Forum: The Classroom
Topic: Cable Modems
started by: Der_Teufel
Posted by Der_Teufel on Nov. 27 2000,18:27
Does anyone know if the so called "speed boosters" and "uncappers" actually work? I have had my @Home connection for about a year now and have noticed alot of lose of bandwidth, because there are alot of people signing up in my area. I would like to improve my speed. Any suggestions?
Posted by reman on Nov. 27 2000,20:19
check speedguide.net they have a special section on broadband connections. The biggest imporvement I found was the registry setting that allowed me to connect to the same site a greater numbr of times (great when getting big numbers of sharehouse.nbci.com pr0n).anyways, have a look and see what you think. ------------------
People ask me to fix their computer. I do in 5 seconds.
They say "You think your good don't you".
I say "I know I'm good". People always ask stupid questions.
Posted by Jynx on Nov. 27 2000,20:30
Heh, get DSL.Seriously, you're running into a fundamental problem with cable, in that it is shared bandwidth (which I assume you know). More than likely, the "uncappers" et all give little or no help. After all, you can't make the total @home available bandwidth larger with software, AFAIK.
Posted by Der_Teufel on Nov. 27 2000,21:13
I know that cable is shared bandwidth. However they don't offer DSL in my area. Plus I have read some bad things about DSL.This message has been edited by Der_Teufel on November 27, 2000 at 04:13 PM
Posted by Lordbrandon on Nov. 27 2000,22:07
that shared thing is bull i have a lot of people in my area and mine hardly ever slows down and when it does it doesent slow down to dsl speed thats like saying "their car goes 600 milse an hour but some times it only goes 400 miles an hour, so you should buy our car wich goes 200 miles an hour all the time.plus i know plentu of people with dsl and they have plenty of ping problems, and their servers go down alot more than @home any way the download speeds arnt the issue its usualy the server that's the slow side of the connection, its the uploads, witch is only about 15 k/sec, and wich are too slow in my opinion. i would love to host files from my house. fuck that cap!
Posted by cr0bar on Nov. 27 2000,22:19
The "shared bandwidth" argument is marketing propaganda. It's all a matter of where the bandwidth is shared.With DSL, your bandwidth is shared at the ISP. You're still competing with all the other DSL customers for connectivity. With cable, your bandwidth is shared at the headend (ISP), but also on the cable plant. This usually isn't a problem since cable plants usually have way, way more bandwidth than the headends. In certain cases , of course, the "shared bandwith" argument holds, but it's not usually a factor. ------------------
"Everyone's favorite implement for any task"
------------------
Posted by Spydir Web on Nov. 27 2000,23:48
I'm not to friendly with the idea of putting cable (for my computers, anyway) in my house, and I've been thinking DSL (but it's not avaible yet), but I have heard many bad things about it... I'm starting to get ticked, cuz I want a reliable boardband connection, that'll work how I want it... I'm sick of this 56k line.So, what do you guys recommend. i'm on the parents dollar (hey, most 15 year olds are), and they're cheapo's, so what's something good for budget and speedy, good, access? ------------------
Spydir Web - spydirweb@techie.com
Core Arctic - < http://welcome.to/CoreArctic/ >
Posted by Der_Teufel on Nov. 28 2000,00:23
I am also on the parent's dollar.  That is why I haven't really complained alot about the slow downs every now and then. LordBrandon: are you seriously only getting 15 KB/s upload from @Home. I have heard alot of people saying this but I am uploading no at about 120 KB/s. It is just that my download speeds are not what they used to be. Oh well... I'll be going to college next year anyway. T3s here I come.
Posted by Vigilante on Nov. 28 2000,00:32
You'll change your tune if you go to virginia tech. I knew some guys there, and for two years they had pathetic downloads and 300 pings to any and every game server. Maybe it's improved, but maybe you need a backup plan.
Posted by Dark Knight Bob on Nov. 28 2000,11:28
me bow down to my uni connection 4 sattelite uplinks giving me about 1.5meg/sec D/L even when all the other 900 odd computers are using it as well Damn i want ADSL over here in uk 8meg/sec down your standard phoneline RAA
Posted by DuSTman on Nov. 28 2000,14:43
Well, i've a 10MBps connection to the lan to that sorta limits things around 800k/s
Posted by RenegadeSnark on Nov. 28 2000,15:24
I have a DSL for the reliability. Unless Dallas, Texas has a huge telecom outage (it's happened before, kinda pathetic for GTE/Verizon but OK) it's always active. The disadvantage is that my upstream is shit (128kbit), but having a reliable downstream of 768kbit is very nice. I don't have to fight with it, it just works.We have some pretty damn good pings too - 40 ms or less to most things. I'm not a guru on cable modem technology, but it would seem if bandwidth was locally shared I could set my ethernet card and cable modem to promiscuos (sp?) mode and start filtering out people's passwords to e-mail, websites, servers, etc with tcpdump. With DSL, not possible unless they hook up between my ISP and the target. ------------------
Webbie/EIC
< http://boomgames.com > Founder < http://tucb.com/ >
Oregon, n.:
Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday night.
