E> Since when don't they allow self-owned modems any more? How long E> ago did they tell you this? Since I recently got a new plan to save myself $40/mon with them. I was grandfathered in under the old plan. The new setup requires a DOCIS 3.0 modem to get the higher speeds. I think (can't remember...) I stayed with 30mbit down, 5 up, but I could have gone with 50mbit down. Not a big deal and not a huge difference. E> I own mine and they are not complaining at me. I think it is about E> 2 years old. I also am "renting" theirs as a part of the standard E> cost for 30/4 internet. It's on a shelf in case my own modem ever E> conks out. In my new plan, the rental fee is bundled into the setup. E> What happened here is that my older new modem almost-died around 2 E> years ago (one of the newer Motorola Surfboards). It was returning E> a lot of errors and they sent 2 techs out here to see what the E> problem might be. They didn't find anything in their lines, so they E> decided the modem was dying. They gave me their modem and left. It E> turns out it was probably the power supply that was working E> intermittantly poorly, but that's a moot point now. E> After the techs left, I bought a new modem (another Motorola SB) E> and plugged it in the day it arrived. Then I called Charter, and E> they provisioned it. I didn't ask them if I could, and the service E> tech on the phone didn't tell me I can't have it. She simply took E> the numbers I gave her and had it going in 5 minutes. Yup, that's how it worked with me last time I did this. E> I would be very annoyed if I was forced to use their modem. I think E> it's important to be able to access the logs, crummy as they are, E> it's nice to know when certain events happen. E> So when did they tell you this, John? Month or so ago. I don't care all that much since it's *very* reliable for me, and I ssh home all the time with my dynamic DNS hostname, mount stuff via SSHFS, etc. I love being able to get home at will. So I run m0n0wall on an old pcengine.ch WRAP board, so I can do my own firewall/routing with a silent box without any moving parts. Been thinking to upgrade to a newer system and possibly move to smoothwall instead. No rush... it's all stable and reliable.