You get what you pay for (Spectrum cable modem story)

[Tomioka]

Been using an SB8200 for two years with no problems.

I still stand by my post:
https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/docsis-3-1-cable-modem.316084/#post-5226953

 

[haggler]

The puma issue started with the puma6 after Intel bought that chip from TI. Puma5 were some of the most popular modem chips etc (sb5100).
I hadn't realized this was a problem with puma7 till I read this thread. The arris modem that had the problem (IIRC puma6 TM1602) gave very good speeds...the issue was the latency duration was very inconsistent. It has nothing to do with the signal, rather some glitch in the processing. The story is they tried to patch it but the issue is with hardware. It made it impossible to use voip, wifi calling, or play online games. For the longest time I wondered why my lag was so bad.
You can buy a d3.1 modem even if you don't have a gigabit tier. The additional total bandwidth will help with more consistent speeds at your service level. For 200mbps/10 up, a 16x4 modem should be fine. Amazon warehouse had a sb6183 for 22 bucks. I'd rather use this than give Spectrum 9.99 for a self install kit on a borrowed modem.
There is no substitute for real fiber optic internet. If you have that option available to you, go for it. The technology is much more reliable than anything over coax. I had att fiber over the past year included with my rent. My only gripe was having to use the att hardware but I started getting too old to care.

 

[blufeb95]

There is no substitute for real fiber optic internet. If you have that option available to you, go for it. The technology is much more reliable than anything over coax.

Unless you live in one of those weird areas where the cable company ran fiber, but they had to tie it into their existing HFC infrastructure further up, so you get RFoG which might either be done with a media converter at the customer premises, which is how fios TV works (or used to work, have they gone IP, yet?) , the HFC signal is on a different wavelength than the PON signals, or it's fiber all the way up to the gateway, so you get a lot of the headaches of DOCSIS equipment just completely over fiber instead of coax in the last mile.