Hey HopTechOne readers! It’s FlyswatterThe1 here, your resident tech tinkerer and wiener dog enthusiast. Whew, I’ve been through the ringer with Xfinity recently. What started as a billing inquiry, then a retention group offer to drop my monthly costs, into a multi-day odyssey of dropped speeds, endless support chats, and one hilariously inept “self-heal” process. But spoiler: It ended with sweet, symmetric AT&T Fiber victory. Grab your coffee and let’s break it down.

The Setup: 24 Years of Loyalty, Gone in a Week: I’ve been with Xfinity (née Comcast) for over 24 years, starting with a modest “speed tier 200 Mbps” plan. Over time, billing creep snuck in, and I discovered they’d quietly bumped me to a 600 Mbps plan—without telling me my hardware couldn’t keep up. I was locked at ~200 Mbps down due to my “past end of life” SB6141 modem. When I called retention to complain, they offered a sweet deal: 1 year of 1 Gig for $51/month ($61/mo after fees and taxes), plus a “free” “keep it as a spare” Xfinity modem. Sweet! No problem, I said. I have a newer Arris SB8200 still new in the box; let’s provision that right now so I don’t need to wait for your new cable modem to arrive.

Big mistake.

The Downgrade: Slower Speeds and Grainy Video Calls: Post-upgrade, my speeds tanked: 503 Mbps down / <6 Mbps up during peak hours. That’s a 15x drop in upload! My Google Meet job interview looked like a 1990s webcam—grainy, pixelated, embarrassing. The SB8200 signals were pristine: 32 downstream channels locked, 4 upstream, 39–40 dBmV power, 44 dB SNR. No uncorrectables. The modem was fine; Xfinity’s provisioning was the culprit. The GUI showed “Configuration File OK” but no bootfile name—like they forgot (or did they…) to send the full 1 Gig config file.

Xfinity support? A circus. Chats dropped mid-sentence. Multiple agents picking up the chat & having to start over. Agents upsold smartwatches instead of fixing. One promised a “98% success self-heal” in an hour—nothing. Retention tried hiking rates to $70/mo to “fix it. because it was my modem & not theirs.” After hours on hold, no resolution. Retention actually told me they CANCELLED my already confirmed order and to go back into a new support chat and see if they would offer me the same package. WTH!? Even a friend at Comcast confirmed: Provisioning glitch, but they wouldn’t admit it.

The Switch: Hello, AT&T Fiber: Enough was enough. AT&T Fiber was available in my Castleton neighborhood (ZIP 46250)—1 Gig symmetric for $80/mo standalone, but only $64/mo bundled with wireless (20% off). With $150 Visa Reward Card and $800 payoff credit per line from Xfinity, it was a no-brainer. Install was Tuesday morning: Tech ran fiber, set up the BGW320-500 gateway, tested 915/809 Mbps wired. Boom—symmetric heaven and a much lower combined ISP / Cellular monthly fee. Win-Win!

But I owned my gear, so I configured IP Passthrough on the BGW320 (Firewall > IP Passthrough > DHCPS-fixed with ASUS MAC) and disabled Wi-Fi/DHCP. Plugged the BGW320 LAN (blue 5Gig port) into my ASUS WAN. No double NAT, no conflicts—ASUS handled everything: Static IPs (192.168.1.x), Hop_Guest network with 20/10 Mbps limits per client, and AiMesh with the RP-AX58 extender in Bedroom 1.

Wi-Fi in the kitchen: 311/333 Mbps. Master bathroom (former dead zone at -78 dBm): now has -54 dBm / 500–700 Mbps. IoT? Lights, thermostat, cameras, MyQ all reconnected seamlessly (MyQ needed a port forwarding rule configured in the new Asus router & 20 MHz on 2.4 GHz). Even my Xbox jumped to 236/635 Mbps after Open NAT tweaks.

Lessons Learned: Fiber Wins, Xfinity Loses:

This ordeal highlighted cable’s Achilles heel: Shared nodes, provisioning woes, and upload caps. Fiber’s dedicated line = consistent symmetric speeds. Xfinity’s support? Hadji from Johnny Quest could do better. 24 years ended with a simple call to cancel—no ETF, prorated bill.

One bright spot in the chaos? My trusty Netgear WNDR3700 router, the “King of OG routers,” running DD-WRT for almost 15 years. What a champ! It powered through the Xfinity mess with grace, holding down the fort until the newer ASUS router (<-was also still sitting new in the box, I know, I know, us IT guys like to keep old hardware running!) and new AiMesh AP took over.

If you’re in Castleton, check AT&T availability. For Xfinity holdouts: Own your modem, document signals, escalate to FCC if needed. And always have a wiener dog for moral support.

Now, excuse me—time for 4K dog videos from the throne.