Upgrading Internet: A Game Changer
One thing you may have been able to ascertain if you have read the site for any length of time is that I have been a nerd for a long, long time. Part of that nerdom is constantly being online. I have had a connection to the internet since 1995. At first, as with anybody at the time, it was a dial-up with a couple of different providers. Primarily with MSN and AOL. Due to us always being online and having a bigger family, we ended up getting a second phone line that was just for the internet. Given the pace of change during the 1990s, we would upgrade our computer every few years, and with that would come an update to the modem speeds. Over that time, we had a variety of speeds: 14.4k, 28.8k, 33.6k, and 56.6k. It may be difficult to remember what it was like, but it was a different time indeed.
Over the 1990s and early 2000s, my family had a number of different computers. We needed them because we had a big family, and many people needed to use a computer simultaneously. I think it was 1998 when my parents got me a hub. Yes, it was a hub, not a switch, for either my birthday or Christmas. With the hub, I was able to connect the multiple computers we had together. This worked well because I could install the single printer we had on all of the computers if we needed to print something. Plus, doing this at that time worked well for the future.
In the early 2000s, our cable provider started providing cable internet, and as you might expect, that was a game changer. I honestly do not recall the speeds that we got, but it was definitely way faster than the dial-up. Plus, it was always on. The internet speeds were almost 350 times faster than a 28.8 modem. If I did the calculations correctly, it was a whopping 10 megabits per second, but it was 10 megabits per second, which was a complete change from dial-up internet.
Since then, I have mostly had cable internet, except for a few years when I ended up getting DSL, but for the last 15 years, it has been cable internet. Along with this, I have purchased and used my own cable modems. Primarily, I have used Arris/Motorola Surfboard cable modems. Along with this, I have had my own wireless routers, including multiple Apple AirPort and even a couple of different Eero models, but recently, things have changed.
Most nerds want the fastest speeds that they can get, but at some point, it comes down to the limits of the remote server that you will ultimately get. Along with this, many nerds, including myself, transfer a lot of data. For many years, Comcast did not have any data caps, but in 2016, they did end up implementing them in my area. It was not until 2020 when I ended up getting unlimited data at $30 per month. As an example, going back 12 months, the maximum shown by Xfinity, I am averaging 1.3 terabytes of data transfer per month, and with a cap of 1.2 terabytes, paying for unlimited data is cheaper overall.
In 2017, Comcast updated my speeds from 75Mbps to 100Mbps. In 2019, I had 150Mbps. Again in 2021, my speeds went from 200Mbps to 300Mbps. In October of 2022, my speeds went from 600Mbps to 800Mbps, where they have remained since. For me, download speeds of 800Mbps are plenty; the thing that was really irksome was the upload speeds. The maximum upload speed I could get on my Arris SB8200, which I just bought in October of 2023, has been 20Mbps, with a possible burst of up to 24Mbps. In December of 2023, I received an email indicating that I could get 5x to 10x faster upload speeds if I replaced my cable modem. Having just replaced it, I was a bit irritated because I bought the modem on the recommendation of Xfinity, thinking it would provide the faster upload speeds, but unfortunately, it does not.
Even though I had just replaced it, I have been debating replacing my cable modem, just to get the faster speeds, but it seems like a waste to do so. Regardless, some solution would be needed to get faster upload speeds. Here is what I did have
Faster Speeds
A couple of weeks ago, I went to talk to a rep at my local Xfinity store, and when I talked to them, they indicated that I could only get 20Mbps upload, regardless of the plan. I left that day and did not do anything at that point. I ended up calling Xfinity to verify, and they could not verify anything because the plan that I had was no longer offered. What seemed a bit off is that the limit of 20Mbps was in direct contradiction to the broadband labels on the Xfinity website, which indicated that I could get 100 Mbps upload, with an average of 169.62 Mbps. Due to this discrepancy, I ended up going back to the store because something was amiss.
I walked in, and a representative asked how they could help. I informed him that I wanted to verify the internet speeds shown on the website. We got to talking, and he indicated that the 20Mbps was the minimum I would get, which was not what the last rep indicated, nor the rep on the phone indicated. I explained to him that I was looking to get faster upload speeds.
