ARRIS SURFboard SB8200 DOCSIS 3.1 Cable Modem | Approved for Comcast Xfinity, Cox, Charter Spectrum, & more | Two 1 Gbps Ports | 1 Gbps Max Internet Speeds | 4 OFDM Channels | 2 Year Warranty

After renting for years i decided to purchase this modem to replace my rental. At the current rate (~$10/mo) the modem should pay for itself in about a year.

The modem itself was easy to setup with the passwords on the small instruction included with the package. Getting the modem activated on the sparklight network took a two hour support call to sparklight but finallt the modem was activated and functional.

Can’t say the modem is faster or slower since i am getting the same speed as before. Most likely the performance is network not modem related.

There is no wifi with this product. I am connecting directly to a netgear router.

Update 3 **************

you can read my sad tale below if you choose. But a quick summary may suffice. I got the sb8200 and it worked for 58 days. It then stopped working. It was replaced by arris but the second modem did not work, either. That modem was replaced by arris and the third modem did not work. The odds of getting three bad modems were pretty near zero so attention turned to comcast. A tech came out and confirmed that the snr was way low and the signal levels were out of bounds. He ran a new cable to the comcast distribution box and installed a new splitter. The third modem connected immediately and worked perfectly. The fact that my old modem (not a docsis 3.1) worked had initially suggested that the problem was the new modem instead of the comcast line.

Arris support was great through all this. I got right through to a live tech after about 3-5 rings (after their voice menu system answered and directed my call). They replaced the modems quickly (i had to send old modem back via ground – free return shipping – but they sent replacement modem via next day delivery). This is some of the best support of any company i deal with. It is pretty much the opposite of comcast where getting to a live agent can be very difficult.

This review was originally a 2 star but is now a 5 star – and i would give arris support 6 stars if i could.

Original post *********************

i have had this modem for 58 days. It was working well connected to xfinity. Good download speed. Then, today it became intermittent. It ran for a couple of minutes, then lost internet connection, then was back but at slower download speed. Then it was running fine. That pattern continued to repeat. I had hoped it was an xfinity issue, but i reconnected my previous modem and everything is working just fine.
Before purchase i had read the bad reviews, but there were way more good reviews so i hoped that i would be one of those customers that got a ‘good one’. Nope. Besides every modem i looked at had about the same number of bad reviews. Many saying – don’t buy this. So what is one to do?

Update **************

i contacted arris customer support. I got through to a tech immediately. He said they needed to check the modem while it was online. Since i had already installed by backup modem, i had to contact comcast and switch my mac address back to the arris and get in connected. I then called arris back and again was connected to a tech, immediately. The reason this is a 2 star rather than a 1 star is because of the ease of contacting support. The tech looked at the modem stats and agreed it was bad. After a 5 minute delay while he consulted with a supervisor, he approved my return of the modem. He emailed me a prepaid shipping label and said they would send a new modem to me as soon as they received the old one back.

So what arris may lack in quality, they do mostly make up for in good customer support. Realistically, any product can fail, so the experience in dealing with a failed product is an important part of the buying process. Arris support gets 4 stars from me – one star off for making me reinstall the modem so they can verify it was bad. Though that was a perfectly reasonable request from them, i had pretty good evidence of my assertion that it was their modem which was the issue.

Update 2 **********

i got the replacement modem. I spent about 90 minutes on the phone with xfinity and arris customer support trying to get that modem working with xfinity. We could not get the modem to work – it seemed like it was working for a few seconds here and there. So i am sending this replacement back and will get yet another replacement (for the replacement). Hopefully the 3rd times the charm.

This cable modem is outstanding and exceedingly simple to install and use. For users who want to use their own equipment instead of renting your isp’s. This is essential for speeds above 100mbps due to the docsis 3.1 protocol. Be sure to change the default password for the admin account to secure it and simply call the cable company with the mac address to set it up.
Be aware: not all internet service providers allow use of personal equipment.

