anyone with roadrunner have dual modems?

[amheck]

We have a house in St. Pete that has a detached garage apartment that I use as my home office a few days a week. When we first got cable put in, I was able to talk to Bright House and they agreed to put in a drop to the house and a drop in the garage apartment for just the 1 monthly fee, since we weren't renting it out or anything like that.

So in the main house, I have my cable modem, AT&T VoIP Service, wireless router, etc. For my home office, I connect my two PC's via wireless to the router in the house and everything is for the most part ok.

Now I'd like to get a non-POTS phone line in the detached garage apartment. Doing some reading, the phone don't do very well over wireless. So I started thinking, since I have cable access to the garage apartment, all it would take would be another cable modem, and then I could hook up a voip setup pretty easily.

Has anyone been successful with getting a 2nd cable modem without getting a second $40-$50 monthly charge?

[pilotbob]

Can you set up an MoCA network to the garage since you already have a cable drop there?

BOb

EDIT: Oh wait... a separate drop to the garage. Does that mean the garage cable is not on a splitter from your house?

[skottey]

We have a house in St. Pete that has a detached garage apartment that I use as my home office a few days a week. When we first got cable put in, I was able to talk to Bright House and they agreed to put in a drop to the house and a drop in the garage apartment for just the 1 monthly fee, since we weren't renting it out or anything like that.

So in the main house, I have my cable modem, AT&T VoIP Service, wireless router, etc. For my home office, I connect my two PC's via wireless to the router in the house and everything is for the most part ok.

Now I'd like to get a non-POTS phone line in the detached garage apartment. Doing some reading, the phone don't do very well over wireless. So I started thinking, since I have cable access to the garage apartment, all it would take would be another cable modem, and then I could hook up a voip setup pretty easily.

Has anyone been successful with getting a 2nd cable modem without getting a second $40-$50 monthly charge?

I have a customer in Tampa who had two Roadrunner modems and he was paying twice for the service. I am not sure if that was the policy or not, but he didn't seem to care as he had the money to pay it.

You have a few options other than getting a second modem. You could pay to run a shielded Ethernet drop from your house to the garage. You would need a router at the cable modem, as you'd be using more than one device. You could run it alongside the other utilities or bury it in some type of conduit to protect it further underground. Do this yourself or have a wiring guy do it. You might pay a little more than the average drop but it would make more sense than having two modems and possibly paying twice. The other option is to get a really good wireless router in your house and a wireless bridge in the garage. My wife's vonage box is in our bedroom, along with a PC, wii, DirecTV box, Slingbox, Xbox 360, etc... all using that bridge to connect to my wireless network and it works fine. No dropped packets or latency with good equipment. Now, by the time you buy a bridge (such as the Buffalo unit I would suggest to you) and a good router (Linksys or Dlink even), you could pay for the wiring job and the wired Ethernet would be less points of failure. So my suggestion to you as a computer professional would be to run Ethernet to the garage. Secondly, wireless is an option but then you have more points of failure (Modem, wireless router, wireless bridge, VoIP box).

Good luck, but whatever you do, don't pay for a second full service.

[DSquare]

We had two modems at our house ran off the same line coming into the house. Our daughter and her husband where basically 'renting' a room from us and he had BHN come out and install a modem in their bedroom. The modem was connected with the coax that was already in place. He had his own bill and we had our own bill.

[amheck]

Thanks for the responses guys.

PilotBob, your question made me think. I remember now, when we first had this done. We were doing a major rennovation to the house, and I needed cable in the garage apartment for when I was down overseeing everything. I talked with Greg (the BHN guy from Orlando who used to be on here) and he helped me get a drop to the garage, and then put in some account notes that the house, when we turned service on, would not be a separate charge. But when they came to wire the house, they did just put a spliiter on the box on the garage and buried a cable ot the house. So my fault, its not really 2 drops, its 1 drop that's split at the one, one way to the house, 1 way to the garage.

I'll have to look at running a cable. I really don't think it's feasible. The wireless router and all of my equipment in our bedroom closet. We'd have to drill out that wall, come down the side of the house, and then go aross a big brick patio and then penatrate up into the garage. We had all of the utilities buried, so I really hate to stick on a conduit and cat5 cable onto the side of the structures. Although, yes, this would be the best solution.

I have, what I think, its a retty good router now, a Linksys WRT54GS. I may give it a go with a wireless bridge and get another VOIP service for up there.

Worse case, there is a POTS line hooked up to the garage. I called Verizon and they are $49.99 for unlimited local and log distance. Although I'd prefer the $10 Skype plan or $25 Vonage plan.

I wish the N routers were better. This might be a good opportunity to replace some hardware, but I don't hear too many good things about the N solutions these days.

[pilotbob]

So my fault, its not really 2 drops, its 1 drop that's split at the one, one way to the house, 1 way to the garage.

I'll have to look at running a cable. I really don't think it's feasible.

So, if this is the case then you already have all the cableing you need to use MoCA network. MoCA is basically ethernet over cable. You just need a bridge on each end.

Unfortunately there are none of these available at retail. But, there are three sellers on ebay right now. You would need two... one on each end.

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=m38.l1313&_nkw=Motorola+NIM&_sacat=See-All-Categories

Another option is power line networking. I assume you have electricity from the same "drop" in the house and the garage. There are several of these devices available from various networking manufaturers.

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=power+line+network&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=2364834645&ref=pd_sl_7809strzgu_b

Either of the above options will let you extend your home network over existing wires and give good enough speed for a VoIP box.

Good luck. Let us know what you do.

BOb

[JamesD]

you are not going to be able to get 2 modems activated on the same account w/o paying for a 2nd set of services... just to clear that up