Saturday 31 August 2013

Motorola Surfboard SBG6782-AC Gateway by ARRIS

Pros 802.11ac wireless router and cable modem in one. Supports MoCA. Feature-rich. Dual-band. Perked up upload speed and download speed a bit.

Cons Below average 802.11ac throughput. Runs warm. Lack of help and user manual. Non user-friendly QoS settings. Bottom Line Cable service subscribers looking for a device that's both a modem and wireless router with less than high-demand throughput needs will find the Surfboard worth a look. A bonus is its support for MoCA devices.

By Samara Lynn

The Motorola Surfboard SBG6782-AC Gateway by ARRIS is more than a cable modem. The device functions as an 802.11ac Wi-Fi router (it's the first cable modem on the market to support 11ac) and also supports a technology called MoCA (Multimedia over Coaxial) that lets users extend Wi-Fi over existing coaxial cable. This is an ambitious device with robust hardware, yet its integrated wireless router capability is not as speedy as other dedicated dual-band 802.11ac routers we've tested—and the interface is in need of a refresh. There is also a troubling lack of detailed help and guidance available for this device, helpful for fully understanding its advanced capabilities.

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Specs
The first thing you will notice about the Surfboard is that it's a big device. It measures 8.8 by 2.1 by 10.1 inches (HWD) and weighs a fairly hefty 10.5 pounds. The Netgear High Speed Cable Modem (CMD31t) is miniscule in comparison, at 6.9 by 4.5 by 1.2 inches (HWD) and weighing 0.68 of a pound.

Of course, the Netgear cable modem is only a cable modem. The Surfboard is larger because it has wireless router components as well as modem hardware. The device uses a Broadcom chipset and has 3x3 MIMO internal antennas.  The router portion is dual-band, supporting up to a theoretical 450 Mbps at the 2.4GHz band and 1300 Mbps at 5GHz.  The Surfboard is also DOCSIS 3.0-compliant. DOCSIS is a standard for transferring high-speed data over coaxial cable. Most ISPs providing cable Internet should be using DOCSIS 3. It's important to find out and make sure you buy the right cable modem.

There are seven LEDs on the front panel that represent, power, downstream channel, upstream channel, online status, 2.4GHz Wi-Fi activity, 5 GHz, and to show when a MoCA-enabled device is connected.

The rear panel has four Gigabit Ethernet ports, a coaxial connector (female, "Y"), and power. There's also a tiny reset button to reset back to factory settings.

On the top of the device is a WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) button for connecting WPS- supported devices to the wireless network.

The Surfboard has vent holes all over the sides and the top, but it still ran warm after just three hours of operation.  You are going to want to place it in a well-ventilated area with good air circulation.  One feature the hardware lacks is a USB port for connecting storage and printers (although the Surfboard does support wireless printing).

Setup
The Surfboard ships with a quick start user guide. This guide has a diagram for connecting ports. First, connect the coaxial. Next, you need to connect an Ethernet cable from one of the LAN ports to a computer's Ethernet port. Finally, you connect power.

You can configure the modem once when the Power, Online, Send, and Receive lights are solid. At this point, I had to contact my ISP to activate the cable modem. When I fired up a browser, I could see I still was not online until they activated. Activation took all of ten minutes.

One setup aspect I preferred with the Netgear modem was when I fired up the browser before activating it with my ISP, I received a splash page which showed my ISP's name and also the MAC address of the Netgear CMD31t. This is handy for two reasons: You need to give the ISP the MAC address so they can activate, and it lets users know what to do next to get the modem online.

With the Surfboard, all I saw was what looked like a regular "Page Not Found" error in Internet Explorer. An inexperienced user may be confused about whether the device is working or not upon seeing this; when what he needs to do is call his provider for activation. The Quick Start guide hints at this only by stating that if all the LEDs do not light up call your ISP for assistance—a bit vague.

I also prefer when setting up the Netgear device I saw the MAC address on-screen. With the Surfboard the MAC address is printed on the bottom of the device and also is included with the startup guide. If it's not convenient to get to the bottom of the Surfboard to take a look when you are on the phone with the ISP or if you lose the guide, it can be hassle to get the MAC address if you need it again and can't get into the Surfboard's management interface.

You will also want to take note that by default the Surfboard's wireless radios are on, something you want to be aware of if you already have a wireless router running on your network. You don't want to have two devices performing routing as that can cause performance issues.

What I did not like about the setup process was the lack of a detailed user manual. The device only shipped with a Quick Start guide. When I wanted to go into the management interface, the quick start guide instructed me to consult the user manual to get the username and password to get into the Surfboard's interface. However, I could not find a user manual online and there was not one included in the packaging! I managed to get the password and username from a search on the Internet. There are a lot of features and functionality in this device and no detailed user manual readily available to customers is a huge oversight.


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