Cable modem users...

[Dowding]

I'm getting a cable modem installed on July 10th. Partly for the increased speed but mainly so my brother can get online using the phoneline while he stays with me for the summer. It will be cool to wing together.  

What kind of a connection can I expect, bearing in mind I live in the UK?

The ISP is a good one for the dialup service I have - ping times of less than 250ms 90% of the time and I usually connect at 52kbps. I hope this translates to a decent HSI set-up.

[Vermillion]

Why not just share the cable hookup with your brother, and forget about the phoneline?  

[Nifty]

agreed!!!  share the cable connection!  It's not -that- hard at all.

Read this to find out how to do it!

As for your connection, it really depends with cable modems.  Not many people are on my node (either good planning by my cable company, or just not many people use the service here) so I get really good DL times usually.  If I was at home, I'd post a gif of the download time for Hoyle's casino demo, best transfer rate I've gotten on the cable mode (don't remember exactly what it was, so I won't guess.)  I have no idea what it'll be like in the UK.  Haven't done a trace to AH before, so I don't know what connection I have to there.

[Nashwan]

Dowding, who is your cablemodem account with? I only have experience of NTL, but the connection is usually exellent, and quite cheap too.

On the point of connecting a couple of PCs to AH:
I have to use ICS or some other form of NAT as NTL only allow 1 IP adress per modem. Can you fly with 2 accounts using NAT?

[Dowding]

Hmmm - didn't realise you could link two PCs to net using cable. But I suppose it's digital rather than analogue, so why not?  

Nashwan, I'm with Telewest. There 'surf unlimited' thing has been very good, and for £25 a month, their cable service looks like good value. Providing it works, of course.  

I seem to remember reading their faq, I'm sure it mentioned blocking something to prevent users using their connection as an ISP. Perhaps it was this multi-PC cable-ing?

[ 06-14-2001: Message edited by: Dowding ]

[Grayarea]

Gremlin and I have used one dial up connection in the past to connect to Aces High through (and it worked very well).

We used a product called gate keeper. It is a shareware NAT type thing.

Using this or simmilar internet connection sharing software it should be possible to hookup multiple PC to one cable system.

As far as the cable provider is conserned there is only one IP working when using these connection sharing software products.

Grayarea

[Nashwan]

Grayarea, you both played at the same time? Cool, that means I can get my brother playing too    
Dowding, Telewest won't stop you networking several PCs together at your home and connecting them all to the net. In fact, you won't even need to use 1 machine to share the connection, Telewest allow several IP addresses for their cablemodem, 5 iirc.
If you want to network a few machines though you will need a hub. However, if you only have 2 machines, you could connect the cablemmodem to 1 pc with USB, then put a network card in both machines and use a crossover cable to conect them. Share the connection from the machine with the cablemodem attached.

There is a good UK cablemodem site at http://www.stayalive.cjb.net/
mainly deals with NTL but lots of general info about the hardware, tweaks, firewalls etc. (You WILL need a firewall if you haven't got one)

[ 06-14-2001: Message edited by: Nashwan ]

[Dowding]

Thanks for the info. Nashwan!  

Telewest require me to have an NIC, so I guess the modem they supply is not USB. Anyway, I'll go onto one of their news groups and get more info.

Cheers.