Posted by RenegadeSnark on Nov. 28 2000,15:27
One thing I will say is this though - by not capping the connections, the shared bandwidth argument does apply. Here in Plano I've heard people bitch and bitch about their cable modems - how they would fall from huge download speeds to dialup speeds in the course of a few months.Our DSL provider, Directlink, has a low DSL-to-T1 ratio so our bandwidth is always there. Never seen my line not capable of its full speed, ever. quote:
Originally posted by cr0bar:
The "shared bandwidth" argument is marketing propaganda. It's all a matter of where the bandwidth is shared.With DSL, your bandwidth is shared at the ISP. You're still competing with all the other DSL customers for connectivity. With cable, your bandwidth is shared at the headend (ISP), but also on the cable plant. This usually isn't a problem since cable plants usually have [b]way, way more bandwidth than the headends. In certain cases , of course, the "shared bandwith" argument holds, but it's not usually a factor. [/B]
------------------
Webbie/EIC
< http://boomgames.com > Founder < http://tucb.com/ >
Oregon, n.:
Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday night.
Posted by Blain on Nov. 28 2000,15:46
800K on a university connection? my university must suck. I'm also on a 10MBps lan and i have never seen a download above 120 the average is about 60-80. I really can't complain though, anything is better then what I have at home. Has anyone heard anything about 2-way personal satellites? I know you can get a satellite dish for downloading pages and files (about the speed of DSL) but you still have to upload over your regular dialup connection, which makes the whole setup a little bit slow. A little while back someone was telling me that there would be a two-way satellite available that would totally eliminate the whole dialup thing but I have not seen anything about it. ------------------
Of course, that’s just my opinion; I could be wrong. -Dennis Miller
Posted by Der_Teufel on Nov. 28 2000,16:53
When I first got my cable connection (December of last year) I was getting awesome d/l speeds. The fastest speed I got off the web was about 900 KB/s. Now I usually average about 80-100 KB/s. A couple of my friends say that they usually get about 1 MB/s of IRC, which is unheard of for me. /me is greedy and wishes he had a faster connection. However, I do feel the pin of the dail-up people. I don't know how I will be able to go back to a dail-up after college or during the summer and other breaks.
Posted by Blain on Nov. 28 2000,17:19
Every time you think you have it bad just remember that it could be worse... back home I RARELY get download speeds that stay above 1K for the entire download. 2K is unheard of. Last I checked my best UT ping was 1200. Boy, I sure can’t wait to go home for Christmas/summer... 
------------------
Of course, that’s just my opinion; I could be wrong. -Dennis Miller
Posted by DuSTman on Nov. 28 2000,17:35
/me strokes his university net connection.mmm, peak download i've had 800k/s, ping generally about 20. Yummy.
Posted by DuSTman on Nov. 28 2000,21:29
quote:
Originally posted by Blain:
800K on a university connection? my university must suck. I'm also on a 10MBps lan and i have never seen a download above 120 the average is about 60-80. I really can't complain though, anything is better then what I have at home.
Well, that's my best, you understand.
In the middle of the night, about 5 am, no other bugger would have been using it. Yeah, 150k is more average. Still damn good though.
Posted by BLacK-JEsuS on Nov. 28 2000,22:25
Before you count cable modems to be all that, read the following info. It covers my @home connection in Northern California. It sucks, basically. Read the link to see the hard facts.
< http://www.detonate.net/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000345.html > ------------------
Jesus was a black man
Posted by askheaves on Nov. 29 2000,02:20
I think I've posted elsewhere about this, but here in Tucson we have the option of Sprint's Wireless Broadband service. It's only available in a few cities so far, but this is one of them. Basically, they put a 10 inch diamond shaped disk on your roof and point it at a mountain with receivers. Through RF, it acheives average download rates of 4-6 Mbps. It costs ุ a month, the dish is about 200, and it's an always on system. Upload is a mere 256k.My fscking god I want this! My friggin' housing authority won't let me install it because they would have to run a coaxial cable into my apartment, but they're willing to install a drop from a shared T1 line from a company that they have part ownership of... God DAMNIT!!!! I'm moving.
