Home > Consumer Reviews > Linksys BEFCMU10 Ethernet Cable Modem

As of September 2005, Amazon is shipping v3 of this cable modem. So far no problems on Comcast in New England area.

Bought a Linksys BEFCMU10 (version 2) in January of 2003. Initially had a few problems requiring that I reset the modem. Problem turned out to be an ISP problem. Problem fixed and had a year and a half of excellent service.
Yesterday, my Linksys BEFCMU10 failed. I bought a new (version 3) and am back in business.
At $10 per month to rent a modem from my ISP, I am still money ahead buying my modem. However, the Linksys modem does get hot and the heat is probably exacerbated using the modem with a stakable Linksys router as I do.

It took a while to isolate the problem I was having with this modem - complete crashes virtually any time I attempted to download something or surf the internet - and it took a second phone call to Linksys support to get a tech who was familiar with this issue, but according to her the existing drivers will NOT work using the USB connection on a WinXP system. They are working to get updated drivers out. She said an ethernet card would resolve this problem. I spent an extra $11 locally on the ethernet card and cable and it now works perfectly. I was on hold for less than one minute both times I called their support line. And it worked fine with Win98 prior to my upgrade to WinXP. I'm very happy with it.

I bought the Linksys cable modem along with Linksys' DSL/Cable router/AP/w 4 port swtiches and a wireless PCI card to build a
home network for my PCs to share high speed internet access last December. After the cable guy from Cable America wired cable to my house, plugged in the cable modem, read the MAC over the phone to their IT guy, the cable modem simply just worked flawlessly.

It took the modem a few minutes to synchronize to the cable signal the first time after the installation. Since then it only takes less than 20 seconds each time I turn it on. I love the sleek industrial design and the vertical footprint. It saves desk space and looks cool.

The cable guy did a download speed test using pcpitstop.com after the installation and was getting 1.4 Mbit/s. He tried to explain to me why I was not getting the 3.2 Mbit/s that I was paying for. I did a few more tests myself afterwards and was always getting less than 1.6 Mbit/s. That's when I followed the links at the site to fine tune my Windows registry. After the fine tuning, I am now occasionally getting the 3.2 Mb/s that I am paying for, but mostly getting 2.4 - 2.6 Mb/s. That is almost 2X what I was getting before the tuning. So before you complain to your cable provider about not getting the speed you are paying for, you definitely want to look into tuning your Windows registry. Machines running the Linux OS do not have this problem.

I am a loyal Linksys customer, but I will try not to be too biased here. Overall, this modem is great, and it never fails. BUT it never fails IF you only do casual web surfing. Things starts to get ugly when Kazaa or BitTorrent or any P2P sharing program is running. I had to reset it every couple hours. This modem simply cannot take abnormally heavy duty load. So if you are just a regular web surfer, get this modem. And if you are doing a lot of P2P sharing, skip this modem.