By Thomas E. Moore, Kenneth R. Martin, Robert S. Cruickshank III, Cable Television Laboratories, Inc
For the most part, the public telephone network is used to access the Internet from remote locations and data are transmitted at speeds ranging from 2,400 to 281800 bits per second (2.4 - 28.8 kbps). With cable, however, data may be transferred at speeds up to 10 million bits per second (10 Mbps) - about 1,000 times faster than by using telephone wire. Cable offers a faster, more poweiful alternative to telephony systems, and the result is an impressive increase in computer communications power .. Cable modem technology is in a unique position to harness the demands of users seeking fast access to information services, the Internet, business applications and cable commuting. With the growing interest in data-over-cable service, there has been an increased focus on the issue of performance. Cable data services are deployed on a shared access network. Thus a 30-Mbps service is shared by multiple users simultaneously. Due to the shared nature of these networks, there is interest in how the performance of the network as seen by a single user changes, if at all, as the number of users increases. This document will show that such degradation of service is minimal with proper design, and that cable modems will reliably deliver data to all users hundreds of times faster than existing phone modems.