Does anyone know where the Xfinity modem goes?
 

I bought a 6 year old house in Linden and will be closing in July. Does anyone know where the Xfinity modem will go? The house was empty so I don't know where it was. In my prior house in Arizona, it went to a cabinet inside the walk-in pantry.

Below is a pic of the cabinet where I think the cable lines enter the garage.

You can connect the modem to any active cable outlet in the house.

If you're only using WiFi, there may be a coax and power outlet above ta kitchen cabinet. If so, that's usually a good central location.

Welcome to the Villages!

It looks to me like the signal comes into your home on the orange cable and then is split to four different rooms of your house.

HOWEVER, it looks like there might be other black cables that come in and go straight up and out to a room somewhere. If that is the case then I'm surprised that there doesn't appear to be a connector between the outside cable and the inside cable (unless it is hidden).

(it's also possible that unused interior cables were left unterminated in he box with the ends pushed into the conduit to make the box neater)

Regardless, you'll have to ask the previous owner or track the line yourself. Two ways I can think of to track it, buy a tester (fastest) or plug the modem into a location that makes sense and see if it syncs to the input signal (cheapest).

I have mine in my office where I have a desktop computer. The desktop computer is direct wired to the modem with an Ethernet cable and it provides the fastest Internet speed.

It definetly doesn't go in that cabinet. I've only seen one Villager put it in that cabinet, turned off the xfinity wifi and installed his own Wifi system in his home.

In other Linden houses, the ORANGE coax line is from Spectrum.
XFinity used black coax.

So the Spectrum line goes to the ground block; extends to the splitter via a white coax, and then to 4 room wall jacks. If you subscribe to XFinity, and try to find the room jack on that splitter for their modem, you will not succeed.

The XFinity line is harder to identify. It might be the unterminated coax on the bottom left. Or it might come thru the bottom next to the orange line and connected to one of the lines wrapped into the circle at the top right.
In either case, it is NOT grounded. That is a risk during lightning strikes.

With coax, unused connections on a splitter need a terminating resistor. If you are only connecting to a modem (not to any cable TV boxes) then you do not need the splitter. Connect the modem room coax line directly to the ground block. Connect the incoming data coax line also to the ground block. Done.

Identifying the correct coax from the room can be done in 2 ways.
Use a signal injector and tracer.
Or trial and error - connect one coax at a time, and see if the modem locks onto a signal after a few minutes. That fails if the right coax line is without a connector.

One final thing... Many houses of that age have what look like ethernet jacks in the rooms. They are not. Those are wires for old style dial-up telephone service. That is what the junction block in the top left is for. Plugging in ethernet cables to these jacks will not work. There might be zero signal or a bad signal. To get them to work, need new terminations at both ends, and a network switch in the garage cabinet.

OK, the ORANGE cable is from the outside provider this could be Xfinity or Spectrum, (my replacement cable from Xfinity is orange), it goes to the ground block, and the to the splitter. There are four cables going to different rooms in the house, you should be able to plug in the modem/route and connect to any of these cables. I have suitable tools to trace the cables if necessary. You may have other cables that are not terminated, I also have some termination adapters.
Also, try to place the modem/router in a central location and as high as possible to get the best coverage.
Send me a PM if you would like to discuss over the phone.

Just let xfinity guy hook it up when you initially get service.

Yes, this, stop worrying about it as when the cable guy comes he will ask which room you want it in and make that wall connection live (which they did for me).

When I read this question I came up with an immediate answer! BACK TO THE XFINITY STORE!

They mail you the modem and you do a self install. They don't come to your house since the cable was already installed (preowned house). Anyway I will try it in a few rooms to see which works best.

Xfinity still uses coax cable, to the house and wall outlets. Centric will be fiber all the way to the modem, then using the superior LAN lines to the room outlets. Spectrum, I do not know what they use. A fiber optic/LAN line is superior/preferred over a coaxial cable line. Or you have which ever services modem/wifi router you can wirelessly stream to all your devices. But again, using the LAN is superior. If you care.

When a network question comes up in TOTV, you’ll get many different answers with many of them inaccurate.
Your xfinity modem can be placed anywhere where you have an rg6 cable. That can be in the wiring box in the garage, or it can be in any room in the house that has an rg6 black copper cable.
If you think you will be fine with 1 router in your house, then position it in a central open position. But if you want very good coverage for your wifi signal, then you are going to need multiple routers (I use 5 routers) and you have the flexibility of putting the xfinity modem in the wiring cabinet in the garage and the 1st router in the garage next to the modem. Then you can convert or use the cat 5/6 blue wires to hardwire your next router(s) in your house, or use the mesh network backhaul when using the newer wifi 6e or newer mesh routers. I converted all my blue cat 5/6!wires from phone to Ethernet cables and use them to hardware the internal network when I can, and use the mesh backhaul network when I can’t wire. I did all the design and installation myself. I also use 3 1G 5-8 port switches throughout the house.
No isp or geek squad person knows how to setup an internal network in your house. Never use a WAP or extender, they are junk. Design a network using mesh technology and you will be fine

when i built my home 3 years ago galaxy said install the modem via xfinity in the front bedroom near the front door. They also installed wifi extenders in the lr and florida room as the home is entirely 5g and streaming. No cable. Be careful of xfinity as they are quick to penalize you should you go over your data usage limit. We use spectrum and youtube tv.

