its really not too painful to set up, and once you set it up, the only thing you’ll ever have to do with it is possibly turn it off and turn it back on again by pushing a power button or unplugging and replugging the modem/router back in.
Here is what a basic setup looks like:
Buy a DOCSIS 3.0+ capable modem. Something like an Arris Surfboard will work swimmingly. This will set you back ~$100
Buy a wifi router that is capable of gigabit speeds. Something like TPLink Archer A7 should work for a basic set up. This is ~$50.
Plug in an ethernet cable from the modem to the WAN port of the router. On TPLink routers this port is usually blue.
take the coaxial cable out of the ISP provided router/modem, connect it to the modem you purchased
take a note of the Serial Number/MAC Address/Other details on the sticker on your modem.
take a note of the WiFi SSID and password on the sticker of the router. this will be your new wifi info to connect to
make sure everything is plugged into power and on
connect to the wifi with a laptop or desktop or plug an ethernet cable into one of the other ports of the router. the internet will NOT work at this point. This is expected.
call the cable company and tell them that you have your own modem and that you want them to activate it. They’ll probably ask you for some of the details on the bottom of the modem. Ensure that they get all of this info correct or it wont work
once the cable company activates the modem, they may tell you that it will take 30 minutes to activate. Wait the time and then test the internet connection on your device. The internet should theoretically work at this point
If you run into issues one thing you can do to troubleshoot is take the ethernet cable that is coming from the modem to the router and unplug the router side and plug it straight into your laptop or desktop(disclaimer its not safe to browse the internet normally like this, just go straight to google and do a search for banana, no need to click on anything else, if it works it works, if it doesnt then still no internet). If the internet didn’t work before on wifi or ethernet coming out of the router and it works now, then you know the modem is working and that the router is potentially having problems.
Although it might be a slight pain to set up once, if you are renting the modem for $10/month then dealing with this hassle once will be an investment that will pay itself off in a bit over a year. This is approximately 1 full afternoons worth of work for a novice if I was to guess. Feel free to reply back to this thread later if you get stuck