Review on Motorola SURFboard Networking Suddenlink SBG6782 AC by Sean Bond

Internet connection lost. Here's what originally happened when I started this gateway. After reading the good and bad reviews, I weighed my options. For the money, the Arris SBG-6782AC seemed like a better alternative to Comcast's $10-month rental. While it's not ideal to have a modem and router in the same device, I took a chance because DSLreports said that if you need to buy a wireless gateway, this is the product to get. Here are some things I did to make sure everything is working as it should. The installation and configuration of the SBG-6782AC went smoothly. Setup is easy if you follow the instructions in the Quick Start Guide. With Comcast, you can simply connect your computer to one of the Ethernet ports to set up and activate the device. Opening a browser window will take you to the Comcast device setup/registration page. From there, all you have to do is follow the on-screen instructions. Most importantly, Comcast is updating the gateway's firmware. This is very important because you cannot perform this action yourself on this device. As of 10/16/2016 the latest firmware version is D30GW-EAGLE-1.5.0.0-GA-07-NOSH. Knowing this is important as there are very few resources on the internet to help you find out if your gateway firmware is up to date. The manufacturer's website doesn't provide you with this information (probably, but I definitely haven't been able to find it for a while.) An outdated firmware version will give your network a headache.2. Not only does the software in the gateway need to be up to date, but all of your wireless Wi-Fi adapters need to have up-to-date drives as well. My laptop has an Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 100 Wi-Fi adapter which the hardware manufacturer says will not be supported for a long time. In fact, I found by mistake that my adapter's driver is not up to date. MY INTERNET CONNECTION WAS BLOCKED BY OUTDATED WIFI ADAPTER DRIVER SOFTWARE. Windows driver update did not help. Windows has informed me that my computer already has the latest driver software installed. The latest driver version date is according to Windows 2011. ******* Here is what I did to solve this problem. ****** (NOTE: Your computer must be connected to the gateway with either an Ethernet cable or some sort of USB Wi-Fi adapter in order for you to be able to access the internet while the built-in Wi-Fi Adapter is updated.) Go to Control Panel and open Device Manager. Select "Network Adapter" (write down the adapter name and model number for future reference) and right-click on the Wi-Fi wireless network adapter, then select "Uninstall". After removing the Wi-Fi adapter, right-click any category in Device Manager. and select "Scan for hardware changes". After scanning for hardware changes, your wireless Wi-Fi adapter will appear as an unknown device in the Device Manager tree. Now you need to go online, enter the name of your Wi-Fi adapter and search for its driver. Once you find the correct version of the adapter software for your operating system (I have Windows 7), download and install it. This will either automatically update the Wi-Fi adapter's software, or you can update the driver yourself. If you need to do it yourself, simply right-click your adapter's name in the Device Manager tree and select "Update Driver Software". It *should* find the new software and install it with no problems. IT TURNED THAT THE NEW WIFI ADAPTER SOFTWARE VERSION WAS 4 YEARS NEWER WHEN WHAT WINDOWS TOLD ME WAS ALREADY UPDATED. If you're having trouble with your Internet connection dropping, try this procedure. I accidentally found out what the problem was. Maybe I can save you time by pointing you in the right direction. 4 stars for equipment that works very well even up to my den (barn) which is 100 feet from my backyard house. One star deducted for the amount of fiddling I had to get everything working properly. I consider myself very tech savvy but if you have connection issues it can take a long time to fix all the little bugs. I hope my review will save you a lot of time I wasted making sure everything runs smoothly. UPDATED SOFTWARE IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR THE OPERATION OF THE SBG-6782-AC. Update 11-3-16: My connection speed was quite slow with the Wireless N card in my laptop. I switched the card to a dual-band model and my speeds have increased significantly. The router actually works in the 5 GHz band. The gateway has been working flawlessly for a few weeks. It never had to be restarted and the internet connection never dropped. If you keep your drivers up to date I suspect this product will work as advertised. I am very happy with my purchase.