High Speed Internet and Modems and stuff

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 02:41:24PM -0400, Kevin Cozens wrote:
> I am surprised that Peter wasn't able to get a USB (cable?) modem 
> working. I made the switch to from dial-up to Rogers for high speed 
> Internet access back in August of 2004. I ordered it as a self-install. 
> Two guys from Rogers came. Once the wiring was in place the modem was 
> connected to the line and tested. After that it was up to me to get it 
> going with my computer.
> 
> Unlike in the past, I was not given a NIC. The cable modem only came 
> with a USB cable. I wanted to use a USB connection to the cable modem 
> anyway since my NIC is used to connect to my laptop. My only concern was 
> how hard it would be to configure Linux to use a cable modem as I 
> remembered the difficulties many people on this list had trying to get 
> their Linux boxes set up in the early days of cable based access to the net.
> 
> Setting up the Windows side of the machine was no problem. Setting up 
> the Linux side of my machine turned out to be a lot easier than I 
> expected. My cable modem back then was a Motoroloa Terayon TJ615. I 
> eventualy found that the key to getting it working under Linux was to 
> select "CDC Ethernet" as the driver for the network interface. The other 
> thing I discovered was that the cable modem interface should be started 
> first so it can set the default gateway. If any other network interfaces 
> start before the cable modem interface make sure they don't set a 
> default gateway or you will have trouble accessing the net.
> 
> My TJ615 developed some flakiness after a couple of months (it would 
> drop the link to the net and require power cycling to get back on line). 
> Eventually, I had Rogers return to take another look at the modem (the 
> first person who looked at it didn't really do anything). The two guys 
> that showed up had a new modem in hand. Apparantly, when they hear of 
> reports of problems and a TJ615 is involved, they just swap the modem. I 
> now have a Motorola Surfboard 5100 cable modem still connected to my PC 
> via a USB link. It has been working and reliable ever since it was first 
> plugged in. I didn't even have to change the driver. It also worked just 
> fine using the CDC Ethernet driver. Top speeds I have seen during file 
> transfers have hit 355kB/s. Sure beats 56k dial-up!

Well it is great to know that they all seem to agree to follow the USB
CDC ethernet interface standard.  Makes life simpler at least without
needing drivers.  If only usb adsl modems would do the same.

As for transfer rates, I have hit just over 600KB/s on my motorola
surfboard (I think 5100).

Lennart Sorensen
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