viduals, where it is then wired to the terminal equipment. WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES? There are many advantages to using the modem over a phone modem or an ISDN connection. Ther first advantage and probably the most popular and important to the average consumer is the speed of the modem. How many times have you found yourself staring at you monitor, waiting for your computer to download a file. Those days are over. A good modem in today's computer is 56Kbps. The cable modems that are being manufactured now range from, at the low end, 500Kbps to, at the high end, 36Mbps. Most of the cable modems being produced right now operate at 1.54Mbps upstream to 10Mbps downstream. Transfer Rate for a 10Mb File: MODEM SPEED/TYPE TRANSFER TIME 9.6Kbps telephone modem 2.3 hours 14.4Kbps telephone modem 1.5 hours 28.8Kbps telephone modem 46 minutes 56Kbps telephone modem 24 minutes 128Kbps ISDN connection 10 minutes 1.54Mbps T-1 connection 52 seconds 4Mbps cable modem 20 seconds 10Mbps cable modem 8 seconds This is a brief example of how fast a cable modem is in comparison to the connections we use today. This doesn't even include the 36Mbps cable modem that has been introduced. Another advantage is the imporved service that the cable modem provides over the traditional phone modem. The bandwidth of the cable is 6MHz, which is much larger than that of a telephone modem. This allows more Internet lines to be run through it. Most of the producers of cable modems can ensure that no more than 80% of the lines are being used, and if that much is being used then they can open up more unused lines. This would make it where the user would never get a "busy signal" as you do sometimes with telephone modems. Also the cost of the cable modems, especiall in LAN'S AND WAN's would be much lower. With telephone modems and ISDN connections, consumers are charged for every minute they are online. With a cable modem there is a flat, monthly rate, usually around $40 a mont...
