3 Megabit Cable Modems, Anyone?

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."

Caching

[SpatchMonkey]

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.

What for...

[Neutronix]

Sorry for being cynical, but...

Why should I even care for 3 Mbit cable modems if sometimes my provider can even sustain a 500k connection?

3Mb would imply a complete restructure on most cable providers and I doubt that they would invest that kind of money.

Re:Monotony Report 20020704

[SpatchMonkey]

That is nice. I like being a whore.

downloads...

[Anonymous Coward]

at that rate of download I'll run out of things to download.

Common Misconception?

[captainclever]

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? :-)

Re:upload speed?

[turnstyle]

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 [turnstyle.com], 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.

Speed in Quebec

[KissMyCpu]

I'm in Quebec and both major providers (Bell for ADSL and Videotron for cable) have created new "extreme" plans.

Videotron's gives you 4mbit downstream and 640k upstream, with a cap of 10 gigs per month for each direction. All that for a hefty 60$. Bell has a similar plan, working at 3mbit / 640k, same caps, although they end up charging 70$ per month or so.

These plans are the result of the previous "caps" of 6 gigs / 1 gig which P2P downloaders were going over by orders of magnitude and were paying through the nose. One of my friend ended up paying 215$ for a single month because his upload/download were at 20 gigs each.

I guess these caps and prices may end up moderating file sharing.

Not all Cable Modem Providers are currupt

[peterdaly]

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

Re:Great news! And one little inaccuracy

[squison]

Not like it matters to anyone outside of RCN's territory. Because cable companies (ATT/Comcast) have monopolies in 90%+ of their markets this doesn't mean crap to them. Optimum Online [optonline.com] has been doing higher bandwidth than them for years and they apparently they don't give a damn.

All ATT/Comcast have to do is compete with DSL in some areas and it doesn't take a whole lot of bandwidth to do that.

So, congrats to those who can take advantage of this. Too bad the rest of us will most likely continue to suffer in 'broadband' hell.

Re:Not all Cable Modem Providers are currupt

[wandernotlost]

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.

Great, so people have to break their contracts to do reasonable things with their cable modems, but the people working in your local office don't mind (for now). Sorry, but that's no way to run a business. What happens when the friendly guy you talked to gets a better job and the new guy isn't so friendly? Now he has the power to cut you off because you're breaking your contract. You're naive if you think that what some individual that works for your cable company tells you holds any weight against the written agreement. I've been flat-out lied to by several people at AT&T regarding my cable modem service, and when it comes down to it, they don't give a damn unless you have it in writing.