Xfi Pods Alternative?

Not sure if there is an alternative available.  I am experiencing the same issues you are, namely pods disconecting.   With the kids being at home for school, the good, clean, uniterrupted internet service is a must.   I have been reading the posts that you and others have posted, but I have yet to see a response from Comcast/xfinity.  When will Comcast/xfinity stepup and admit there are issues and provide solutions to those issues.  I hope very soon.

How is your home network set up? Having six Pods in a two story house is a lot - they actually might be interfering with each other as well as with your gateway. 

The way that a mesh network like the xFI Pods should be set up is to have your gateway in the middle, and the Pods set up radiating outwards from it like the points on a star or spokes on a wheel. That way, you elminate any cross talk and interference and you can blanket your house with coverage. 

I have a more detailed response to your concern - albeit to a previous poster - right here. 

I agree with darkangelic.  6 Pods is too many.  My 2 story house has 3 Pods and that covers my house interior, front yard and back yard at 70Mbps.

Best case, centrally locate the Comcast gateway (aka cable modem) in your house to get the most free air space coverage, like in your living room.  Then plug Pods in at far corners of the house, such as bedrooms or kitchen.  Use NO MORE than 3 Pods.  Ideally, use the Pod ethernet port to hard-wire fixed placement devices (ex:  Xbox, PC) and turn off those device wifi.

Pods are a fully-meshed network.  Each Pod uses 1 radio to backhaul traffic to every other Pod and the Gateway.  Each Pod's 2nd (or 3rd) radio is used for Wifi clients like your iPad and phones.  Loss of 1 Pod forces ALL Pods to re-mesh taking all your Pods, thus your Pod wifi, offline for a minute or two.

There are a limited number of radio channels available.  Adding more radios (more Pods) makes the channel problem worse.  Per channel, only 1 radio can transmit at a time.  Smart radios find unused, low-noise channels.  Your neighbors' wifi radios are also trying to find clear channels.  Radios can share channels, but throughput can fall dramatically.  

 I know this from experience while troubleshooting Comcast XB7 Gateway with xFi Pods and MOCA transcievers (see my post on XB7 cannot support Pods and MOCA) and wife's wifi mesh expertise.

Disclaimer:  I've simplified radio channel selection, time sharing and throughput for post brevity.

Thanks both, for your feedback and expertise.. I actually now have 5 pods, since one died and stopped working entirely.
My gateway is not located in the middle of the home, as I keep it in my office to avoid interruptions while working from home. So, the gateway is in my office at the far corner of the second floor. I have 2 pods upstairs and 3 pods down. The two pods that consistently fail are downstairs. I don't really have too many options for placement of the gateway given cable outlets and overall layout of the house. It's either going to be downstairs or upstairs corners of the house. Would you recommend I remove the 2 pods that fail the most, as you suggested I have too many? The reason I got 6 is because I had a terrible time getting wifi downstairs prior to getting pods, and if I wanted to step outside the backdoor to my backyard, forget it - I'd have no signal at all.
I don't live in a humongous house (2300 sq feet, mostly open layout), so if 5 pods is overkill, I'll try removing 2. Is it possible a newer Xfinity gateway might garner better results? 

Thanks again!

my gateway info is in attached photo 

You have the newest model gateway, so you're not going to improve upon it, unless you opt for a third party networking solution. 

If you absolutely cannot move your gateway to the middle of the house, then you can proceed by taking all your pods offline, and then reposition them as though the gateway were in the center (imagine the previous "star" configuration, but folded in half) - one upstairs near the middle,  one downstairs near the middle, and another one a bit farther away, or closer to the other end of the second floor. You will obviously need to fiddle with the positions as you might deem necessary.

For what it's worth,  I got a $12 usb WiFi dongle, it has external antennas, it says it high speed,  I hooked it to my laptop, configured it as a access point and I can get a signal down the block when I walk down with my IPhone, I discovered this working on another project, the speeds are slower but the coverage is great, I have the Xb7 gateway and it works excellent, fast speeds and it covers my whole house, no disconnects 

Wondering what you ended up doing? We are having the same issue and I’m going nuts!