Is anyone out there on cable.

[Carl East]

On Saturday, I'm getting my very first cable modem. What I would like to know if anyone out there can tell me, is it much faster, or just a little faster. I'm told it's a lot faster by friends, none of which have it, so I'm not sure.

The reason I decided to speed up my internet connection, was that I was sick and tired of having to wait so long to download things. I also invested in a 1000mhz computer, now that flies.

Just curious

Carl

 

[Isabella Thorne]

ohhhh hello Carl dear ...

welll you know what i think ... save your money and stick with slower phone line ... until you see what the new puter does ... i found when i got my new puter it went almost as fast as when i had a shitty puter with high speed access ...

geez i hope that made sense ...

but the downloads do take longer for sure ... but i mean how much stuff do you download? i guess that's what you have to look at darling ...

how much money is the difference between the slower and high speed net?

 

[Closet Desire]

cable modems

I have a cable modem here in the UK which is slower than those used in the US. I have to tell you...I don't care how fast your machine is...if your ISP is up to snuff a cable is darn near like a hard drive to the net. V90 doesn't even come close (and I use one for backup....just in case).

 

[CelestialBody]

 

[riff]

Maybe cable is all u can do because u live in the sticks.

DSL is where it is at. We have a T1 at work and I am faster at home no shit.

At 1GHz you don't have to worry about your computer bein' a bottleneck.

 

[Closet Desire]

sticks?

With a population of 11 million, I wouldn't exactly call London the sticks. DSL and T1 are both great ways to go. I was only expressing an opinion about cable which has the added advantage of reasonable bandwidth and relatively low cost to both install and operate.

 

[Cheyenne]

I can't get roadrunner cable connection until late in the second quarter of 2001 when it is FINALLY scheduled to be available in my area. Thumper has had it for awhile though and loves it if you can track him down.

 

[Weird Harold]

Maybe cable is all u can do because u live in the sticks.

DSL is where it is at. We have a T1 at work and I am faster at home no shit.

Here in Las Vegas, we have two different DSL providers and cable modems available where the comapany has upgraded to fiber optics. The listed access speeds are the same for both DSL connections and the cable modem.

Based on the numbers given for the highspeed connections vs the numbers I see with a 56K modem, either DSL or Cable should cut download times by a factor of ten. A twenty minute download at 56K would only take 2 Minutes with either DSL or Cable.

Who provides the high-speed connection will have as much to do with the speeds you actually see as the nominal connection speed. If they don't have a server that can handle the number of customers, then the server becomes a bottle-neck instead of the connection speed.

If you've ever worked on a LAN system that bogs down when everyone is logged in, you've experienced the main problem with DSL or Cable access. Keep a free dial-up access as a backup connection for when the high-speed connection goes out of service or has problems handling the traffic.

 

[Carl East]

Isabella: Thanks hun, but I've already committed myself to the cable, which reminds me, I wish you could play with my cable. haha

Closet Desire: That's what I wanted to hear, thanks.

Celestialbody: I download some songs from napster, it's such a pain with a v90 so I'm looking forward to trying out the cable.

Riff: I've gotta say I'm really looking forward to getting this, I can download porno's which is my favourite past time.

Thanks all

Carl

[Edited by Carl East on 01-11-2001 at 03:58 PM]

 

[Carl East]

Thanks for the advice WH, I think I will keep that option, just in case.

Carl

 

[Wizard]

No cable here but I ordered my DSL and will have it up and running by Jan.27th I'm told.....I can't wait.........

 

[Pepin]

On Saturday, I'm getting my very first cable modem. What I would like to know if anyone out there can tell me, is it much faster, or just a little faster. I'm told it's a lot faster by friends, none of which have it, so I'm not sure.

The reason I decided to speed up my internet connection, was that I was sick and tired of having to wait so long to download things. I also invested in a 1000mhz computer, now that flies.

Just curious

Carl

Carl,

Let me see if I can give you a direct answer...

Yes, much faster than dialup, there are, however, a few things to consider when choosing high speed access... DSL for example, is fast on the D/L, and rather slow on the U/L, so, if you are like me, and have a server, or like to U/L as much as you D/L, or even gaming on the net go with cable... its an even U/L - D/L ratio bandwidth.

here is a link to help explain more...

http://www.speedguide.net/

Hope that helps..

