I am switching back to DSL and it is practically impossible to find one that is a combo modem/router that meets IEEE 802.11ax, at least at a decent price. I have a few old OLD OLD DSL modems in the garage. Am I losing anything using a 15 year old modem and then attaching a new router to it? What would I lose of I hard-wire a modern computer directly into the old-ass modem/router? Or should I just bite the bullet and buy a modern DLS modem for a better ethernet interface?
If it’s really old — so that it’s fundamentally a bridge and your IP is externally accessible — I suspect it’s as speedy as it can be, but you’d want your own firewall. I had one like that dating back to the infancy of DSL.
Exactly. My question is more about ethernet speed across the cable from a modern router to the DSL modem. Has it increased enough to make a difference if I hard wire two computers, a printer and with all of the wifi flying aroud my house?
I don’t know DSL protocols enough to say if an ancient modem will talk to the latest DSL services. Only one way to find out. (Most DSL modems will have the necessary link lights to tell you)
The obvious question is - what’s the ethernet speed between old modem and new router? (What’s the network speed of the old device?) I doubt there are any 10Mbps out there, but it could be 100Mbps not 1GB. Ethernet connections will dumb down to match the other end, but faster is always better. It used to be “who cares?” when DSL could never match the 10Mbps (or later, 100Mbps) of DSL. Your narrowest pipe was the DSL in the good old days. With 1GB ethernet, DSL is still the slower piece.
Then, is it a modem or a basic router? Does it pass the internet IP to the internal ethernet port or just a NAT address (like 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x). The way to find out is to plug in your PC and check the IP address it gets with ipconfig command - but don’t leave a PC connected for any longer than that, and be sure Windows FIrewall is on. If it is not doing NAT then you definitely need a router to distribute to the rest of the house network.
Still, the only thing that matters to the modem is the amount of in/out traffic to the internet, assuming everything is behind the new router. So the question would be, what speed do you need to do, say, streaming? Do you watch a lot of video over the internet? Otherwise, you won’t see much of a difference just browsing…
You can get multi Gbps on Cat 6 if it’s not too long. How fast is your modem?
Modem… well you can run, e.g., OpenWrt on a router box that supports WiFi 6 or 7, it does not have to run on the same old, old shitty DSL modem.
Wikipedia says
For 10GBASE-T, an unshielded Cat 6 cable should not exceed 55 meters and a Cat 6A cable should not exceed 100 meters.
If you even go that fast…
That’s a good point. The DSL I am getting is 140Mbps so can my old modems transfer across the modem part at that speed?
Yeah, that’s nothing 
An unshielded Cat 6 cable should be good up to 100 metres.
If it’s really really old the ethernet port is 10Mbps. I don’t recall if they even made stuff like that back then. I think by the time DSL came along, 100Mbps was pretty standard? Odds are it’s 100Mbps if it’s old, so almost as fast as your DSL.
The question really is - how fast do you really need? Unless you are streaming 4K video or downloading huge files, you won’t care. Short answer is try it and see, that will tell you if spending money on something new is worth it.
(MY ethernet switches on my home network have a green link light if the connection is 1Mbps and amber if it’s 100 or 10. Some printers are still 100, because - how fast does a printer have to be?)
How fast was DSL back then? I assume the limitation was and still is the copper so DSL speed re: the modulation/demodulation has not changed. Is that a correct assumption?
(Sigh…this will date me.)
For a long time, I only had ISDN service at my older house. It continued in use way longer than one might expect, but the bandwidth was adequate for my needs. (It started out being much, much faster than a dial-up, but was soon eclipsed by cable, DSL, and other technologies…which were unavailable where the house was.) I used a Netlink ISDN modem.
But it was connected to a very new wireless router. And the router worked perfectly. The router provided/provides the firewall, packet routing, DHCP, etc., for the LAN, not the modem. It sounds to me like you have a similar situation. If the DSL modem works at all (which you can easily determine with a local computer hardwired to it), it should negotiate a data speed with the router and the router will take care of everything else. Your LAN should operate just fine at modern data speeds. The internet gateway (the modem) may limit you a bit, but it doesn’t sound like it will be much.
You will have to configure the modem, but that should be fairly straightforward. All the router wants is to be told if the WAN gateway IP address is static or dynamic and where it is.
