Coax cable itself can do 10Mb/sec. The 1.5Mb that is advertised is fiber to the neighborhood, then once it hits your house, its as slow as 10Mb. Most coax is basically a 10Base2/10Base5 network standard. Its older (late 70's, early 80's), but not the oldest medium. Its rated at 50ohm impedance and meets all of the normal ethernet standards. Its also known as IEEE 802.3 or Thinnet. Cable TV and Cable TV Networks (i.e. Comcast.net) use RG-59 and RG-6 cabling. I'm speaking for Comcast in that there is fiber-optic coming up to the neighborhood that hosts your cable internet up to the little green box in your yard. From that box, coax runs to your house and your neighbors. There is typically a 185 meter (682 feet) cable length limitation between 2 network devices unless some type of repeater or signal booster is used. All of these details go towards overall bandwidth and signal quality measured in dB.
You can hook up to 29 total network devices on a coax network, but since most home users do a network with 10BaseT (twisted-pair), this isn't an issue... not that many people have 29 devices. Coax has a 10MB (mega-bit/second) limitation which is similiar to the twisted-pair 10BaseT version. This is why cable internet only comes to your house in a 10MB stream and not the more sexy 100MB stream, but the cable company would have to outfit homes with RJ45 or fiber connections and bring fiber to the houses as well, which isn't cost-effective for them, plus the nightmare of home-owners chopping up the fiber lines when they dig holes to put in that new fence. Since cable TV lines are already in place and cable internet comes over the sames lines, the cable companies would never spend the cash to change a bajillion home's wiring.. unfortunately.
Depending on the number of wavelengths in a fiber strand, a typical one can do 10GBs (gigabits/second) and 16 wave lengths, making a single strand capable of doing 160BBs (billion bits/second). The wavelengths can now be doubled from 16 to 32 which would double the overall fiber network capacity of a single fiber being able to do 320GBs... staggering.
Its probably going to be hard to tell how much total bandwidth a cable company has piped into a neighborhood on their fiber since they can take fractions of each strand's bandwidth.
Lemme guess.. your work email is something like company.man@internal.comcast.net
Try reading their Terms of Service and Comcast's own home-user FAQ.
From the TOS:
File and Print Sharing: The Service functions as a Local Area Network (LAN) in that each Customer is a node on the network. As such, users outside the Customer's home may be able to access the Customer's computer. Additionally, some software may permit other users across a network such as the Service and the Internet to gain access to Customer's computer and to the software, files and data stored on the computer. For example, operating systems such as Windows 95 and Apple Macintosh include file sharing and print sharing capabilities which, when enabled, will permit other users to gain access to the Customer's computer even if the Customer is not using the Service. Comcast therefore recommends that the Customer connect only a single computer to the Service and that the Customer disable file and print sharing and other capabilities that allow users to gain access to the Customer's computer. Any Customer who chooses to participate in the Service using other than a single computer or who chooses to enable capabilities such as file sharing, print sharing, or other capabilities that allow users to gain access to the Customer's computer, acknowledges and agrees that the Customer does so at the Customer's own risk, and that neither Comcast nor its Underlying Providers shall have any liability whatsoever for any claims, losses, actions, damages, suits or proceedings arising out of or otherwise relating to such use by the Customer.
And in the FAQ (NOT from the TOS):
Can I use the service on more than one computer?
Yes, customers with home networks may order additional network addresses in order to connect several computers to the service through one cable modem.
You must first subscribe to the basic Comcast High-Speed Internet Service.
Once you become a subscriber, you can sign up for a second and third address.
You will need to have access to network expertise because Comcast High-Speed Internet Service neither installs nor supports networks.
The cost is $6.95 per month for each additional outlet. Customers can have two additional addresses, for a total of three.
Comcast will install the network card and software on a second and third computer for a change of $49 for each computer.
Therefore, you're the average Joe Homeowner and you want to hook your Counter-Strike game pc along with little johnnie's pr0n searching machine up to your cable modem so you two boys can surf to your hearts content. Great, Comcast says have at it, but you'll need to have a separate IP addy for each machine. Comcast won't tell you how to do it, but its as simple as cabling both NIC's to the cable modem. Since Comcast had the foresight to remove the multi-subnet chip from the early Cisco UBR cable modems, the only way for you to have 2 IP's is for you to pay Comcast for them, since both PC's need to be on the same subnet in that cabling configuration. But wait, why pay $7 for a 2nd IP when you can make your own internal net under the 192.168 range, of course under a different subnet. Since Comcast is totally behind you running multiple machines on your single cable connection, it must be OK for me to hook my PC's up anyway I see fit, right? Of course it is... or does their Terms of Service leak water like a canteen made from the skull of a Taliban cleric who just met up with a AC119 gunship.
Is there anyone else thats using an Asante FR3004LC router/firewall? How well will this hardware firewall/router fare against the new Comcast menace?
It opens ports for games and such only on demand, is not pingable, or at least doesn't ACK back when ping'd, does natural packet filtering with NAT. It claims that WAN traffic only sees the router and that LAN traffic is cloaked. It will do PPPTP tunneling and IPSec for VPN's. You can copy the MAC of a PC on the network to the router and it will use that for all outbound traffic. I'm planning on sniffing the outbound streams to see just what is leaving my place to see if its claims are indeed true.
Slashdot Mirror
Try going to Com.com and it pulls up a CNet site. All Intel owned, who also sleeps with big Bill.
