So I saw the news article on here last week about the release of the ASUS CM-32 AC2600 which is a cable modem and high end router.  Initially I set it up by contacting the ISP and registering it with them.  All was well for that first 24 Hours.  I could access the administration side of the router just fine and set up my Wi-Fi and passwords, had good internet connection throughout the house, and in general it just worked wonders over that piece of garbage they had me renting. 
 
We were still on the 30mb bandwidth package and we had previously discussed with our ISP about upgrading to the 100mb bandwidth package once we got our new modem/router and turned in the old hardware.  My wife took the hardware back yesterday and when she got home the net was not working.  I was thinking Ok sure they may have reset the CM-32 when they updated service.  When I go to check from my desktop to see what was up, the usual 192.168.1.1 address does not connect to the modem and it would either time out, or say something along the lines of "the port number has changed".  What was weird is that I couldn't access the CM-32 but still have internet connection. I went and did a hard reset.  Same issues.

I could connect to the internet just fine via hardwire LAN but any sort of connection via Wi-Fi, or connecting to the CM-32 admin GUI itself was not possible.  Pulling up ipconfig showed what looked like a completely different set of IP's from what they should be according to what ASUS has.  From what I could see, it was a different subnet mask, and a very different range of IPs that were being assigned(keep in mind that I am not a networking expert here) but what should be 192.168.1.1 for the DNS Gateway IP was now something like 75.XXX.XX.XX.  And trying to access any admin settings through that was not working.
 
I have called ASUS and my ISP.  It was pretty much to new of a unit for the ASUS tech to be of much help, beyond what I already looked at on the website, but they were as helpful as they could be.  The ISP tech made it worse, resulting in no net connection, followed by three hours of on the phone with them just to get it back to square one of the problem.  What it looks like to me is my ISP must have forced some sort of firmware update thinking I was for some reason still using their modem and it killed the ASUS Firmware, or somehow the entire router side of the CM-32 popped smoke and the modem managed to survive.

I have a new one on order from Newegg and set up a return for this current one.  +1 on Newegg for that.  But I just want to make sure that it wasn't my ISP who screwed it up in the first place because it seems very plausible they might have.  I don't want to have to keep replacing a $280 modem/router because my ISP doesn't know what they are doing, or if it's just early adopter issues.  Any ideas?

They list the ASUS CM-32 so it should be good to go.  And like I said it was working when we used it for the 30mbps plan but they must have tried to update something when we switched the next day to the 100mbps plan.  Not entirely sure but that's when the issues started.

Yeah.  That's what I was figuring happened.  New one should arrive today.  I will swap it out and hope that everything will go smoothly.  Hopefully Newegg will work with me on the other one.
 
Update:  Actually got a hold of a tech who knew what they were doing and he noticed the account got set up wrong when I upgraded my service.  Apparently when you rent one of their modem/router units you have to pay extra for the Wi-Fi capability.  They apparently put some code on my account disabling the wifi which blocked my access to my router and the modem just bridged through the LAN so it still provided net.  Since this was my own equipment and not theirs he took the code off and everything worked fine.

hahahaha yeah if 99% of their tech support wasn't reading off a tree I wouldn't have had to order a whole new unit.  The original CM-32 was good but I had no idea what was wrong.  Yeah their modem/router is pretty much junk.  I live in a 2500sf single floor house and the modem/router is on one side and it needs to pickup a desktop and tv on the opposite side.  Their unit just wasn't cutting it.  With all the new beam forming tech and crazy features coming out of companies like ASUS in this sector it just seemed like the way to go and just ditch the ISPs junk that I was paying for any ways.

The long term will tell if it was worth the hassle but so far the ASUS CM-32 AC2600 is working like a champ keeping up with four phones, three laptops, three desktops, and two smart TV's.

They bypassed my router some how.  They have a setting they enable for those who don't pay for wifi that disables the router and all the firmware associated with it.  It was a mistake on their end.  I wasn't paying for wifi because I own the modem and not renting one from them.