Special Report:Six months with a cable modem
Miscellaneous notes and surprisesCable modems, like 56K modems, are designed to be asymmetrical: they can download faster than they can upload. In my experience, however, uploads were roughly as fast as downloads, and were occasionally faster. I can only guess that my neighbors are downloading more MP3s than they're uploading, so the upstream channel is unburdened. Being on a cable modem network means being a full member of your local area network, and that makes you more vulnerable to network attacks. Windows users should disable file sharing and print sharing. I had always read that cable companies used so-called "headend servers" to cache popular web pages and speed access to the web. During an interview with my cable company, I was told they don't use caches. That goes to show once again how varied cable modem companies are. Most cable companies don't offer static IP addressing. I get my IP address through DHCP, though it turns out to always be the same IP address. In the days when the cable modem wasn't working, I fell back to using ISDN. For most use, I'd be happy with an ISDN line. ISDN fast and reliable, there is a variety of equipment available, and it doubles as my business phone line. Where the cable modem outclasses ISDN is in pulling down large files. It's a dream come true for software downloads, MP3s, newsgroup binaries and any other multimedia format that comes down the pipe. Links 56K.COM listing of cable modem ISPs 56K.COM Cable Modem Link Board David Ringgold's Cable Modem Resources on the Web Speedguide.net cable modem and DSL performance tips Next: back to Introduction
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