Yesterday our Zoom cable modem crapped out at home and it was no April Fool’s joke. Last night we went to Best Buy and picked up a new modem and upgraded our router to the D-Link Xtreme N Gaming Router which promises to prioritize gaming traffic.

Replacing the cable modem was as easy as unplugging the old, plugging in the new Motorola modem and calling Comcast to register the modem. I spent more time on hold waiting for the Comcast customer service rep (10 minutes) than actually hooking up the hardware. Once Comcast registered the MAC ID on their end, internet quickly returned.

Comcast also pitched me on a free 90 day trial of 8Mbps down 2Mbps up connection. At the end of the 90 days it will cost $10/month more if we don’t cancel. I said sure, uncap that badboy. Thinking back to the dial-up modem days, internet speed is the new drug.

According to data at speedtest.net it looks like Comcast is the top dog for bandwidth in our area:

Next, I put in the CD that came with the D-Link DGL-4500 and followed the wizard. It helped me setup wireless security and configure the modem with no manual intervention. Five minutes later, I asked our sons to give the new connection a whirl. Had lag improved? They said they noticed an improvement.

This morning I quizzed them again and they said it was “better.” I probably won’t enough time to test the gaming until this coming weekend. It’s no rush, we have 89 more days.

The DGL-4500 comes with a Y! Desktop Widget for real time network monitoring as well as offers a bright blue readable digital display on the router which they call a “network activity display screen.” The Widget doesn’t show anything that isn’t already available from the web interface (by accessing 192.168.0.1) so not sure if it’s worth the additional CPU overhead.

We paid $179.99 + tax at Best Buy. After some extended use, I’ll either write a detailed review of our findings or share feedback in updates to this post.

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