Finally decided it was time to stop the $6+ tax lease fee with my current provider. Changing out the modem was extremely simple (just needed to call my provider and have them enter the mac id). Speeds are fantastic! Smaller and uses less power than the company-provided modem. The only downside is how bright the leds are, which can be resolved with electrical tape or sticking it in a cabinet. (then again, some people might like the ‘night light.’)

make sure to log into the modem (‘admin’) after setting it up, changing the default password from ‘password’ and registering the modem for warranty! There is also all kinds of connection and diagnostic info available there.

For the price i paid, the modem will pay for itself in 11 months. Very happy!

I’ve spent the last 5 years renting the mediacom modem for $13/mo. Had it on my list to buy a modem, but i’m not real techy, so kept putting it off out of fear of the time it would take to install a new modem that i would supply. After 5-10 replacements of their cheap modems, i finally got motivated when i lost internet, couldn’t get a service tech out for a week, and maxed out the data on a borrowed verizon hotspot (and they wanted $30 for another 4 gigs of use!). So i ran down to walmart and bought this thing (amazon had it for $50 less, so i ordered it on amazon and took the walmart one back.)

wow, i should have done this 5 years ago. This modem is faster, more reliable, and super easy to install. All i had to do was call the mediacom cable customer support, give them the mac # that’s on the box, and life’s good!

I’ve been using it for 2 weeks now with an 10 year old router/wifi i had laying around, and our internet feels like lightening compared to what we were experiencing before.

In hindsight, no tech ability needed. Just hook it up, read the number, and lg. After all my fuss with mediacom’s modem/router/wifi combo, i decided to keep the equipment separate. Now i have this guy as the modem and a separate router/wifi combo i bought at walmart years ago for great consistency and speed across the house.

Installation was straightforward because i didn’t have a computer close to the source i was able to activate the modem via chat with spectrum. Worked immediately during the chat and has been going strong. I am upgrading my router next and will update if there’s any issues with them playing nice.

Yes it is true !! It did increase the speed and gave full coverage of my house!!!
I bought this as a bundle along with amazon eeros mesh 6.
Installation was very very easy with respect to the devices (modem + eero mesh 6). Need to chat with my isp since this is the first time i am upgrading from docsis 3.0 to 3.1 and to register this new device with them. If you were with the same dilemma like me, you will see a tremendous increase in internet speed (you will be surprised by looking at my attached screenshots). Yes i did with doubt for a year to make a decision of upgrading my modem to 3.1 whether it will truly improve the internet speed or is it just a business strategy by isps in the market. But now i have to admit it is true. 3.1 upgrade is needed if you do wfh or have multiple device streaming.
I have not explored its full capacity of how many devices it can handle, for now only 16 devices connected and it does it’s job with justification.
But i did verify the coverage and it has improved 100%.

In layman terms – arris sb8200 is a modem and does not have an inbuilt router in it. The eero mesh 6 does the job of a router (physically 3 router devices at your house with the same wifi name to connect to your devices).
So, no need to manually switch to connect to these mesh devices as we normally do with a wifi extender. Wherever i move around my house there is a mesh device to back my n/w coverage. I believe it can easily cover 5000 sqft as they promised. Whenever there is a switch of mesh device happens i can see the coverage strength drop for a second and then regain its full strength in seconds.

I am satisfied so far with this device as far as the coverage, signal strength all over the house and its perimeter (basement, garage, driveway, backyard) and most importantly for the competitive price in the market when compared to the price range of a netgear orbi.

They are advertising this year’s model and giving you last years. Return to and they continue to give me the 2gbps instead of the 5gbps as advertised. It still works fine, but i feel this is bait and switch. Find another seller

I have xfinity as well and i can tell you that it works fine with it. Not sure why someone is saying it is no longer supported by xfinity. It has been very reliable and this is my 3rd or 4th one in the last 15 years or so.
Keep in mind that the new modems have been for upgrade purposes. I haven’t had one go bad yet.

I saw an older review where it gave a couple of cons for the sb8200. One complaint was that you could only use one of the ethernet ports in the back. Of course that is true and is working the way its suppose to. It’s clearly stated to use the 2nd ethernet port you need to have and 2nd ip given by your isp provider. This so you could get up to 2 gbps speeds. Naturally you have to pay extra for this. Not a con if misunderstand the features.