In a pinch, I’d do everything I could to disable routing features of the modem–put it in bridge mode so the public IP is passed through–then set up a modern router/firewall on the inside.
That inside thing could be anything you wish, just make sure you plug the Ethernet cable from the modem into the WAN port and you should be good.
You probably won’t need any crazy performance over that specific cable. If you run normal CAT-6 you’ll be good for some time–I currently have a run of about 100 feet connecting my iMac to my 10GB switch at 10GB, and it works beautifully; the wire is not limiting at all.
ETA: Just don’t use any of the other ports on the device, they will be insecure and probably be running through a very slow switch. That goes for old switches in general: if you use some ancient 16 port switch to stitch together parts of your network you run the risk of having everything go at the speed of the slowest thing plugged into it (such as some old IOT device that runs at 10mbit speeds).
I suspect there is zero chance your old modems will run at the new speed.
Splitting the modem from your router is IMHO the right thing to do anyway. The router capabilities built into the modems was never great. Modern router/WiFi base stations can deliver much better performance and some provide useful additional security and other features. I use an ASUS unit, and it has been a ridiculous step up from the integrated mess my ISP gave me.
No. There have been several different modulation systems over time: DSL, ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL2+, VDSL, VDSL2-Vplus, and some other variations.
VDSL2 supports up to 200 Mbps and was technically released in 2006, so I guess it’s theoretically just barely possible that your 15-year-old modem supports it. But I find this very unlikely. I wasn’t aware that VDSL was even used in North America.
You’ll have to check your modem for VDSL2 support. My guess it’s only some ADSL variant, which is much slower. You’ll probably want to confirm with your provider exactly which DSL type you’re actually getting. There are lots of small variations which might affect which modems you can use.
All this stuff should be backwards compatible, so your old modem should work, just not necessarily at full speed. It might only be 1.5 Mbps.
Thanks Dr. Strangelove. My line is 140Mbps so it has to be VDSL paired (Is that the same as VDSL2?) so none of my old modems will give me the speed I’m paying for. Found the right modem on eBay for $60.
VDSL goes to 55 Mbps; VDSL2 goes to 200. Some other variants go higher yet. Hopefully the modem you found will work for you.
Word of warning–DSL (of any variety) speed estimates can be… optimistic. DSL is very sensitive to distance to the “central office” (the point where the analog lines get converted back to digital), not to mention possible defects in the line like electrical interference, water intrusion, etc. If someone came to your residence with a meter and tested your lines, you should be ok. If it’s just an estimate based on how far they think you are from the central office, it’s more of a dice roll. Good luck!
It’s on Centurylink’s list. Same one they rent for $15/mo
If it is like what CenturyLink offers here, the “paired” is two DSL connections, so like having two phone lines, each running DSL—so using both pairs of a phone cord. If I understand it right, the modem bonds them so that it appears as one connection, and your fastest download will be 70Mbps, but you can simultaneously download two things at 70Mbps.
You will almost certainly need to use a one of the modems CenturyLink says to use, but you seemed to have solved that.
If it is like what CenturyLink offers here… It is fiber to the node, so the “central office” may be a box down the street. After a big door hanger and mailer blitz in my neighborhood, it turned out the “fiber now available” meant fiber to the node, and a max speed of 80Mpbs, which is really two 40s.
Done right, bonding can get you a single data rate at the aggregate speed.
For instance, internet protocols can take different paths on a per-packet basis. But it depends upon the routers at each end understanding the routes. A bonded pair of connections is usually at a lower level than this. You are unlikely to be provided with two separate IP addresses.
For VDSL this depends - at least in part - upon the encapsulation of your link. But the bonding protocol G.992.5 appears to cover the ground - ATM, Ethernet, and a time division version. (Here Ethernet is actually referring to the protocol that is running up the VDSL link, it works better for Internet than the original ATM protocols - which are more suited to time sensitive stuff like voice.)
tl;dr - I suspect you do get a proper useful aggregate bandwidth link, not just a couple of independent ones.
I hope so, because that is a much better service. About 5 years ago when it was first offered in my neighborhood I talked to CenturyLink and the phone rep said it worked the way I described. At the time I believed it, because it matched my experience with bonding using dialup modems in the 90s, but reading now it looks like it works the way you describe.