Cable Boxes with 802.11

foniksonik writes "'Cable providers are upping the ante in the competition for broadband subscribers. By combining cable TV, broadband service, and wireless connectivity in one set-top box, cable companies could soon offer consumers value that DSL firms won't be able to match.' 802.11a/b/g and what happens to Tivo? The most interesting part is the potential for 'network neighborhoods'." I'd suspect the cable boxes will end up using a variety of proprietary crud.

Comments

please don't say...

[Sebastopol]

"network neighborhood"...

it reminds me of that utterly useless icon/feature in windows which hangs my computer ever time i accidentally click on it! ;-)

Value??? Uh, sure... right. uh huh.

[mark-t]

So... I can pay $60/month for cable and internet from the cable company or I can pay $30/month for DSL... Considering I don't want cable, I fail to see the "value" here. And of course, if I try to tell the cable company that I don't want cable, they bring that down to $50. "Value"? I don't think so.

Re:w00t!

[Da Schmiz]

This kind of FUD irritates me to no end. Modern cable systems do not have any trouble with file sharing security (read the spec) -- and if you've got NetBIOS open to the world, you're a security hazard waiting to happen. Nope, I don't feel sorry for you.

And, as regards the bandwidth thing: your average DSL line gives you what? 1.5 Mbps? In one 6Mhz channel, cable can deliver 27Mpbs of bandwidth. There's a reason why most cable companies throttle bandwidth down to DSL speeds: it makes bandwidth much more consistent. Even without throttling, depending on your provider, it's highly unlikely that you'd be getting less than 512-1024 Kbps even during peak access hours. Compare that to DSL -- contrary to popular belief, everyone in your neighborhood is still sharing a single T3 trunk (sometimes less), so your neighbors can still impact your bandwidth during peak hours.

I mean, come on. On any network, when you have almost every host accessing data simultaneously, available bandwidth will drop. If the bottleneck isn't in the system itself, it's in the gateway out from there. Having used cable happily for several months now, I can say that I've never experienced these "slowdowns" that everyone talks about. And you can bet I'm on during "peak hours" -- isn't that about what time it is now (4:45 p.m. PDT)?

Ah, wait! I get it! You're nothing more than a cleverly disguised troll. My apologies, everyone. I won't feed him next time.