Modem purchase

[Deleted]

Thought I would ask the experts here. I am getting Time Warner internet next month and would rather not pay a rental fee for there modem. What modem works with TWC? Something I can get cheaply at Walmart. Don't know anything about that stuff and want to be up on information when I order internet from TWC. Thank you in advance. Oh I have this laptop which has both wifi and a plug for RJ something or other connector. RJ42??? is that the name???

[dave]

RJ-45 plug, commonly called an ethernet connector. Looks like a regular telephone plug (RJ-11) but is slightly bigger. You'll need a cable with an RJ-45 at each end to connect your PC to the router. And a second with the same plugs to go from the router to the wall. A router may come with a cable in the box ... I don't remember. You'll have to pay Best buy probably 5 or 10 bucks for each cable depending on cable lenght or you can buy the same cable on eBay for half of that.

Alan, Ralph is the expert, but if you're impatient for answer here is mine. Any router should work and when you hook it up you can immediately test your speed by going to speedtest.net. I have hi-speed cable and mine just tested at 11.6 mega bits per second. If you bought the low speed connection you might get half of that. I believe DSL is much less, but we connected an entire school district on two DSL lines some years ago and it performed well. Unless you're opening an Internet retail business I wouldn't worry too much about modem speed or bells and whistles or cable speed for that matter. I doubt you'd notice a difference between hi and low speed cable Internet except in file downloads. And it'll sure beat dial up.
Lynksys is a popular brand router, NetGear is another. Amazon has routers as cheap as $20. I think I'd bay $40, but in today's market $30 may be enough.

You didn't say how much TW wants to rent the router. Service would come with it, plus they would hook it up, I believe. May be worth a few bucks a month.

[chris]

I have Frontier and they gave me a router that has wifi for free. I had my own but they came over and replaced the router with an updated one.

[clarencebunsen]

Alan, there are 2 possible boxes involved, modem or router. A modem connects to the cable & has outputs for TV, computer and possibly phone. The computer output is the cable Dave described. That will allow you to hook up one computer to the internet. A router lets you connect multiple computers. In effect it is a splitter for internet. Before Wifi became popular I had TC cables & computer cables strung all over the house.

Most modern routers now include wifi. I now have one cable connecting the modem to the router and one cable connecting the router to my desktop computer. However if I have a lot of family over I could have as many as 3 laptops, 3-4 tablets, a Chromecast and several phones all connecting to the same router. Multiple users can slow the system down.

Will TW sell you a modem rather than renting one? That makes compatibility their problem but they would probably over charge.

[Deleted]

Dave and CB they want $5.99/month to rent what I need to hook me up to internet. Plus the $14.99/month for internet. I only hooking one computer to the internet and that is my laptop. Thanks for the information it will be useful so at least I will sound like I know something.

[Clipper]

$21 a month doesn't sound like a bad deal Alan, but over the long run, as with anything you rent, you will eventually reach a point where you have spent enough to own the thing outright. If you intend to use the computer in one place and connect it to the modem with an ethernet cable that is fine. If you want to move around the apartment with it, you will also end up needing a router, and that will incur another expense for either purchase or rent a router.

[Ralph]

If you rent it and anything goes wrong with it they will have to replace it, and if it's TWC........something will go wrong.