Monday, December 30, 2013

Disabling Wi-Fi on a Comcast Xfinity Cable Modem

Judging by traffic and comments, my last technical "how-to" post was a moderate success, and was found by folks Googling for the solution—so I'm back with another quickie.

A few months ago Comcast sent me an Arris TG862G cable modem, an upgrade from the previous Motorola device to enable higher speed internet access. On the upside it did the job more than handsomely:

On the downside it insisted on being a firewall, DHCP server, and Wi-Fi access point—when I already have something I'm perfectly happy with for those functions. And while some aspects could be tweaked via the admin console, the Wi-Fi couldn't be disabled.

I wanted it disabled.

So if, like me, you want to disable Wi-Fi on your Xfinity Arris TG862G cable modem (how about that for SEO), here's what you need to know: just call Comcast and ask them to put your device into "bridge mode". I did, it was painless, it took them a minute or two, and the box became exactly what I wanted: a transparent bridge between co-ax cable and my Asus router. The N16 now has a the public IP and does its job as firewall, Wi-Fi access point, ssh tunnel endpoint, DHCP server, and so on.

Enjoy.