Coax cable itself can do 10Mb/sec. The 1.5Mb that is advertised is fiber to the neighborhood, then once it hits your house, its as slow as 10Mb. Most coax is basically a 10Base2/10Base5 network standard. Its older (late 70's, early 80's), but not the oldest medium. Its rated at 50ohm impedance and meets all of the normal ethernet standards. Its also known as IEEE 802.3 or Thinnet. Cable TV and Cable TV Networks (i.e. Comcast.net) use RG-59 and RG-6 cabling. I'm speaking for Comcast in that there is fiber-optic coming up to the neighborhood that hosts your cable internet up to the little green box in your yard. From that box, coax runs to your house and your neighbors. There is typically a 185 meter (682 feet) cable length limitation between 2 network devices unless some type of repeater or signal booster is used. All of these details go towards overall bandwidth and signal quality measured in dB.
You can hook up to 29 total network devices on a coax network, but since most home users do a network with 10BaseT (twisted-pair), this isn't an issue... not that many people have 29 devices. Coax has a 10MB (mega-bit/second) limitation which is similiar to the twisted-pair 10BaseT version. This is why cable internet only comes to your house in a 10MB stream and not the more sexy 100MB stream, but the cable company would have to outfit homes with RJ45 or fiber connections and bring fiber to the houses as well, which isn't cost-effective for them, plus the nightmare of home-owners chopping up the fiber lines when they dig holes to put in that new fence. Since cable TV lines are already in place and cable internet comes over the sames lines, the cable companies would never spend the cash to change a bajillion home's wiring.. unfortunately.
Depending on the number of wavelengths in a fiber strand, a typical one can do 10GBs (gigabits/second) and 16 wave lengths, making a single strand capable of doing 160BBs (billion bits/second). The wavelengths can now be doubled from 16 to 32 which would double the overall fiber network capacity of a single fiber being able to do 320GBs... staggering.
Its probably going to be hard to tell how much total bandwidth a cable company has piped into a neighborhood on their fiber since they can take fractions of each strand's bandwidth.
Lemme guess.. your work email is something like company.man@internal.comcast.net
Try reading their Terms of Service and Comcast's own home-user FAQ.
From the TOS:
File and Print Sharing: The Service functions as a Local Area Network (LAN) in that each Customer is a node on the network. As such, users outside the Customer's home may be able to access the Customer's computer. Additionally, some software may permit other users across a network such as the Service and the Internet to gain access to Customer's computer and to the software, files and data stored on the computer. For example, operating systems such as Windows 95 and Apple Macintosh include file sharing and print sharing capabilities which, when enabled, will permit other users to gain access to the Customer's computer even if the Customer is not using the Service. Comcast therefore recommends that the Customer connect only a single computer to the Service and that the Customer disable file and print sharing and other capabilities that allow users to gain access to the Customer's computer. Any Customer who chooses to participate in the Service using other than a single computer or who chooses to enable capabilities such as file sharing, print sharing, or other capabilities that allow users to gain access to the Customer's computer, acknowledges and agrees that the Customer does so at the Customer's own risk, and that neither Comcast nor its Underlying Providers shall have any liability whatsoever for any claims, losses, actions, damages, suits or proceedings arising out of or otherwise relating to such use by the Customer.
And in the FAQ (NOT from the TOS):
Can I use the service on more than one computer?
Yes, customers with home networks may order additional network addresses in order to connect several computers to the service through one cable modem.
You must first subscribe to the basic Comcast High-Speed Internet Service.
Once you become a subscriber, you can sign up for a second and third address.
You will need to have access to network expertise because Comcast High-Speed Internet Service neither installs nor supports networks.
The cost is $6.95 per month for each additional outlet. Customers can have two additional addresses, for a total of three.
Comcast will install the network card and software on a second and third computer for a change of $49 for each computer.
Therefore, you're the average Joe Homeowner and you want to hook your Counter-Strike game pc along with little johnnie's pr0n searching machine up to your cable modem so you two boys can surf to your hearts content. Great, Comcast says have at it, but you'll need to have a separate IP addy for each machine. Comcast won't tell you how to do it, but its as simple as cabling both NIC's to the cable modem. Since Comcast had the foresight to remove the multi-subnet chip from the early Cisco UBR cable modems, the only way for you to have 2 IP's is for you to pay Comcast for them, since both PC's need to be on the same subnet in that cabling configuration. But wait, why pay $7 for a 2nd IP when you can make your own internal net under the 192.168 range, of course under a different subnet. Since Comcast is totally behind you running multiple machines on your single cable connection, it must be OK for me to hook my PC's up anyway I see fit, right? Of course it is... or does their Terms of Service leak water like a canteen made from the skull of a Taliban cleric who just met up with a AC119 gunship.
Beware the salesman. Lucifer once signed-on for a timeshare in the upper westside of heaven... boy was he pissed.
Is there anyone else thats using an Asante FR3004LC router/firewall? How well will this hardware firewall/router fare against the new Comcast menace? It opens ports for games and such only on demand, is not pingable, or at least doesn't ACK back when ping'd, does natural packet filtering with NAT. It claims that WAN traffic only sees the router and that LAN traffic is cloaked. It will do PPPTP tunneling and IPSec for VPN's. You can copy the MAC of a PC on the network to the router and it will use that for all outbound traffic. I'm planning on sniffing the outbound streams to see just what is leaving my place to see if its claims are indeed true.