Special Report:Six months with a cable modem
PerformanceAt one time, my cable company advertised their cable modems as being hundreds of times times faster than a regular (presumably 56K) modem. That speed was probably based on the potential speed of the cable network, which is tens of megabits per second. Later, they amended their claims to 50 times faster than a regular modem. The 64,000 bit question is: how fast was it? The answer depended on the month. I signed up for the service as soon as it became available, and at first it sizzled. For file downloads and uploads, the cable modem was as much as ten times faster than a 56K modem. I routinely saw FTP speeds of 40 to 60 kilobytes per second, as opposed to five kilobytes per second for a 56K modem, when transferring compressed files. Based on the best download speeds I achieved, the performance was roughly 500K, or about ten times faster than a 56K modem. For web surfing, the cable modem felt anywhere from one to ten times faster than a regular modem, depending on the time of day and the site I was visiting. Web surfing involves a lot of delays in communicating with the web server, while graphics and complicated layouts stress your computer's software and video circuitry. Consequently, doubling your modem speed doesn't necessarily double your web performance. Digital technologies like cable modems have another advantage over regular modems: less latency (lag). That turns out to be a huge advantage for online gaming. Ping times of less than 150 ms are common, and some pings return in less than 100 ms. Next: The inevitable "cable modem gets slower" story, with a twist
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