Another con was that it didn’t have wifi. How is this a con if it’s not designed with that feature??? You want that? Than buy the model with wifi.

Obviously no product has 100% reliability with all customers. For me, it has pretty much been that and that means any future upgrades will be with arris.

I have a 600mbps xfinity plan. Previously i got only 130 mbps with my old sb6121 docsis 3.0. With sb8200 docsis 3.1 i can now get ~700mbps constantly. Superb!

I purchased the arris sb8200 for xfinity gigabit internet service as they have a deal for two years for the same price as the 400mbps plan ($69.99). So in order to save almost $15 a month i decided to buy my own modem to replace my aging motorola (arris) sb6141. My sb6141 netted me 259mbps down and 35mbps up on my previous plan of 400mbps down and 35mbps up, which is great for a 8×4 channel docsis 3.0 cable modem. So since arris bought motorola modem cable division i decided to get another one having had a great product with the 6141. The arris sb8200 is also the only docsis 3.1 modem with two ethernet ports capable of doing 2gbps down and is the most future proof of any modem on the market at the time of writing this review. And you can get a refurbished model for half the price which is even better!

Inside the arris sb8200 is a broadcom bcm3390 chipset (a much needed change from the sb6190’s intel puma 6 chipset which had hardware bugs and caused them a lawsuit for good measure), 3gb of ram, 128mb s34ml01g200tfv00 spansion flash memory nand and 16mb macronix mx25l12805d spi nand flash memory. The sb8200 is capable of downstream bonded channels up to 32 scqam or 2 ofdm and upstream bonded channels up to 8 scqam or 2 ofdma (32×8 scqam and 2×2 ofdm). The ethernet ports are only gigabit ethernet and therefore the max you will get is 950mbps average down and it will never be possible to the the boxes 10gbps selling spiel. Even if you don’t have docsis 3.1 in your area or a gigabit internet speed plan this modem will serve you for many years to come. And this modem has 3gb of ram, which the other docsis 3.1 modems have 256mb or less! Ram! Oh and with most providers (xfinity included) you can call them and add a separate ip address for the second ethernet port for a small fee (xfinity charges like $5.95 if i’m remembering correctly). This would be great if you wanted to connect a gaming console directly to the modem for the best speeds and then connect your home router to the second. And eventually you’ll be able to kick in 2gbps by merging those two ethernet ports!

Setup of the device was quick and easy and you simply plugin the coxial cable, ethernet cable to your device (router for 99% of the people) and power cable and you are off and running. A quick call to your internet provider (xfinity for me) to add the hfc mac address and the modem is registered and provisioned and i’m up and running within ten minutes. Xfinity will try to send out a tech but you can get them to override it if you know what you are doing. Gigabit internet can be extremely temperamental as we’ll discuss later which is the reason xfinity requires sending out a tech on all gigabit plan installs. And again this is simply a modem so you will need a router if you want wifi or the ability to connect more than one device.

The performance of the arris sb8200 is top notch and i was easily able to pull my provisioned modem speeds from my xfinity service. I was able to test 1.4gbps down (fast.com also includes backend speed as actual can only be 950mbps as i mentioned above) and 45mbps up. On speedtest.net my tests are almost always 930-960mbps (or near that) down and 40-50mbps up. These speeds are amazing and just my upload speed is faster than most people’s download speeds! Right now xfinity is only utilizing docsis 3.1 for the downstream channels so the modem lights will have a blue light for downstream and a green light for upstream (this is not an error or bug).