As mentioned, one way to get these faster speeds was to just buy a new cable modem, and it should work. But, I was paying more than $130 per month. Because of this, when I walked in, I had already planned on getting the Xfinity XFi modem since it would have been $5 cheaper compared to me paying for unlimited data with my own cable modem. I was also prepared to upgrade to the 1Gbps plan, since they technically no longer offer the 800Mbps plan I was on. While talking to the representative, he indicated that they actually had a promo for the 2Gbps plan, as long as I opted for a 2-year contract. Now, I typically try to avoid any sort of contract whenever possible, but it was a pretty good deal.
Ultimately, I ended up saving $21 per month, which is not an insignificant amount of money; that’s just over $250 a year. Furthermore, it is not likely that AT&T will have fiber in my area anytime soon. I would prefer to have AT&T due to having it being completely symmetrical for downloads and uploads. While I was in the Xfinity store, one of the other reps mentioned that even higher upload speeds may be arriving in the coming months, and ultimately there will be symmetrical speeds not being that far away. Now, let us look at the XFi gateway.
Xfinity XFi Gateway
The rep that I talked to at the Xfinity store indicated he was proving their latest XFi gateway. This is the XB8. The XB8 is capable of handling up to 2.5Gbps, and it includes built-in Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi that is included is Wi-Fi 6E. Beyond the wireless, there are actually a number of ports on the device. The XB8 has six ports on it. Two of these are for voice, which I do not have, and the other four are Ethernet connections. There is a single 2.5Gbps jack on the back, in the lower right corner. The remaining three Ethernet jacks are 1 Gbps each.
When I initially set up the XFi gateway, I did not worry about the Wi-Fi because I was planning on using my existing Eero Pro 6, but after I found out that the XB8 has Wi-Fi 6E, I opted to use that.
Configuration
The initial setup of the XFi was straightforward. I used the Xfinity app to activate it, and once it did its initial update and was activated, everything just worked. It really was a simple and easy setup. After I did a lot of testing to make sure that I was indeed getting more than 20 Mpbs upload speeds; and of course I was.
In order to get onto the internet, every device on your network has to have an IP address. This is usually handled by some sort of router, including ISP-provided devices.
There are a number of devices within my network that I would prefer to have a static IP address, including, but not limited to, my printer. The XFi gateway defaults to using the 10.0.0.0/24 range, which results in 252 devices. You have a couple of other options as well. You can use a /16, which allows more than 25,000 devices, a /25, which allows 128 devices, or even a /8, which allows for more than 16 million hosts. The default is usually enough for most people.
When you configure a Dynamic Host Control Protocol, or DHCP, address, you will also need to provide a lease time. By default, the XFi has a super short setting. I prefer to have a bit longer time, and for me I thought doing an infinite, or forever, lease would make the most sense.
There are a couple of different approaches for setting a static IP on the XFi. You can connect the device, and then switch it to a static, or “Reserved” IP. The other option is to assign the IP address ahead of time. When I initially started trying to reassign devices, it was not working. The IP address would not actually change.
Eventually, I figured out that it was the amount of time that I had set on the DHCP lease. Once I changed this from “forever” to “2 minutes”, everything started being able to be re-assigned. This is not documented anywhere that I could find, but it was what I experienced.
Now, let us look at some speedtest results.
Speedtests
Of course, one of the first things that I did after getting the XFi gateway activated was to run a speed test from my MacBook Pro. My first couple of speed tests were showing around 340Mbps down and 100Mbps up. I was glad to see the upload speeds be that much higher; however, the 340Mbps download was a bit odd. That was until I remembered that I was using iCloud Private Relay.
After disabling iCloud Private Relay, I tested again and it was much better, 600Mbps down and 212 Mbps upload. One feature of the Eero is the ability to run the speediest, and the results from that are 947 Mbps download and 347 Mbps upload. I wanted to verify this and the best way for me to do this was to run a speed test using a wired connection. I used my Mac Studio for this test and it provided around the same, 927Mbps down and 341 Mbps upload. This is an absolute upgrade for my connectivity. However, this is far from utilizing the full 2Gbps.