Pepin

 

[Chuckus]

I have a cable modem and love it. We have an ISDN line at work and I used to have one at home. The cable modem rocks, it helps if you have a dedicated line run.

I have a P3 800Mhz with 384 Megs RAM and all the goodies too, it helps if your puter is fast. If you want some tricks I can send you links to some pages that you can read and show you how to increase your bandwidth and all that stuff. I have Roadrunner and love it, waiting to see what they come out with next that is faster........hehehe

 

[Ezzy]

Who is your connection with?

Some of the other problems in the UK are to do with the "Local Loops" currantly operated by BT.

Offtel demanded that BT open the Local Loops to all cable companies, by April last year.
BT stated that they could not comply and increased the sales drive of their ISDN and plans for DSL connections.

It was not until late September that they started to actually get round to opening the Local Loops.

Cable connection speeds are also dependent on distance from the nearest exchange, not the straight line distance between you and the exchange but the true distance along the wire.

Cable is also often fed "split" so if you and a neighbor both have cable, they may be sending both lots down the same line. This will reduce your speeds if they are.

The cable provider will be able to advise about this an many other things.

As others have said keep yourself a Free ISP if you can or a minimun cost one if you can't just incase the HSL (Cable connection) goes down.

Blueyonder appear to have an HSL link problem about once every 2 weeks, so you might find going back to V90 a real pain once you get used to the speeds of HSL.



EZ http://cwm.ragesofsanity.com/s/cwm2/sleep.gif

 

[Unclebill]

Originally posted by Carl East
On Saturday, I'm getting my very first cable modem. What I would like to know if anyone out there can tell me, is it much faster, or just a little faster. I'm told it's a lot faster by friends, none of which have it, so I'm not sure.

The reason I decided to speed up my internet connection, was that I was sick and tired of having to wait so long to download things. I also invested in a 1000mhz computer, now that flies.

Just curious

Carl

My daughter and her husband recently got @Home service. I played with it a bit and using s web site to test the speed, got results from 541K-611K implying they have something close to half a T1 downlink speed. Compared to a v.90 dialup, approximately 10 times the data rate.

As far as the computer, I'm sunning a Pentium 233 and it won't be a bottleneck running either v.90, cable or DSL. The data rates just aren't high enough. Even running 100BaseTX Ethernet, because the NIC provides the buffering at a hardware level, there is little chance of data loss or bottleneck until the network congestion gets high enough that collisions become a limiting factor which is typically about 70% network loading.

As far as faster procesors, you're not going to see as much performance improvement as you might expect unless you go to a higher bus speed like the AMD Athlon running on a 200MHz bus.

 

[Carl East]

Well good people, I must say I was impressed with the answers I received, thank you for taking the time to explain all this.

Carl

 

[Closet Desire]

Telewaste...

Hey Ezzy,

Right on about Blueyonder's "problems". I've just come to refer to Telewest as Telewaste. They have frequent DNS problems and problem with the US routers. Drives me absolutely nuts at times. Still, when it works, it really works and at £33/month for a dedicated line it's still worthwhile for me.

There is a workaround for the down times without losing the speed by dropping to dial-up. If you have an AOL account (I have the basic £5 a month deal) you can tell it to set up through the cable modem (connect through network card). Since BY problems have nearly always been with routers and not the portal you will find that AOL works lickety split until the school kids all get home and log on. I haven't tried it with other ISP's but if you can get to them through BY you can bypass BY's problemsl. Downside, of course, is you have to pay the access costs.

Bandwidth, like you mentioned, is a concern since lots of people in the neighborhood use the same cable and, possibly, the capacity can be overloaded. I have some software that monitors where the bottlenecks are and this hasn't come up as an issue in my area yet. Microsoft recently acquired a major interest in Telewest and I'm aware that some major hardware upgrades, include a ten fold increase in bandwidth capacity, is underway.

In the end I decided TW was the lesser evil twin of BT so I just grin, bear it, and cuss a lot!

Cheers

 

[Ambrosious]

Cable, you're gonna love it!!

Your pics will dowload faster than it takes you to store them.

 

[Dillinger]

Its A LOT faster. DSL is a good choice too.

