Review on 📶 NETGEAR CM500V Cable Modem with Voice - Xfinity by Comcast Internet & Voice , Supports 300 Mbps Cable Plans, 2 Phone Lines, DOCSIS 3.0, Black, 16x4 w/ Voice (CM500V-100NAS) by Derrick Shah

I had a hell of a time setting it up. First I downloaded the user manual before doing anything. (Netgear doesn't include it, but I'm fine with that.) There's also a quick start guide. I opted for a more detailed instruction manual, which was a mistake. The user guide tells you to go to your ISP's website (they have a chart of all the major ISPs) to activate the modem once you've got everything connected. Everything worked fine (internet and phone) once I got everything plugged in and able to log into the Comcast Xfinity activation page. It seemed to work, but I was never asked for the modem's model number and MAC address. It bothered me judging by some of the reviews on here that my internet and phone would soon be down if I didn't contact Comcast. The quick start guide doesn't list website addresses, it just tells you to call Comcast to activate it. So I called and the automated system asked if I wanted to activate the device. I said yes and the system sent a reset to my modem. After that nothing worked. I then called the terrible customer service. Almost 90 minutes later, a CS employee restored my internet but not my phone. Eventually the representative told me that they would move the issue to "Level 3" and that I would get a response from them within 24 hours. What, 24 hours without a phone and there's no guarantee it'll work? No way. I told the rep to disable the CM500V and plug in my Comcast/Xfinity modem/telephone tower (it's really big) to make sure everything is fine, but decided to try again. . The second time around, I followed the instructions in the quick start guide, not the user manual. I factory reset the modem first, just in case something changed that I wasn't aware of. Then I started it all over, got internet and phone but didn't go to the Comcast activation page. Instead, as instructed, I called Comcast to activate it. The technician told me it was already set up. I asked him if he had the MAC addresses and model number of the hardware and he said yes. I asked him how they got it and he said the system recognized them automatically. It works like a charm. I connected it to the new router with no problems. Now that I'm up and running, I'm getting much faster speeds than Comcast devices, and I suspect some of the intermittent issues with my internet have now been resolved (like inexplicable disconnects from some websites, sudden slowdowns, etc.) d.). Now I have better control over my technology and I'm saving $11 a month on top of that. It seems (and I use the word sparingly) that Comcast has actually made it easy to set up this and possibly other modems by automatically fetching the hardware information. In the end I'm very happy and I really like my new Netgear modem.