i too have RR from time warner..i got it roughlu 3 months ago,and im completely happy.teres been less than an hour down time due to reasons out of my control,and it sure beats the busy signals i used to get on my earthlink dial up........40 bucks a month is a little steep,but i need the fast connestion so ......im done with dial up after by accidentally leaving my dell desktop online for 6 days while on vacation, i recieved a 800.00 dollar phond bill thanks to the aol sevvice doing me a favor by searching for "next available number" and i ad to pay it cause i had signed a contract........so 800 a week vs. 550 a year....and i can stay on al the time.........

that really sucks, i think i might have contested that bill considering you werent there and it was aol's fault for dialing a non-local number.

I would have had a freakin' cow if I had to pay 800 in one month I have dsl and it works great other than I have a static IP which I really don't care about. I only have the cheap line though...384kbps down and 128kbps up and its forty dollars after tax there are better packages in my area that I could buy like a 1.5Mbps down and 256kbps up but its through the roof where I live... Living in a small country town sux!!!

I connect and disconnect differant computers as server computer for my home network and so I have had quite a bit of communication with my cable companies tech people,with my cable's system they get your number from your ethernet card, when you connect the card sends a number to their equipment , I believe it is the last 2 sets of numbers that it sends and the cable companies equipment uses the first 2 sets, They keep all the numbers I have used at one time or another ready to be recognized in case I switch back to one of the cards I used previosly,They told me this and I have tried it ,the only time I have to call for help is when I buy and use a new one for my server. So as I understand I have 8 numbers that their equipment will recognize as me,I can only use one at a time unless I switch my switch around as I had it one time and each comp had its own ip,at 9 bucks each , presently I share. 6 altogether.

glexp wrote:

Not too much difference between cable and DSL. Upload/download speeds are pretty much the same. Cable is a shared service. That is, you "share" a connection with other subscribers in your vicinity. If many are on, speeds may drop. DSL is assigned to your phonenumber. The draw-back here is that you must be within a certain distance of a distribution point. I have had Earthlink as a DSL provider for several years. Not bad, but I'm thinking of switching to my phone service (SBC). Some friends of mine have Comcast and are happy with that service. Typically download speeds are anywhere from 384 KBPS to 1500 KBPS. Upload speeds are usually 128KBPS to 256KBPS. Remember that "download" means you receive data while"upload" means you send data. Hope this helps... GP

Man I love this "shared" environment arguement.... DSL has hammered that into the heads of people for so long.... The cable network is a shared environment in the truest sense of the word. but so is DSL. The pipe is only so big and all traffic has to aggregate somewhere to get onto the backbone. With the cable network (at least here in KC) we have planned for growth. The plant is divided into sections which run off of Cisco Universal Broadbadn Routers. Each of these CMTS devices has 6 cards with 5 slots per card. Each slot is capable of supporting from 6 to 8 upstream ports. Now in KC we divide it down further than that by putting areas into nodes. Each node generally consists of 50 to 200 customers. If we notice that the upstream is becoming saturated (75% CPU utilization) we do a node split and move half the customers to their own node on their own upstream port. If all slots and card are full, we install a new ubr and offload customers to get the CPU utilization to an acceptable range.

This brings us to a discussion of bandwidth. In KC we are only using approximately 6% of our allowed bandwidth in the RF spectrum. This gives us PLENTY of room for growth. There are other ways to increase the amounts of bandwidth if we do begin to saturate, such as QAM upgrades and WDM (Wave Division Multiplexing). DSL is a dying technology. Twisted Pair can only push a limited amount of data through it. Cable technology is on the rise and you are not limited by your distance from a CO (DSL limitations, the further you are from the CO the slower your speeds will be.)

Take all that into consideration and add in the fact that with DSL there are unlimited "hidden" costs and I think that you will find that cable broadband is definately comparable, if not cheaper than DSL.

Of course I am biased since I work for a cable company, but don't take my word for it. http://compnetworking.about.com/library/weekly/aa111200a.htm has an extensive review of Cable vs DSL and if you google you can find many others. I know this is a late post in this thread, and I have actually posted this information numerous times. But it was time to revisit it......



WiP

Weaver wrote:

Regardless of whether or not you are on DSL or Cable, one fact still remains. Your cable or DSL line plugs into something at the companies end. In DSL, this is usually called a DSLAM. In cable, (I am not a cable guy, Shannon could back me up here) this is sometimes called the head-end. -Weaver

I think I covered that in my previous post, the device is the CMTS (Cable Modem Termination System. In our case the devices are Cisco UBR devices. Other divisions and companies use Motorola Big Boxes. These devices are in the distribution hubs for each specific area where the data jumps onto our fiber ring to get back to the headend. In KC the fiber ring is (I believe) redundant OC-48 in one direction and an OC-3 in the other. I may be wrong on that though, so don't quote me.... lol

We are also looking into doing some WDM stuff which I mentioned in my previous post. That is cool technology! http://www.networkmagazine.com/article/NMG20000727S0010 is a good read if you want to learn more about WDM. There are also several white papers on the subject http://techlibrary.wallstreetandtech.com/data/rlist?t=987097376_59702386

very interesting post

Not sure there is an argument about "shared". In this context, "shared" means one pipe serving a number of users. As I understand it, the "shared" line is why individual throughput decreases as more users come online in a cable system. With my incoming phone line there is only one user on the pipe. Any decrease in throughput is due to increased traffic at some node down the line. Obviously, when the discussion expands to the backbone, everything is shared. Much like a tree trunk (old name for backbone) shares its resources with all the leaves.
And since I'm only a leaf and have no in-depth knowledge of the rest of the tree, I'll leave further discussions to the "arboreal technologists" on this forum

I use RR and love it. I get average 2.5-2.8 download thats megs people..LOL

glexp wrote:

As I understand it, the "shared" line is why individual throughput decreases as more users come online in a cable system.

Yes and no. The catch is that the physical wiring that cable is delivered over (specific coax, you got me) has capabilities conducive to supporting many users... i.e. You can push serious amounts of data through the line. Orders of magnitude more information than can move through your standard phone line. Thus, you can feasibly have multiple users on the line without having an impact on the other users. It is all a numbers game. More "bandwidth" per run = feasibly more users per run.

-Weaver