I was hoping someone would have provided a response by now, but since they haven't I'll give it a shot. I'm not an expert on this, but when I got my XB7, it was very easy to "give it" the same SSIDs that I'd been using previously and all of my devices connected just like before. Very simple and I had to do nothing with about a dozen devices - iPhone, iPads, Mac Mini, MacBook Air, security cameras, etc.
I cannot comment on your IP question.
PS. If you require any Rogers supplied Pods for your application, you must enable band steering for them to work.
@DrMike wrote:
I am preparing for a Rogers tech to come tomorrow to swap my XB6 with an XB7 to better meet my 1.5 GB Ignite Plan. My questions relate to what happens to all my connections and existing settings once the new modem is activated.
I will want to keep both my 2.4 and 5.0 GHz SSID's separate (I will want to use the same SSIDs and Passwords) - I do NOT want to have any band steering active (if that is still a thing for the new modem as it was for the current one?), since I have a lot of IoT stuff in my house all connected - Google homes/speakers/displays, smart lights, smart appliances etc and all have been set up (as required) on the 2.4 Ghz band.
For the same reason, I never use/used the Ignite Hub or App to set the current XB6 up since I wanted to make sure I could control things like no band steering. Is that still the case?
As long as you do not have Ignite WiFi Pods activated on your account, you still have the ability to configure different network names for each Wi-Fi band on your gateway, even using the Ignite WiFi app. (Log into the app, click "View Network Details", then click the "pencil" to edit your network settings.
I also have a number of devices (PC, laptops etc that are set up not specifically with static IPs but with stable IPs so that I have a number of network drives all mapped to specific IPs to facilitate easier file sharing etc.
So, when the new modem is installed, will I need to set up each and every one of these connections and drive mappings again? Is there any way to 'port over' settings from one modem to another? Will DHCP just take over and find everything even though it may assign different IP addresses than currently assigned?
Good question. I'm not entirely sure. There is no way (that I know of) to export and import settings. However, you may not need to. When my sister's XB6 went sour, I'm pretty sure that all she had to do was swap the gateway and her existing (albeit simple) configuration got migrated to the new gateway automagically by Rogers back-end management systems.
If you are locked out from making changes to your Wi-Fi channels, then the Ignite Wi-Fi Hub is already active on your account.
All of the devices that require "stable IPs" should have Reserved IP addresses configured in the gateway.
For all of the other devices, DHCP will assign them an available IP address when they connect to the network.
Basically, is there anything I can do in advance to make the transition as seamless as possible?
Again, I'm not sure what settings (if any) will get preserved and migrated automatically. I would still save your Wi-Fi network names and passphrases, just in case you do need to reconfigure the gateway from scratch. I would also log into your gateway through the web admin UI, go to "Connected Devices > Devices", and save the hostname, MAC address and IPv4 address of each device with a Reserved IP address.
If you do need to reinstall from scratch, there are some settings that you can only change through the Ignite WiFi Hub app, so I would at least download and install it on your mobile device(s).
If your Reserved IP addresses do not get migrated, you can still configure those through the web admin UI, and your life will be much easier if you can copy/paste the host name, MAC address and IPv4 address, provided that you have those archived in a text file.
@DrMike wrote:
I was surprised that misinformation persists throughout Rogers' ranks however. Some will know from a previous post that I was told by a Rogers tech Specialist in an online chat last week that the XB7 did NOT have any ports capable of greater than 1 GB speeds. We know that info is INCORRECT as it does have one - port 4 - that is configured at 2.5GB - and was in fact the whole point behind me making the swap in the first place!! But when the tech came in person today, he plugged my main PC into a different port and when I suggested it needed to go into the port marked with the orange line, he insisted, just like his phone chat colleague a few days ago, that all ports were 1 GB speed max. I asked him put it into port 4 and humour me. No point in arguing - he clearly was wrong.
The field techs and tech support pass on what they learn in their training and the information that they can find in the documentation that they have access to. They may not actually have much "hands on" experience with the gateways beyond performing a simple installation. Even the Comcast Overview of Xfinity Gateways page does not make any mention of the 2.5 GigE port on the XB7 and XB8.
I now have 2 questions however.
1. When I go into my admin panel (not the WiFi Hub app) and look at all my connections etc, about 2/3 of the connections are "named" such as "Google home mini", or "Dell XPS" or "Family Room ROKU" or similar under the 'Hostname' column. But quite a few are unnamed and are listed in the table simply by MAC address. Although all seems to be working OK, I'd really rather be able to identify each connection by SOME alias rather than a MAC address. Is there a way to force that? Alternatively is there a way to get a "hostname" from a MAC address? And if I could decode the MAC addresses, could I edit the connection entry in the Connected Devices table so that all entries are more intelligible to me than just a cryptic and meaningless MAC address that could be anything? It's not a big deal but I'd like to be able to see what is actually connected 🙂 And I guess it is a security thing too to actually recognize what devices are connected at any given time?
The Host Name in "Connected Devices > Devices" gets populated when you configure a Reserved IP address or when the DHCP clients passes on its hostname when it connects to the network. It may not always update and the "Edit" button does not allow you to make any manual changes either.
The Ignite WiFi Hub app will allow you edit the hostname but, as far as I know, this does not get propagated back down to the gateway. Likewise, if you "forget" a device in the Ignite WiFi app, the device entries on the gateway do not get deleted either. The device management support in the Ignite gateways is pretty awful and Comcast really doesn't care about anything other than the stuff that you can do through the app.
2. Speaking of security, one thing the WiFi Hub app did offer me was the opportunity to add some extra security to the network. I said OK, and it said it would take 10 min to 'apply' it but nowhere could I see what it actually *WAS*? What is that security measure and what is it doing. And How?
The app was probably prompting you to enable Advanced Security. Click here for more info.
Glad to hear that your upgrade was successful!
@DrMike wrote:
Thanks for the info and the link to the Advanced Security FAQ. I guess I should have done a rudimentary search before posting the question lol.
But that does lead me to wonder, unless there are downsides (performance or otherwise) why would this feature not be ON by default? Seems a no brainer to me?
As far as I can tell, there is no (major) performance impact to having Advanced Security enabled. As for why it is not on by default,
- Some people have found that their favourite web sites break or are blocked, and some have found that this causes some mobile apps to fail... and a mobile app typically does not provide much feedback when network connectivity "breaks" in unexpected ways.
- When Advanced Security causes problems with sites, there is no white list. The only thing that you can do is turn the feature on or off.
- The feature is a "black box" and there is not any public information about exactly how the feature functions or how the analysis is done.
- There are also privacy implications to having this feature enabled since your network traffic does need to be analyzed, and alerts appear on a dashboard in the App.
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