Bottom line, Cable vs DSL: Sometimes you don't have a choice - where you are determines which, if any, you have access to. If you do have a choice and you're mainly interested in the fastest downloads possible choose cable. which has a very high theoretical throughput (amout of data that can be moved through a connection in a given time period) - since up to 30 or 4 households can share a cable node users on busy nodes can sometimes see slowdowns in that throughput though. But when done properly its MAXIMUM potential is faster than DSL's maximum potential (DSL does provide you with a connection that is not shared though - so your maximum potential is lower BUT you do have lower latency and a consistent peak)

Anyway... once you've got cable hooked up you absolutely need a firewall. Cable is a persistent connection which makes you considerably more vulnerable to attack. If you only have one computer on your connection you just need some software like Symantec/Norton Personal Firewall. If you've got more than one connection consider getting a Router that also serves as an Ethernet Hub and has a built in Firewall. Or using one of the computers as a firewall for the others.

Now - once everything is working that still doesn't insure maximum speed and throughput. You've got to change some settings in your computer if you really want to optimize things. Get rid of those Windows defaults - they're for slow connections! Easiest way is to get a program called iSpeed - http://www.hms.com - they've got a free 21 day trial - it lets you optimize your registry (Windows users, that is) with a simple gui interface. You can do this manually but its tricky and potentially troublesome - but I could tell you how, if you're interested.

Hope this helps.

 

[Unclebill]

...Anyway... once you've got cable hooked up you absolutely need a firewall. Cable is a persistent connection which makes you considerably more vulnerable to attack. If you only have one computer on your connection you just need some software like Symantec/Norton Personal Firewall. If you've got more than one connection consider getting a Router that also serves as an Ethernet Hub and has a built in Firewall. Or using one of the computers as a firewall for the others...

An alternative to buying a firewall is to download a proxy server from WinProxy http://www.winproxy.com. There's a version you can download free that will handle up to three computers. They also sell a commercial version that will handle larger numbers of users (for a much larger price).

If you're willing to run without the firewall, Windows 98/2000 provides internet connection sharing which allows multiple computers to share a single internet connection. But I think it does not contain the firewall feature. Haven't looked into it closely enough to know the answer to that one.

WinProxy is a fairly full featured proxy server which acts as a firewall and also gives you the ability to filter what is available to each computer it serves.

WinProxy also provides you with some handy information on non-routable IP addresses to use behind the firewall.

The one drawback is the computer running the proxy must have two E'net NIC's; one connects to your cable modem, the other to your hub which allows other computers to share the connection. If there are only two computers, the hub is not necessary; only a crossover cable between NIC's.

 

[Unclebill]

...Anyway... once you've got cable hooked up you absolutely need a firewall. Cable is a persistent connection which makes you considerably more vulnerable to attack. If you only have one computer on your connection you just need some software like Symantec/Norton Personal Firewall. If you've got more than one connection consider getting a Router that also serves as an Ethernet Hub and has a built in Firewall. Or using one of the computers as a firewall for the others...

An alternative to buying a firewall is to download a proxy server from WinProxy http:www.winproxy.com. There's a version you can download free that will handle up to three computers. They also sell a commercial version that will handle larger numbers of users (for a much larger price).

If you're willing to run without the firewall, Windows 98/2000 provides internet connection sharing which allows multiple computers to share a single internet connection. But I think it does not contain the firewall feature. Haven't looked into it closely enough to know the answer to that one.

WinProxy is a fairly full featured proxy server which acts as a firewall and also gives you the ability to filter what is available to each computer it serves.

WinProxy also provides you with some handy information on non-routable IP addresses to use behind the firewall.

The one drawback is the computer running the proxy must have two E'net NIC's; one connects to your cable modem, the other to your hub which allows other computers to share the connection. If there are only two computers, the hub is not necessary; only a crossover cable between NIC's.

 

[Dillinger]

Helpful Online Broadband Resources

http://www.speedguide.com - How-tos for every sort of tweak imaginable, all designed to help you get the most from your broadband connection.

http://www.cable-modem.net - All sorts of information on cable modem connections, including hardware reviews and tweakign guides.

http://www.dslreports.com -All things DSL - purchase info, tweakings, etc.