Cable Modems

[Mike Kallies]

Hypothetical Question.

I have this "friend" who is a subscriber to an alternative cable
provider for Internet access.

About 10 months ago, this cable provider told him that his recent
Internet problems were because his Motorola Surfboard modem was no
longer supported.  Not only this, they added that it was likely the
*cause* of his problem and they couldn't help him unless he replaced
it.

The next day, the modem began working just fine, and he thought it
would be the end of the story.

10 months later, with strange upstream packet loss problems, and not
wanting to shell out full price for a "supported" modem, which would
probably make no difference, he grabbed an SMC modem with DOCSIS 3.0
off Craigslist.

Plugging it in... he found that his Internet connection was a lot faster...

... 4-8x faster than he paid for.
... and from a different ISP!


This raises a few questions:
1.  How is the modem linked to the ISP?
2.  Why is he getting free-ish Internet from this third party provider?
3.  Does the seemingly repaired packet loss issue with the SMC modem
mean that the cable problem *was* the modem?



Thanks,

Mike
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