Utilizing the Faster Speeds
Now, that I have the 2 Gigabit per second plan, I would need to find a way of utilizing as much of it as possible. The 2Gbps connection will allow me to download many things simultaneously on many of the devices connected to my network, all without needing to worry too much about how long it will take. This will be particularly useful when there is a new iOS or macOS update, because I tend to download them on multiple devices at once. But, being able to use 2Gbps on some devices would be a nice benefit from time to time. One particular situation that I can think of is if I have a catastrophic failure of one of my drives and I need to download the backup from my online backup provider. Which, sadly, I have had to do in the past.
One of the limitations of the Eero is that it only has two ports, one for local connections and another for connecting to the cable modem. Therefore, that has required me to use switches. Beyond this, the Eero Pro 6 is limited to 1Gbps ethernet, so I could not even have utilized the speeds even when connected via ethernet, which was one of the reasons I opted to use the XFi gateway.
The big issue with trying to utilize a 2Gbps connection, for me, almost every single one of my devices that has an ethernet connection is only a 1Gbps connection. This includes my Mac mini, Apple TVs, and even the multiple Raspberry Pis that I have. The single exception to this is my Mac Studio, which has a 10Gbps ethernet jack. This is all well and good, but all of the switches in my house are 1Gbps switches. The reason for this is because I did not need anything faster than 1Gbps because my internet connection was only 800Mbps. I could stick with just what I have, and in 99.9% of cases this would be sufficient, yet I prefer to use as much of my internet connection as I can. All of this led to me needing to buy a new switch for my Mac Studio to connect to.
I did a bit of research to see what options were available, and as you might expect, there are a lot of options. I immediately opted not to get a 10Gbps switch, not just because I have no real use for it but also because they are expensive; even a 5-port 10Gbps switch is between $225 and $300. I know I do not need any sort of management. I just need it to connect to my Mac Studio.
I have three switches in my house, and all of these are TP-Link switches; two have 8 ports, and one is a 5 port. I could have just purchased a 5-port switch with even just two 2.5Gbps ports, but I did not want another device that would need to be plugged in all of the time. Instead, I opted to replace the 8-port switch that is currently connected to my Mac Studio, as well as the other items near it, so I needed another 8-port switch. I do not use anything with Power over Ethernet, or POE, so that was not something I needed to worry about.
Initially, I thought I might need two switches: one to go from the area where my Mac Studio is down to another switch and then to the cable modem. However, given that the XFi Gateway has the four Ethernet ports, this was completely unnecessary. I only needed a single 2.5Gbps switch.
Given how well my current TP-Link switches have functioned, I opted to buy another TP-Link switch. This time it is the TP-Link TL-SG108S-M2. I chose this one because all 8 ports are 2.5Gbps ports, it is a small switch, and it was less than $100. Given that I was just swapping out the switches I had, it took less than 5 minutes to fully swap out the two devices. It was a simple process: unplug each of the existing cables and plug it into the new switch.
Once it was connected, it was time for another speed test. Here are those results:
As you can see, the 2.5Gbps switch absolutely allows me to utilize the full download speeds that I am subscribed to. One of the things that I realized as I was installing the 8-port switch is that I could have just stuck with a 5-port switch and been fine, but having more ports is always useful, and the price difference was not enough for me to only get the 5 ports. If the 8-port had been twice the price, of the 5-port it might have been different, but it was not.
Here is another from Akamai's server in Chicago
Closing Thoughts
Initially, the gateways provided by many internet service providers were subpar and had just enough features to say that they provided what everyone needed. However, these days many end users expect more, and companies have stepped up to provide some of the latest features. In the past, you may have wanted to just get your own wireless router, but even as a nerd, it may be worth using the gateway supplied by your ISP. I know I long resisted using Xfinity’s cable modems, but it ended up reducing my monthly cost, eliminating a network item, and it even upgraded my Wi-Fi, resulting in it being the most cost-effective solution overall.
With that said, there may be a day when I end up buying a Wi-Fi 7 router just for devices that can utilize it; however, as of this writing, I only have a single Wi-Fi 7 device, my iPhone 16 Pro Max, and it is absolutely not worth buying a separate wireless router just for that one device.