It looks like you have 4 black COAX cables connected to the splitter in the upper right corner of the panel box. If Xfinity activates all 4 of these, you will need to locate the outlets in the house which should become active. You can connect the modem to any of these outlets, and, if you are subscribing to the standard cable box TV programming, you will need to rent a cable box for each of the outlets that you want to use. Anthor option is to use wifi to stream to your smart TVs, or to rent Xfinity wireless cable boxes. If you need an outlet in another location, you will need to pay Xfinity or an electrician to install a new outlet. Also, there may be additional outlets in your house that do not become active. If you want to use these, you will need to disconnect a cable from the splitter and connect another cable to the splitter. This can be a DIY project. Good luck.

Note that Xfinity changed their model for new customers to unlimited data.

The modem will be placed in the best area with signal strength for the devices that need to be using it

What about the existing customers?

Having a data cap on wired Internet is so ridiculous these days. Internet companies usually implement a cap becasue they can't guarantee to provide service a large percentage of time for all their customers.

My guess is they made the change in policy now that so many people have left Xfinity, they have plenty of cable capacity to serve everyone on their system.

Welcome to the neighborhood. Live on Dagenais. Only one cable is connected. Ours was in the living room. Lucky it is centered behind the TV. Will be back late July. PM me if you like. Cheers, steve

Centric, or other fiber feeds, are not available in Linden.
OP choice for a wired feed is only Spectrum or XFinity.

The OP's photo shows 4 cables exiting the top of the panel, so I assume that all of them go to wall outlets in the house, and will be activated when Xfinity turns on the service.

I also have my modem in my office w a desktop computer. And it is the 3rd bedroom located at a corner of the house.

AND the latest Xfinity Router has no problem delivering a Very Strong Signal throughout the entire house and property

See Post No. 12. The OP is doing a self-install, so Xfinity will not be coming to the house. If you want Xfinity to come to your house, they will charge you about $100 to $200 for the visit.

Don’t use Xfinity. That will solve your problem.

A lot of people are giving you answers without asking questions. What is the layout of your house, how many devices will you be runnining, what kind of speeds are you aquiring from them, will you be streaming to TV(s) and if so, how many and which rooms. You may need more equipment than you think and one modem may not do the job.

Topspinmo and Carlr33 had the best answer. Set up an appointment and tell your installer what you want to run and they can give you options and you can decide from there as far as speeds, modem location, potential need for additional routers, etc. and of course, cost. Then you can make a better decision. I helped my mom when the tech came to set up her house when she changed providers and she needed a little more than just a router, but she is extremely happy with their work and the results and it was actually cheaper than her previous provider with way better speeds and no buffering on her tv’s.

I would not pay Xfinity for a house call if you don't need it. Get the modem/router and plug it in to each COAX outlet and use a smart phone or laptop to see how strong the wifi signal is in every room in the house. Typically, Xfinity provides a combination modem/router. You can measure the Internet speed for free at "speedtest.net". I have never had to add additional equipment. Good luck.

Connect it to any cable outlet in the house. They all go to the connection at the box.

It's been a few years, but Xfinity offered me a self install or they would install for free. I did it myself, but there was some signal issue. When Xfinity came to check it out, there were splitters on splitters in the cable box. There were 7 or 8 tv cable drops in and outside the house. He redid everything and then ran a new cable to my office where the modem was installed. He ran it thru the attic and down the inside of the wall. Imagine my surprise when he said there was no charge. A good tip was in order.

I am thinking about buying the house next door for family and friends. Is it possible to use internet from 1 house to another? Seems like a shame to pay for the home with little use.

Yes, it is possible. Think of it as a guest house on a single property or the far end of a very large home.

I can currently see wifi signals from at least three homes around me. They are weak, but they are present. If we both installed equipment to extend their network then it ought to work fine in my house. A wired connection would be ideal but there are wifi systems also.

The Xfinity modem is also your router and is responsible for distributing the WiFi signal to all the WiFi devices in your home. You, therefore, should place it in a central location somewhere where a coax outlet is available.

Only one cable was terminated and connected. I terminated the remaining cables and labeled the rooms they went to. Also have an antenna in the garage attic.

It's possible that the OP's house is the same. But, the fact that this is a pre-owned house and someone installed a splitter in the panel with 4 COAX cables connected to it makes me assume that the cables were activated and used by the prior resident. Xfinity would not have visited the house to disconnect anything.

With all this information, i'm lost, what's the OPs question again?

OK, mine install was couple years ago in my area. Be warned. :undecided:good luck when you have actual problem. Luckily set up service rarely has problems..