Posted by Vigilante on Nov. 29 2000,05:00
2-way satellite hookups are becoming available, but they'll still be worse than dialup for gaming. Foiled again by the speed of light.
Posted by Lordbrandon on Nov. 29 2000,16:54
i get consistant speeds like this:download: 300-600 KB/Sec
upload: 12-15 KB/Sec
ping: 29-45ms and im uning kilobytes (KB) not kilobits (Kb) there are 8 bits to a byte i think that is confusing some people in bits i get this: DL: 2400-4800 Kb/Sec
UL: 96-120 Kb/Sec and if you can get better upload and ping on dsl by all means get that. if you want to decide wich one to get the only thing you can do is talk to people who have it in your imediat area that means no bigger than a 5 block radius thats the only way you can tell were i live (Alameda CA) was one of the first places to get cable modems so maby there are fresh servers here, what ever it is im happy with it. and remeber YOUR area is the only one that counts. all others are subject to the conditions in there imediate area. so what ever people tell you is bullshit un less they're your neighbor
Posted by PacmanX on Dec. 10 2000,00:45
I had some really weird shit happen to me when I first had @home installed at my place.
One day I was downloading something really big off CuteMX when it was still around. The speed was a good 200-300KB/s. All the sudden the transfer stopped and the modem lights went dead. This used to happen ALL the time, forcing me to re-cyle the modem (you know, when you unplug the lil bastard and plug it back in?). Well, it stopped happening after I installed Win2000, but I'm still curious: was it something involving my system (running Win98 during all that) or them (the geniuses over at Rogers Cable here in good ol' southern Ontario) ?
------------------
"What fools these mortals be!"
Posted by DrunkNigel on Dec. 10 2000,17:41
DSL sucks in my area,
Cable rules.I get about 120KB/sec DL and 120KB/sec for local UL, but like 40KB/sec for anywhere else. uncappers? what the hell, don't they cap it off at the isp? oh well... ------------------
"If it doesn't work, hit it with a hammer."
Posted by pengu1nn on Dec. 11 2000,16:54
i have a t1 at work, and 28.8 dial-up at home (well it's not home anymore it my mom's house) i find that most servers can't send at the full speed of my connection, one day i will get close to 150kb the next day (from the same site) i will only get 50-60. ul is just as fast as my dl. but ping times are shit. i got to go through atlanta, then D.C. and then new york. i won't even talk about the 28.8 connection (it's a 56k modem but....)
Posted by Der_Teufel on Dec. 12 2000,05:41
CuteMX is still around. You just need to find someone with the installer and it will update itself. As for the modem lights going dead. It used to happen to me every now and then in awhile, I use @Home also, but the tech said it was that the modem lost the signal to the ISP and had a hard time getting it back. That is why you had to restart it by unplugging it and all that other shit that is a REAL pain in the ass.
Posted by Lordbrandon on Dec. 13 2000,16:42
i have a little reset button in the back of mine, you probably do to.
Posted by whtdrgn_2 on Dec. 13 2000,16:49
I work for an ISP, and I can tell you about some of the DSL issues. A DSL modem is very sensitive to you phone line. The telco uses coils about every 1800 - 3200 ft to help maintain the strength of the signal. These coils kill a DSL connection. Most DSL modems say you can get 128k to 1.5 Mbps. It is often more then not that you get the slower end of this stick. Plus the ISP has to maintain a DSLAM that will work with every DSL modem in the planet, so buying your own may not be an option. That means that you lease, sign a contract, or purchase it from the ISP for a 400\% markup. You also have to be within 305 miles of the phone companies CO to get service (depends on DSLAM and modem) On the otherhand my friend has Roadrunner (cable modem), and at time my 56k modem is faster.------------------
--
1000101
Posted by CatKnight on Dec. 14 2000,05:32
im at psu, and the connection here is only so-so. i can get download speeds of 500k/s, but usually only get around 100. my pings are around 50-100, but they feel more like 150-200, because the connection is 'jerky'. like my ping will rapidly osscilate between 75 and 125, making it feel even laggier. stupid napster foos. at home i have dsl which kicks ass. the download speeds are a very reliable 50k/s, with ping times at a reliable, stable, 25 to good servers. although my isp, flashcom, just went bankrupt (because they suck soo much ass), we are switching over to telocity. flashcom (northpoint) has good internet service but fucked up customer service.
|