Buying or renting an internet wifi router

[Ives]

Do you rent yours from the internet company or own one? I've always rented for $5/mo but that seems dumb.  Which do you have? We are buying a house and will have Spectrum.

[cool7hand]

We agree that renting is not cost effective. We went with Google Nest Wifi. Pricy, but it supports our sometimes bandwidth hungry side gig.

[chemistk]

I think you're talking about modem rental, right? Typically you don't rent a router from your ISP unless it's a combo unit (which, I believe, most ISPs give as a default these days).

But, in just about all circumstances, buying your own modem (or combo modem/router) is more cost effective in the long run. The ISP we use has already raised its modem rental rates since we joined 4 years ago (up to $8/mo from $5/mo).

_____

Okay, OP - ignore what I just said above. I'll leave it for other interested readers. I am not familiar with Spectrum (never lived in the service area), but looking into it they apparently provide a modem for free and offer low cost router rentals.

That's an interesting deal, I'd still bring my own.

[nereo]

Oh good god don't rent.

Look, for nearly everything, if your Return On Investment (ROI) is less than 2 years you should just do it.  Even if the payback is 2-5 years it's generally better to buy than rent. For internet @ $5/mo your ROI is under a year if you buy new, and less than that if you just poke around and buy used (I see them all the time for free, and used for $5-10.

Because of the layout of our home we went with a 3-pack mesh (no dead-spots on my entire property), and that was STILL cheaper than what Spectrum would have charged us in rental fees over a two year period.

[Papa bear]

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/recommended-router/?PHPSESSID=uim23j2nlhlfro82lvsqk9413l

I’ve read through this a few times and received some awesome advice on the thread.  Hope it helps you too!


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[geekette]

Do you rent yours from the internet company or own one? I've always rented for $5/mo but that seems dumb.  Which do you have? We are buying a house and will have Spectrum.

We had Spectrum until recently and bought our own cable modem in 2014 to avoid fees.  We'd always had our own wifi router.  Our ancient (by internet standards) SurfBoard (now Arris) SB6141 is still on the accepted list (for tiers up to 100MBPS).   

[habanero]

In Wifi router space you also to some extent get what you pay for. If it's a large household with several members requesting meaningful throughput at the same time and with multiple devices connected you will at some point see that performance matters. I have based my own setup on 2nd hand stuff that was Da Shit a couple of years ago and those can be found very cheaply on the used market.

If the stuff that comes from the provider isn't up to the task it's generally possible to bypass it and just use it as a dumb modem. Might require a small amount of skill to set up to avoid problems (you generally never want two routers handing out IP adresses on your home network) but it's normally pretty simple.

I have never replaced the modem part of my setup as the connectivity is blazingly fast from the ISP-supplied device (optical fibre), but I have never used the WiFi part of the box the provider gave me.

[Daley]

It's worth noting that more often than not, used cable modems are getting to be more of a crap shoot. More and more cable internet companies are starting to register the modem MAC address to either an internal or central shared database, and they aren't de-registering those device MAC addresses after closing accounts. This is to combat theft and aftermarket sale of rented equipment, but it also catches and hurts legitimate second-hand equipment activation as well... and there's no recourse to fix the issue but to return it and buy new.

Buying a new cable modem is awful from an electronic waste standpoint, but that's not entirely on your head. Buy new, Motorola/Arris is fine, but aim for the cheapest DOCSIS3 model you can get away with. When you leave them, be sure to de-register your modem with them to ensure it can actually and safely be resold (in theory).

This said, I don't think Charter Spectrum allows you to save any money by opting out of using their equipment, and they're currently looking to tack on an extra $5/month base fee for everyone this month.

However, I'm not one of those people inclined to trust ISP controlled network equipment for my router/WiFi setup as I'm sure you've noticed from the other thread, and tend to neuter those routers and put them in passthrough mode in favor of my own. YMMV.