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3 Megabit Cable Modems, Anyone?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the quicker-than-the-passage-of-recess dept.

joelav22 writes: "I've got to move to San Francisco! RCN has upgraded current customers to 3 megabits of bandwith for no extra charge. In the days of all the bandwith chopping and caps, this is definitely a welcome trend. I hope ATT and Comcast can take a hint."

4 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. Caching by SpatchMonkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can probably get away with things like that if you use transparent proxies to do web page caching, and so on. Or traffic shaping to make individual connections a little slower.

    Call me suspicious, but I bet they have all sorts of tricks to keep the actual usage past their network down.

  2. Common Misconception? by captainclever · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Quoting the story from yahoo:
    "RCN Corporation (Nasdaq: RCNC - News) announced the launch of a new "super-charged" high-speed Internet service in its San Francisco and Los Angeles markets. Known as MegaModem(SM), it enables RCN's California customers to access the Internet at download speeds of up to 3 megabytes per second (Mbps), double the company's standard downstream speeds of up to 1.5 Mbps, and up to twice as fast as competing cable modem and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services. "

    Shouldn't that be "3 Megabits per second" not megabytes?? 3Mbps (megabits-per-second) equates to theoretical maximum of 384 Kilobytes a second download, not 3 megabytes..doesn't it? :-)

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  3. Re:upload speed? by turnstyle · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Amen. There's never any mention of upstream. People don't seem to appreciate the value of outbound communication, and no doubt the cable companies would prefer to see their customers remain exclusively consumers.

    I take this personally because I make software, Andromeda, that builds streaming web sites from collections of MP3s. Some folks run it on a server at home (PHP or ASP) so that they can play their home collection while at work (or elsewhere).

    Capping upstream prevents people from fully enjoying the potential of the network.

    --
    Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
  4. Not all Cable Modem Providers are currupt by peterdaly · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have a RoadRunner, through Time Warner, and have been very happy with the speed and reliability of the service. Each "area" operates very independantly, so service and "culture" is not the same at all TWC offices.

    I have previously talked with head of the technical team for the local division on a professional level, and his comments were quite interesting. For instance, the no NAT clause in the contract. They know people have more than one machine behind an IP, but really don't care. They won't do anything about he user unless they suspect bandwidth reselling. The no NAT clause makes it easier for them to drop the user since manytimes it is hard to prove the reselling end of things. Our local time warner office has their own (at the time a talked to him this was the big game) Quake II server. They are very gamer friendly, and realize that is why many of their customers want the service.

    I know people here love to bash cable modem providers, but up until now I have absolutely no complaints against mine. I take the back, the retards can't get tv/internet on one bill, I get two bills from them at different times of the month, with different due dates. That sucks.

    Anyway, not all providers are bad.

    -Pete

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