Cable modem is here! Hooray! (NTL)

Member Name: IanPaterson

Product:	NTL
Date:	30/08/00 (43 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap install, very fast

Disadvantages: Upload speed

I had cable modem installed last week. It cost me £25 for the cable to be installed and the first two months are £20 then £40 after that. I had to buy my own cable modem, they give you a list of two suppliers, 3Com and Netgear mainly. Shop around before you buy. I got a 3Com modem for £110 not £149 so its worth looking.

I can surf from home at 512Kbs! What a difference! 18Mb download took about fifteen minutes on a 49.9Kbps connection!

The MAJOR advantage of cable modem is the modem type. With BT Openworld, you only get a USB modem restricting you to one PC, even the USB hubs will not work (you need to install specific MS drivers for this!). With the cable modem you have a 10Base-t or RJ45 connection for a single PC or a hub to lots of PC's. I have a mail server, proxy server and firewall between me and the internet, you can't be to careful these days!

The disadvantage is uploads run at 256Kbps max. Half the download speed. This is not such a problem unless you want to run FTP servers or upload big files on web sites frequently. Lets face it, the biggest files most people send are attachments on e-mail so it is no big deal really. The network you use is public shared bandwdith so at peak times, you may see a drop in response. Until subscription is high, the service will not be tested fully.

So far I have had no service problems, always ready on demand.

**** UPDATE 21/09/2000 ****

I have now thoroughly tested H.323, VPN, FTP and NNTP through cable. The results are very good. Upload time can be a little disappointing @128Kbps but download access is on average 398Kbps. Tunneling from home to another firewall is very good on average 329Kbps, tunneling into home using Firewall-1 averaged 106Kbps, still a good response considering a domestic connection.

Summary: