[Lyndon]

I am switching from my Qwest DSL (max 3 megs, though they promised they would improve, ha!)
to Comcrap Broadband (at least 5 megs last year), and was planning on picking up my own modem.
Are there any suggestions to what model would be a good one?

The basic one here is the Motorola Surfboard SB-5120. And it was the only one I could find readily used in the local Craigslist and classifieds.
Any other suggestions? I have a wireless router, a Linksys WRT54GS to piggyback on...
Thanks,
Lyndon
Salt Lake City

[guest46813]

Any Cablelabs certified DOCSIS 2 cable modem will work.

On a HFC (hybrid fiber coax) network, the available bandwidth is all shared among all the subscribers on that HFC leg. I would take the claim of 5Mb/s with a grain of salt. Plus if you have to upload high BW content, an HFC upstream is going to be a big bottle neck.

With DSL, you are not sharing BW on that DSL drop. The 3Mb/s to 5Mb/s comparison may not be apple to apple. With DSL though, how much BW you get depends on how far you are form the CO. Laws of physics whether ADSL or on ADSL2+. I do not know if you are on an ADSL or ADSL2+ circuit. The majority of BB consumers in France are on ADSL2+ so folks can really get 16-20Mb/s.

To a large extent, all BW are shared. From that fiber node on an HFC or the DSLAM, the trunk BW is all shared. How much BW you get depends on the network engineering of how many subscribers on a given Gigabit Ethernet trunk. In Japan and Korea, this engineering is very conservative (very few customers on any given trunk). FTP at 50-70Mb/s in Japan is basically common stuff, but that is on a fiber to the home. A 100Mega service is very common there and dirt cheap relative to what FIOS charges.

[Lyndon]

Thanks, Quoc.
Very informative.
I knew that it depends how close you are to the source, and how many people were sharing the line.
You said:

A 100Mega service is very common there and dirt cheap relative to what FIOS charges.

I'm green with envy.  An old friend has Verizon Fios at his home in the Maryland farmlands, and he consistently gets 40 megs or higher.
This is an area that I feel the American consumer gets stiffed badly for price and performance from their phone and cable suppliers.
Just from my experience last year, I was consistently getting better download speeds from cable vs. the dsl which I have had for the past year.
Just bought my Ooma Voip, so I am ready to say sayonara to Qwest, both for my landline phone and the dsl.  Of course, Comcast is not much better...
Lyndon

[flintstone]

I measure 20 megs down and around 3 megs up with Comcast here in Michigan, of course I pay an extra $20 for it. I have the Comcast modem.


Dave

[Lyndon]

Thanks, Dave.
But what Quoc says definitely pertains to my neck of the woods.  You can pay that extra level with Comcast, but my neighbor is saying he is only getting 10 megs download.  Granted, that is better than my 5, but...he should be getting what you are getting, or close to it for the price.
It strikes me as misleading advertising.  My local phone company was sending flyers in my neighborhood last October, stating that we were slated for Fios, and would get an introductory offer of "up to 10 megs" in the near future if we signed up for a year.   Gee, they stopped putting in the optic cable when the recession started.  When I called to complain last month, they basically said, "Hey, we never guaranteed that speed, we said "up to".  Which gives them a lousy loophole for poor service.
 
Whoops, I better get off my soapbox, I'm sounding like a certain member who is in the doghouse.