Cable modem???

[Agrafixx]

I recently had a cable modem installed. Wondering ??? Does anyone know what the better connection would be, USB to the modem to the computer or a Ethernet card to the modem and direct to the mother board. The company set me up with Usb, but gave me the ethernet card if I want to install it. Any info would be great.

[Palandri]

RJ45 is always best

[Martog]

USB=11Mb/s
Ethernet=100Mb/s

Plain and simple

[MousePotato]

go for the NIC card over the USB,
i started out the same, going with the USB net-link, however, as i also had my mouse and joystick on USB ports, and during have online game play, both my joystick and mouse would lag, once i swiched to the internal NIC card, no more troubles....least thats my small opinion.

[Soulstice]

Never use USB for networking, digital video, sound, etc. Anything that requires extensive bandwidth should be interfaced to the appropriate hardware. Also, USB has a very disgustingly high CPU overhead, which, as MousePotato pointed out, can cause other devices chain-linked to the USB interface to lag.

Here is another hint for everyone else on this site who is not familiar with the new USB II (400Mbps) standard: FORGET ABOUT IT!!! Although the bandwidth capabilities have been increased, the CPU overhead still remains unchanged.

Not only that, but there is a solution that is becoming just as cheap as USB: FIREWIRE (IEEE 1394)

FireWire delivers the type of bandwidth capabilities of server-based systems, and the new revision will provide speeds of upto 800Mbps (...let me check on that, but I think I'm correct).

The best part about FireWire is that, like SCSI, it requires very little CPU overhead, and was designed to handle very-high bandwidth requirements. Some experts believe that UDMA will die out soon, and FireWire will take over as the interface of choice for all components within and/or external to the system. FireWire, like USB, can support many devices chained together, either through a HUB or separate independed interfaces. I think it is 96 devices all together, but again, I'll have to check on that. USB supports 127 devices (in theory), but its useless if the bandwidth and CPU usage continues to be so damn poor.

Anyway, I just thought I'd let everyone know about this, and for those of you who already knew, feel free to provide some feedback. I'm interested in how many others believe FireWire will eventually take over as the "universal" interface for the PC (eg. replacing UDMA, PCI slots, USB, etc.).

Take care everyone!

Peace.

[JLDraven]

Originally posted by Martog
USB=11Mb/s
Ethernet=100Mb/s

Plain and simple

Interesting, I have the AT&T@Home service, with my cable modem hooked to a NIC card, and it says my connection is 10 MB/s. Is there some tweaks or some configuring I can do to get that number up? I'm running a Win2k SP2 system, with a 3Com Etherlink XL 3C900B NIC card. Thanks for any tips.

[themaker]

Actually, USB 10 mb/s, 10BaseT Ethernet also 10mb/s, 100BaseT 100mb/s ;-)

Most cable modems won't get any faster no matter how they're attached ... thats due to bandwidth limitations inherent in the cable modems - which is capped out at 1.5 mb/s on @Home.

It may just seem faster since there is less CPU overhead on a PCI NIC than on a USB NIC, perhaps.

You could use an old 10baset nic and never reach peak capacity of the card.

Goto any of the online speedtests and see just how fast your connection really is ... there is one on Cnet.com and msn.com that work pretty well.

Regards,

- TM

[JLDraven]

Okay cool, thanks.

[Soulstice]

themaker:
Actually, USB caps out at about 12Mbps, but who's counting??

[Martog]

I wish I had a firewall device to test out. My laptop has a built in firewire port, but I have nothing to use in it..hehe..

Just the fact that Ethernet has a much higher brandwidth capicity than USB right now, even though cable modems only connect at 10mb/s, and usually are capped at 1.5Mb/s or less..just Ethernet provides some room for expansion if needed. =)

[Tiger]

so if you get an NIC card is that considered a modem also? I plan to get DSL or cable internet and I just purchases a 10/100 lan card (NIC), do I need a modem or is that also a modem. Thanks

-Tiger

[spud]

mb = megabit
MB = MegaByte
one MegaByte(MB) equals eight megabits(mb)
one megabit(mb) equals one-eighth of a MegaByte(MB)

@home service is capped at 3 megabits per second, period. (caching sometimes makes this seem faster.

USB v1.1 (developed by Intel) is spec at 12 megabits per second or 1.5 MegaBytes per second

USB v2.0 (also Intel, but I presume this bus will not make any waves) is spec at 480 megabits per second or 60 MegaBytes per second

FireWire (IEEE 1394, developed by Apple in 1993 (took a while!)) is currently at 400 megabits per second or 50 MegaBytes per second

Further revisions of FireWire will allow up to 2 Gigabits per second (do the math, it's 256 MegaBytes per second)

10BaseT Ethernet (depends on you NIC, @home uses these usually) is at 10 MegaBits per second

100BaseTX Ethernet is at 100 Megabits per second

yes, you should not use a USB cable modem, you may encounter problems when trying to use other operating systems than what is supported or when trying to create a small home network.

[jizz126]

my @Home isnt capped at 1.5mBITs/s. i get like 2-3mbits/s sometimes

[AndrewAce]

neither is mine. I consistenly get 2.5-3 mbps. Very nice!

[Slowminded]

for cable modem tweaks here are 2 links

http://www.speedguide.net/index.shtml

http://www.dslreports.com/

speed guid has some good info and dslreports has an ok bandwidth meter

read, read, read, backup and tweak at owen risk