliable unit. If you actually own one of these things, solder the power supply wires directly to the PCB. Only that will solve your problem.

I got this cable modem from my ISP back in 2002. This product is just bad. I used it for one year and I had to return it and bought my own modem. When I was leasing this product from my ISP, it was a headache. The modem goes down at least twice a day and I had to reboot it before I went online.
I don't recommend this at all. Look for motorolla cable modem.

Like other reviewers, I also lose connectivity with this machine. More specifically, if I nudge the modem accidentally while I work or if I wiggle the cable to which it is connected (which happens when I vacuum), I lose my internet connection. My anonymous and evil broadband service provides this machine, and I have had it for about two years. I am currently shopping to replace it with another machine and return it to the evil cable company.

Used to work in cable tech support. The only modem with repetitive modem failure problems were RCAs. There is a design flaw with the connection to the power cord that causes modems to short out or become so sensitive they will reset if they are just touched. Any other Docsis compatible modem will work out better.
Maybe after this review RCA will look into this and fix it.

I signed up for internet cable and decided to rent the cable modem at first. The cable company delivered this RCA model; so I technically didn't buy, I rented it. Highly unreliable. Seemed to have a loose connection. If you accidentally tapped the modem with your foot, you could lose the connection. Once the kids started jumping in the room, and this cable modem lost the connnection. Come on. On the other hand, when it worked, it was fine.

I've had the same thing with this modem since day 1 seems to be the power connector if you move the modem or touch the power wire it disconnects or sometimes does it by itself. I tried to make the contacts tighter by compressing the connectors in the socket in but it still does it. I'm gonna go see if ATTbi can give me a replacment.

I bought this modem when it was on sale. Since then, it kept dropping the connection now and then. It turned out to be the loose power connector. If you move the modem, it's more likely than not that the modem would start looking for the signal from scratch. Once it started to automatically drop connections on me. So I called the cable company. The tech support came and said it could be because the _temperature variation_ that the connection was lost and it was quite common in RCA models. So he replaced the connector for me. Well, it doesn't drop the connection automatically anymore. But I still need to be very careful not to shake it or knock it. So I put it in a corner. So far so good. But if you are buying a cable modem, skip this one unless you can get a free one ;) The reason for 2 stars is because when it works, it works fine. I tested the bandwidth of this modem, download was always >1mb/s. I'm sure other modems would produce similar results if not better -- DCM226 is a fairly old model after all.

I have been using one of these for more than a year, renting it from a local cable company. It has been very reliable. I'm now relocating and I'm going to buy one of my own.

I really enjoyed using this modem! I had no problems with mine for two years, so I don't really see why so many people say this is a bad product, I sure don't think so! it was very reliable for me and my online video gaming!