[ale] OT: Change in UI on Xfinity Modem/Router/Wireless AP

[Dustin Strickland]

I am a contractor who handles home networking support for Comcast. Sorry
to hear about your issues, first-off. I get many customers transferred
to me from other departments who have been misinformed about equipment,
charges, technician appointments being made, and all manner of other
things. I don't know who told you what or why, but it's wrong unless
policy has changed recently(I haven't been doing this for very long).
You shouldn't see any charges on your bill related to bridge mode. As
far as policy in my department goes, we can enable bridge mode for you
with no associated charges, and we can disable it. For any
troubleshooting/configuration beyond that pertaining to bridge mode, we
would refer you to a third party who *will* charge a fee(though surely
no one in ALE needs their help :P). Any other CC customers beware,
bridge mode can cause serious problems on Technicolor gateways and I
would strongly advise you not try it. Also be aware, you can buy your
own DOCSIS 2 or 3 modem/gateway to use rather than the Comcast-supplied
equipment.

On 12/24/2014 11:19 PM, Scott Castaline wrote:
> I in the past have brought up the discussion of attempting to get
> Comcast support to put the above device into bridged mode. I very often
> would have mixed results in doing that. Sometimes it took 3 to 4 calls
> to get it done each time being told that there would be an $80 charge to
> do so. I would keep on escalating it until I would all but 2 times get
> credited for the charge. What usually would happen is I would finally
> get them to do the deed and a month or so later the AP would be
> re-enabled and then the battle would start all over again. More recently
> this was causing ntp not to sync my routers clock (ASUS RT-AC66U).
> Recently we had bought one of those smart-tvs and I decided to go ahead
> to set it up. I was able to get it to connect to my router through
> wireless but no internet access. I kind of figured that my current
> set-up of having my router's WAN port connected to one of Xfinity's LAN
> ports on their AP was the culprit. In preparation for battle with
> Comcast support I kept going through their interface to see if there was
> something that might help. With last nights storms I decided to unplug
> everything and start on it today. I was pleasantly surprised when I
> logged into their AP and found a new UI with a softswitch to put the
> damned thing into bridged mode and much to my surprise it did just that.
> It actually worked (who says miracles don't happen anymore). So now my
> router is very happy since ntp is syncing and wife is happy watching
> NetFlix, and whatever else the tv has access to. So as they say "Happy
> wife means happy life!" and my life just got real happy. I thought I
> would through this out there for those of you that have Comcast are not
> aware of this yet. Also those that are, do you know if I'll wind up with
> a surprise $80 charge on my bill?
> 
> Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New year.
>