Depending on how long "several years" is exactly, there could be really good reason to upgrade your modem, or no reason at all. Still, the quick answer is that yes, there are some differences between ...

Can you guys give me some idea of what kind of cable splitter (coax) that should be adequate for splitting my cable modem off from my cable TV connections? I want to get as clean a line as possible, ...

Yes, you can buy your own cable modem, and you might want to, given the excellent throughput and dead-simple setup of the Netgear C3000 WiFi Cable Modem Router. Router only supports up to 300Mbps ...