Well, I finally got the cable modem installed in February 1999.
I have been reading about it for months and I hope it lives up to the hype.
My local cable service is Media One.
The internet service is called Media One Express which claims it "revolutionizes
the way you experience the Web, delivering the Internet at rates up to
50 times faster than the standard dial-up modem".
When I signed up they were having a deal where the $99 installation
fee would be waived. How could I beat this deal, so I called and
signed up right away. I asked the sales representative a bunch of
questions, since I wanted everything to go smoothly. They asked if
there was a cable outlet in the room and they also walked me through a
series of steps to ensure that my system met the minimum specifications
that are needed to run this service. This is important, because with
the cable modem your internet speed can be limited by your system.
I also asked if they would put the wire in the wall and the sales representative
assured me they would drill holes in whatever wall they had to in order
to get the cable wire to the computer. I thought great and all for
free. I promptly scheduled an installation visit for the next day.
It was nice to know they would show up fast.
Well, the installation started off on the wrong foot.
After letting the service representative in, I quickly showed him how I
wanted the cable wire placed. I said to splice the cable wire above
our drop ceiling in our computer room, run the wire above the drop ceiling
and then bring the wire down inside the wall where the computer is.
I then showed him where I wanted the wire to come out of the wall.
He quickly responded with "I don't do that" and he explained that for
the service I wanted, it would mean I would have to hire someone to come
and do it for $90. What? I thought this was free installation.
What do they do?
He then said he would run the wire from the TV around the bottom of
the room over to the PC. Great, my wife said I we could install this
thing only if we did not have wires running around the room. I then
insisted that he splice the wire above the drop ceiling and run the wire
across the top of the ceiling tiles and drop it down right at the computer
(outside the wall). He reluctantly agreed.
Now that we got this settled, he first got to work on the computer.
Because if the network card would not take in the system, it would not
matter where the wire ran.
The first network card (NIC) would not work in my PC. We do not
know why, but it had something to do with the drivers for the card.
Windows 95 was looking for them, but we could not find them. They
are supposed to be on disk 18 of the Windows 95 installation. We
searched my copy and his two copies of Windows 95 and we had no luck.
He then tried another network card, which took right away. You
can see it in the photo to the right. The top card is my 28.8 sound/modem
card and the lower card is my Stealth S220 Video card. The network
card fit nicely between them.
See the green area, that is the reflection of a green light that is
on the network card. I think it lights up when the card is working
properly. |
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They charge $50 for the network card; you can get it cheaper and install
it yourself. I bought the model they use and, unless you know what
you are doing, you are probably better off letting them install it.
If you are buying a new PC you should see if you can get one with the network
card already installed.
Once the network card was in the computer he began to do the wiring.
Once the inside wire was set up he had to climb the utility pole outside.
He explained that there are high frequency filters on the cable wire that
need to be removed for cable service to work.
Once his work was done outside he came back in with the cable modem
and proceeded to hitch it up to the PC. You can see the modem to
the right. Once I saw it I realized why it was not installed inside
the computer. It is quite large and heavier than it looks.
The cable wire comes from outside (white wire on top) and plugs into
the back of the modem. The modem also has its own plug (black wire
on bottom). The third wire is the data cable that runs from the modem
to the network card which was just installed in my system. |
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Once the modem was all set, he configured my system. I did not
have to do a thing to the software, it took him two minutes to configure.
Once he was done all three internet browsers were now connected via the
cable modem. The first test of the connection was as slow as molasses.
I then remembered that I ran PPP - Boost from my PB tools page and remembered
that this could be the cause of the bad connection. I than re-ran
this utility setting everything back to default and we had the download
speed that we should have.
I have to say I love it, it can download a 15 MB file in 1.5 min.
Every now and then I hit a site that takes a minute to connect, but this
slowness is due to internet congestion and not the modem or my system.
Once connected to a site the page loads almost instantly. The speed
is most apparent when you download large pages of text or graphics.
The text and graphics almost load instantly.