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Over the years I have been both a Comcast and Time Warner Internet customer in way more than 3 different cities. Avoid them if possible. No fun paying $10 more for more bandwidth and not seeing your bandwidth increase. Thanks to DD-WRT you see your actual bandwidth in real time.

Everyone should learn how to access websites they deem critical via that websites IP address alone. Its simple enough if you know the IP address, which can be discovered via the commands nslookup, dig and traceroute (tracert for you windows users). To learn more, google any of those commands and learn. Once you know the IP address using this in your browser's Location Bar (some browser installations turn off the browser's location bar, but you can turn it back on...if not use a better browser):

http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/ where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of the website you want to reach.

If they (cable company) will not provide you with only a cable modem, go with another provider. You want it to be nothing but a simple modem. No Wifi, no firewall, no router. Then add your own firewall/router that you control 100%.

Since they are going to throttle your cable connection anyway, see if DSL is available. It will be cheaper per month also. Go with DSL if you can not get FTTH. Funny how cable companies only offer you more when they are forced too.

If you must use cable:

Cable Modem (no Wifi, no DNS) + DD-WRT enabled firewall/router ~ is your best option.

The FCC use to define broadband as sustained bandwidth speeds above 768Kbps, that page has since been removed, wonder why? If a cable provider throttles service to below 768Kbps, at any time, should it be allowed to be called Broadband? I think NOT.

If your broadband is symmetrical, not an up to bandwidth lie, there is no business incentive to restrict, limit, throttle and reduce a customer's bandwidth perpetuating the scarcity myth lie related to Internet access. There are less than 30 FTTH communities in the USA where a residential customer can purchase symmetrical Internet bandwidth today. Thankfully more are being planned. Except in the 14 states where the Cable companies have gotten politicians to enact laws preventing competition and FTTH.

To learn more about nslookup, dig and configuring your DNSsee this Google Developer's web page. There are command examples on that page, enjoy.

http://xxx.xxx.xxx/ doesn't resolve :-( Damnit!

Uhhhmmmm - yeah, I think. I guess I'm a freetard. Now and then, I'll fire up Wireshark, and just watch the traffic. Yeah, I can see that my deviant son is browsing a porn site. I can see that the wife is checking her email and the banking. I can see that the other kid is looking for car parts. And - the other other kid is playing games. But, why on earth does he have packets going to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/ ??? That isn't a game site - he's not browsing, or there would be a lot more packets. Hmmmmm. A little checking, and I holler at him. "Have you installed anything lately? Have you done a virus scan on your stupid Windows laptop? What is this site?" He looks at it, tells me it's nothing HE ever heard of, goes back to his machine, and does some checking. An hour or so later, he admits that he was testing some stupid schitz that one of his buddies recommended. One of the features happens to be a trojan.

I don't bother making reports - I guess if I did, I might get my name attached to some zero day thingy. Hmmmm. That might not be good either. The better known you are, the harder it is to stay anoynymous when you really WANT to be anonymous!

The Domain Name system is nothing but "human-friendly" window dressing. It's completely unnecessary. As long as the server is configured to allow it, a virtual named hosting space on a shared IP can be accessed as http://xxx.xxx.xxx./~username. Hosting space on a server (at least for non-toy operating systems) is defined by usernames, not domain names. DNS is essentially "speed dial" for websites, but it's not the only way to get there.

Well, n00b at some things, not at others.

I pay my ISP a few extra bucks for some static IPs. I fool around with server builds. I build 'em, play with 'em, trash 'em. Wash, rinse, repeat. I never bother to register anything with anybody to associate my IPs with any names. I just expect that if I'm sitting anywhere in the world and I want to look at that page I put on my playtoy of a web server at home, I only need to type in http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx./ If I need to fetch the file that I left on that miserable excuse for an ftp server that I have at home, I expect to be able to plop down in any internet cafe in any place in the world, fire up their locked-down, browser-only interface, and type ftp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and grab said file with a couple of mouse clicks.

That's why I pay my ISP for static IPs.

Is there anything about all of this that will break that functionality?

Well, n00b at some things, not at others.

I pay my ISP a few extra bucks for some static IPs. I fool around with server builds. I build 'em, play with 'em, trash 'em. Wash, rinse, repeat. I never bother to register anything with anybody to associate my IPs with any names. I just expect that if I'm sitting anywhere in the world and I want to look at that page I put on my playtoy of a web server at home, I only need to type in http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx./ If I need to fetch the file that I left on that miserable excuse for an ftp server that I have at home, I expect to be able to plop down in any internet cafe in any place in the world, fire up their locked-down, browser-only interface, and type ftp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and grab said file with a couple of mouse clicks.

That's why I pay my ISP for static IPs.

Is there anything about all of this that will break that functionality?

http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/ .... oh jeez, they've figured out a way to get around our bullet-proof DNS filtering scheme guys!