Insane cable co

[stealer11]

Hi all,

I just moved to a city located outside of Sacramento CA. I ordered a cable modem from the local cable co and they came out and hooked it up ASAP. After they left a brought out my Linksys wireless router so I can share my cable modem with my other 3 computers including 1 laptop. I then found out that the cable co does not allow ANY routers on their system. Sure enough when I plugged in my router my cable modem did not work. After doing a lot of research I found out that I can clone my MAC address to fool the cable modem into thinking that my router is really my main computer. So everything works great now. Has anybody heard of cable companies not allowing router on their system. Now get this, When I called them up to ask how I am expected to set up my home network they said I could use a plain old hub and then they would charge my an additional $18.95 a month for each additional computer in my house. They must by on drugs or something if they think people are going to stand for that. I am still considering switching to DSL when it becomes available in a few months. Is there any clear benefit of DSL over a cable modem?
I really don't want to give this crazy cable co. any more business than I have to.

Thanks
Stephen

[TheRogue]

im not sure but i think my (soon to be :D) cable co has the same but my network is going to look like this

cable modem - gateway comp (firewall, web server, mail server etc..) - hub < my comp, dads comp, laptop

which i s'pose wouuld get round it?

[Uranium-235]

Same here, except our dsl company does allow routers (althogh it would be impossible for us since we use a usb dsl modem). Which is another reason I set it up on a seperate computer in the other room running ICS (no linux drivers for the usb modem-hell the windows ones barely work at times) with a 8-port switch connnected to that.

[TheRogue]

just thought i'd pimp the thread by sayin ill have cable on the 29th :D

ive only been waiting since 1995 when i first came on the net with good ole MSN... where you had to pay for both access and call charges.... memories

[vee_ess]

Is there any clear benefit of DSL over a cable modem?

There are plenty of benefits...
Cable is based on a downstream only setup. This means you will never be able to get truly high-speed upstream rates. DSL is based on the phone line which is designed to go in both directions.
When cable companies laid out the cables, they used a standard that used a single cable for each sector, or neigheborhood. This means that once more people start signing up, you lose bandwidth. With DSL, however, you are the only one with your phoneline, because phonelines are on individual lines, so no matter how many people sign up in the future, you will always have your bandwidth. This also leads to security. With cable, everyone else in your sector can view your data, because it is sent to everyone, it just isn't accepted by the others - only yours. But as you can see, by changing certain settings on their computer, they can easily access and view everything that you pass along and receive over the internet. They can also change it. Right now, security isn't a big issue, but, it can be exploited in the future, which I have no doubt will happen.

There are many other benefits, but I'll stop there for now, but if you would like more, please tell me.