Technicalities of cable high-speed internet access

Yes the segment in your local neighborhood is shared media. If your segment is overloaded and the provider isn't provisioning new channels to respond to that, then your experience will not be a good one.

Ultimately though, all bandwidth is shared--just a matter of where the aggregation occurs. For DSL, you get a dedicated line back to the switch, but then you're at the mercy of the upstream pipe from there. In cable modems, the aggregation just happens a bit closer to your house.

It's true.

I'm not sure I'd drive myself too nuts about the details. Talk to your neighbors who have the service you're considering and see how happy they are with it, maybe even ask to take a test drive and see what sort of numbers they're getting from a speedtest site like speakeasy.net/speedtest or broadbandreports.com

That said I've had cable modems now for ... oh hell about 9 years now, and never has the DSL sales scare tactic of "cable is shared bandwidth!" been an issue for me, and I've always had a faster pipe that the DSL subscribers near me. Fios will change that of course. :-)

If your neighbors are happy with the provider, you'll most likely be happy.

Best Regards,

dude, ALL internet access is shared.

What, did you think you had an exclusive point to point connection with that remote web site, with your packets going over one set of wires like a switched telephone connection? With no one else sharing those same wires and that same web site?

You will ALWAYS be sharing your connection. Nothing is dedicated. It all comes down to how well your provider manages the traffic.

I presume you're talking DSL as an alternative. Well, do you think your DSL connection isn't shared? Sure it is! You don't have dedicated links to remote web sites.

It all comes down to where the connection is shared and how big the pipes are and how well they're managed at the point of sharing. So what if you have a single pair of wires going to the phone company central office? That central office is where all your neighbors' lines come together with your line. You are SHARING that point of contact with the outside world.

How big that point of contact is, determines how fast/reliable your connection to the net is.

It's ALL shared, no matter what. And any technology, be it cable or DSL, can be managed well for its users or managed poorly.

Thanks ASSHOLE for being such a DICKHEAD and BRAIN-DEAD MORON.

Todd H was smart enough to understand what I was asking and answered in an intelligent and polite manner.

Todd H, thanks for your help. Sorry I didn't respond earlier.

Elmo P. Shagnasty, G_ F_CK Y__RS_LF (wanna buy a vowel?)

That's funny. Todd and I said the exact same things.

And upon re-reading what I wrote, I find exactly nothing to support your contention that I was "being such a d*****ad and a brain dead moron". Neither would anyone else.

The point is, this bit about "oh, DSL isn't shared, but cable is" has been going around forever now. It's time to put that idea to rest. A badly managed DSL service is just as bad as a badly managed cable service.

I didn't open with the word "Dude" though. :-)

bullshit, your reply was condescending and offensive and if you can't figure out why from the tone of your reply, see a psychologist. "What, did you think you had an exclusive point to point connection with that remote web site, with your packets going over one set of wires like a switched telephone connection? With no one else sharing those same wires and that same web site?" You come off an arrogant egocentric hooray henry.

eol,

Thank you.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one that read that as offensive and condescending.

Thanks again,

Todd,

Thanks again,

Conan

If you took it that way, then you need to think about not taking things so personally.

I thought Elmo's reply was fine, if not even humorous. But that's how Usenet is, people read different things into an author's intent.

You, however, left nothing to the imagination. By resorting to name calling and offensive language, you made it clear that can't participate in reasonable discourse.

So, you're either thin skinned or a troll. In either case, you've proven you have little to contribute while Elmo has proven to have interesting things to say.

Have a nice day.

-Gary

It seems to me that you took my humor waaaaaaaaay wrong.

But, what the hell. That's your prerogative.

I'd hate to be your co-worker.

On Usenet? Nah. You have to expect that people will misunderstand you and respond in ways you don't anticipate. If you can't do that, you don't belong here.

Further, resulting to insults and crass language simply because you misunderstood somebody else's humor reflects poorly on you, not them.

I'm curious, do you work in customer support for Comcast?

-Gary

As opposed to, what, a genius moron?

No doubt you do.

There is ... things. OK, right. Educated.

Literally. I'm afraid you need the adverbial form here, oh educated one.

Your? YOUR??? ha ha ha

Usenet can be a hard place. ha ha ha

cheers,

Henry