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The
Bleeding Edge - Internet Cable Access |
- Not that this is "cutting-edge" technology, but
it's the way many of us will begin accessing the
Internet before much longer...those of us who aren't
already wired, that is. While access from your local
cable company sounds like a bummer to some people,
enough people are happy with it to make it the
single fastest growing access method currently in
use. As more of us sign up, the relatively high cost
(currently around $40-50/month with another $400 for
a modem) will drop. When both directions of the
cable transmission are fully digital, we'll really
begin to see cable come into its own. Cable
companies are spending some of the money they're
dunning out of us on a huge upgrade of the nation's
cable infrastructure, and acceptance of a single
standard (DOCSIS, as if you cared) is close.
(Remember that until every cable provider is DOCSIS-compliant,
the cable modem you buy should depend on the service
you join -- find your modem and your cable ISP at
the same time.) If your cable company offers cable
modem Internet access, or will soon, consider buying
a PC with a network interface card (NIC), which
allows your PC to connect to a digital cable
converter to download data from the Internet at 1 to
4 Mb per second. Current problems with cable access
include pricey installation and monthly fees,
relatively slow upload speeds (around 56 kbps),
wildly varying download speeds, and possible sharing
of your access with strangers (one new cable user
opened his Network Neighborhood folder and found
four strangers in there). In that case, the best you
can do is to turn sharing off and hope they haven't
already decided to poke around in your machine.
Sites to visit for more info include Sam's Cable
Modem Trials at www.teleport.com/~samc/cable5.html,
the Cable Modem help page at
www.cablemodemhelp.com, the availability of
cable in your area at www.cabledatacomnews.com/cmic/cmic7.html
and www.cablemodeminfo.com, and tweaking tips
from home.tampabayrr.com/philips and
www.speedguide.net. As I understand it, most
cable users are currently required to use
Excite@Home as their ISP, since AT&T is a majority
stockholder in that provider. A consortium of other
ISPs, including AOL and GTE, want AT&T to let
everyone else in on the cable action. Lawsuits and
Congressional hearings are already under way to
settle this one out. The current buzz is that while
cable may be available in your area, the lousy
customer service, interminable installation delays,
and numberless glitches are angering many users.
AT&T is really losing some customer loyalty here. Do
you live in an area that's wired for Internet cable?
Find out at www.cabledatacomnews.com/cmic/cmic7.html,
along with plenty of info on cable providers. Note:
Cable speeds are benchmarked as fast as 36Mbps --
varoooom! But since most PCs get their cable feed
through a NIC, as detailed above, the maximum speed
is only 10Mbps (the cards won't support faster
speeds). Upload speeds are even worse, as slow as
2Mbps or even 200Kbsp; fine for the majority of us,
but Webcam or Webcast transmissions might not do
well. (Of course, all of this talk of "slow" is
relative; the average modem user will still be blown
away by how fast everything loads.)
- Note: Now isn't the time to sign up for
Excite@Home service. It's facing all-out assaults
from creditors and may go bankrupt; worse, it may be
"delisted" from Nasdaq. While someone will pick up
the slack, right now Excite's ability to provide
uninterrupted cable service is very much in
question.
- Keep your eyes open for fiber-optic data
transmission for Internet connections, coming soon
to a PC near you.
- Some older cable modem connections have a
certain vulnerability that makes your system
effectively part of a LAN (local area network) with
other users (see above). If this happens to you,
make sure you're using a firewall (hard- or
software), and turn off file and printer sharing if
you don't need it.
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