My issues arose with my xfinity service and resets, slow speeds (300mbps max down), etc. Xfinity sent out a tech and that did nothing. So another rech came and found a ton of ingress coming from 4 lines on my tap. He trapped them off and i was up and running with gigabit speeds again. Then the resets started, at night almost every 10 minutes! It was only happening between 10pm and 7am average, every night! I had more techs out, supervisors and more supervisors! After a month (and many hours of my time and speaking up) the issue was resolved as it was a bad line amplifier which was causing noise and caring my upstream to spike into the high 50s, which triggers resets on the modem and t3/t4 errors. Now my neighbors were having issues on certain channels and slow internet but their modems were not resetting! And we knew my modem wasn’t bad as it was fine for over 12 hours a day with no errors at all in the log until night began to fall everyday. And in fact my neighbors never lost internet, ever but my internet was almost useless at night time. So the arris sb8200 is extremely sensitive to t3/t4 errors and the threshold for errors and resets is much higher for the xfinity owned gateways and modems. Also arris had out out a firmware update previously about severe sensitivity to t3/t4 errors and i had the latest version but i was still having issues so they still need to work on this. If you are experiencing issues with your arris modem navigate to http://192.168.100.1 and you’ll be able to see basic signal information, modem error logs, modem and firmware info. You can use this information and post it in the support forums to get help and diagnose any problems.

But now that the line and backend errors are corrected it’s smooth sailing and i’m saving myself a ton of money (the new xfinity modem charge is $14 plus tax and it will be $15 by the beginning of 2020 so you pay for the modem in a little over a year) every year and you’ll have the newest technology that is even better than the xfinity modems and gateways, many of which use the puma 6 chipset which i mentioned above (causing severe lag and timeouts which can kill online gaming or video watching). So i’m paying $69.99 and getting gigabit speeds of 950mbps down and 48mbps up which is a great deal hands down and you won’t find speeds that cheap anywhere else! The arris brand is keeping the motorola spirit alive and kicking which is great for competition! The arris sb8200 is the best modem you can buy for your money right now and if you can find a refurbished unit on amazon even better (they didn’t have any when i bought mine but three weeks later they did and for $100 cheaper)!

Here we go again with forced upon you star ratings, this time for wi fi signal and tech support. Sorry the wifi is awful as it has none, it is just a cable modem. No tech support needed if you take the easy way when following the app and just hit the button that brings you to your isp. Screw in the coax, plug in modem, call the number for your isp and tell them the mac address. Took about 10 minutes to fully link. When it did it worked fine. I did try apps self activation but after typing in enormously long address provided by arris for mediacom got a message that address was too long. Plus had to organize computer and cable plug in to modem. Enclosure is so light, weight of cables pulls it right off shelf. Might want to invest in some blu tack. Big gripe is fuzzy indicator lights. Leds are behind translucent panel that leaks light from one led to another. Took me awhile to realize ‘upload connection’ was illuminated from internet connection led so i wasted time trying to use it before it fully connected. Now. Now we wait to see how long before next gen modems superceed 3.1. Between adapting 3.0 and them flipping to 3.1 my isp took 5 years. I hope this modem will last that long.

So far so good (about a week) with this modem. My isp is xfinity and it took one try and about 15 minutes to get the unit activated. Most of the time was waiting for apps or the modem to connect. To bypass calling customer support for activation (if all goes well) requires apps that connect to the internet, which will be down to you isp during activation, this method requires a cellular internet connection with a tablet or smart phone. Save some time and download the arris and xfinity apps before you start the activation. The unit looks and feels kind of toyish and is ridiculously small and light compared to my former modem. It does however work well, i’m now getting the download speeds i’m paying for, an extra 100 mb/s that the old modem could not support and could upgrade the speed of the connection. On the down side although the unit has 2 ethernet ports only one will connect to xfinity since they (now) only support one ip address per connection. For me i finally figured out the second port has no use and it took a bit of searching to find that out. If your isp supports dual ips you could connect additional devices or a switch directly to the modem and not have to connect to a router. Otherwise its dead space. All in all if you only need a docsis 3.1 modem the sb8200 is a great value.

I bought this unit to work with my upgraded internet speed. It’s advertised to run fast enough, but apparently not compatible with xfinity’s 1gb service. So far, fastest speed test is around 750 – 800. I recommend you check with your service provider’s website prior to buying a modem. This modem works well, but disappointed in the speeds i’m getting.

4 phone calls later (1 to my service provider comcast, 3 to arris) it works great. But a customer should not have to jump through so many hoops. Problems 1) ‘quick start guide’ says after all cables connected go a web page to ‘activate’. I bought this so i could connect to the internet. So how can i connect to the internet before it’s activated? I called arris (tech support at time i called is located in india). Lady said that it’s still possible to connect service provider’s activation page even before activation. The lights on the modem were behaqving differently from my previous arris modem. The lady said as long as they’renot blinking the cokor doesn’t matter (that contradicts the ‘quick start guide’) i go to the web page for xfinity/comcast and it gives you 2 choices iphone store or google play store to download an app!!!!! (nothing said, ‘click here for activation’) so i called xfinity/comcast by house phone (phone call # 2). Person ‘activated’ phone, but it still wouldn’t connect to internet. She said, ‘on my end it’s working fine you need to call the manufacturer.’ so i call arris again (phone call # 3) as we started the modem started to work. She said it was probably still activating. I asked her ‘what about changing the modem id & password for better security? She said that is in your router you must call them. Really docsis 3.1 modems don’t have id & passwords??? I downloaded the ‘user manual’ on this web page and it talked about going to the ‘web manager’ web page to change default password!!!! I enter the web address and the page won’t load (192.168.100.1) because it’s not a secure web site. Many many attempts later i called arris again (phone call # 4) the person says we have to do a ‘factory reset’ i could tell he was reading from ‘cue cards’ (this was after ‘power recycles’ plugging and unplugging cables, even unplugging from ethernet port one and trying port 2, (which i knew from these comments you need something special from your service provider to get port #2 to work.) when that didn’t work and now i couldn’t connect to the internet at all!!!!!!!! (no pages would load at this point he declares, ‘the modem is faulty you need to send it back.’ i asked for an rma #. He said, ‘just send it back’ (but now i have no proof of any of this. I said, but now none of my pages will load.’ he said ‘well sometimes this can make the problem worse, i have to go now.’ and the call ended. I turned everything off, reconnected all the cables as they were before waited a min. Or 2 and turned the modem then router back on and i could connect again to my web pages. I wanted to try on last thing. I got my cell phone and went back to the original arris page and downloaded the user manual through the google play store (becareful it’s not the arris app it’s the ‘arris central …’ app. Going through that version of the manual i saw several links not in the other guide/user manual!!!! This manual told you to plug the computer ethernet cable directly into ‘port one’ of the modem to load the page and what to do when when you get the error code about the page not being secure (different for each web browser). This worked i was able to change my modem password.!!!!!!! This whole thing took me many hours and it didn’t have to be this way. If the techs were up to date with the latest version of the manual it would have gone a lot smoother. Now everything works (hopefully for years to come). I hope this helps.

This modem replaces an arris sb6183 for me. The 6183 worked very well for a number of years, but had probably been hit by too many power fluctuations. The sb8200 is keeping a more constant and faster connection. Sunglasses are needed is because arris has put the same, if not even brighter, led indicators on the front of this modem. Re: the 6183 arris at least gave the customer the option of turning off the leds in the modem software. No option to do that exists in the sb8200.

Better then renting from cox. Easy to install. Call have it added to account.

Worked as advertised, no problems setting up.

I bought this so i don’t have to rent one from optimum. It works good. A little pricey though

Setting up the modem with xfinity was no issue using their mobile app’s self guided setup. Everything appeared to be ok at first, but then our household started having modem resets, connection drops, and packet loss during gaming every 2-3 days. Since it can be difficult to get the cable company tech to come out, without jumping through hoops, i troubleshot the issue on my own. The real help for the diyers is in the product reviews here. The issue with this modem is getting the cable signal levels within arris’ specification, which leans on the more sensitive side than other similar modems. Our cable signal was strong and consistent coming into the building, so i only had to attenuate, or lower, that signal into the appropriate range. I used a cable splitter with a 3.5 db drop (lowered both down and upstream signal), then a return path attenuator for an additional 3 db drop on the upstream signal. This put signal levels into the right range, and our connection is stable and we get the speed we pay for. I work in it and was comfortable researching and learning how this all worked. I’d recommend most people contact their cable provider and ask for technician support. Based on other people’s shared experience, it looks like they ended up solving other issues with their cable setup anyways.