Cable Modem Question

[11290]

I just got a cable modem yesterday and have a technical question.

They installed the modem and ran it to a USB / Ethernet adapter. Am I losing some throughput with this adapter and would it be faster if I had an Ethernet 10/100 card inside of the computer in a PCI slot. Someone told me that the USB port is a slower data processor than the card would be.

[lugerstew]

hi at@t hooked mine up with a smc usbto ethernet adapter,i have since switched to a linksys 10/100 pci ethernet card. i cant personally see any difference in speed but the pci card is a lot less troublesome for me

[Omletteboy]

The usb ethernet card is rated at 10 mb. Your cable modem is prob good for 7 mb, that degrades to about 2 mb by the time it gets to your nic, so you won't see any gain with a 10/100 card.

[Xayd]

It won't be faster, but might be more stable.

I've heard of nothing but problems with the USB DSL/Cable modems. If it works for you, great. If not, you might have to go with a NIC.

Xayd

[Omletteboy]

True indeed, I've heard bad stories about the usb adapters.

[11290]

So far, since last Friday, I have had no problems with the cable modem or the USB adapter. I probably will go ahead and install an internal card and eliminate the adapter if I decide to keep the cable modem service after the 30 day trial period.

Don't really know why I would not want to keep it and go back to dial-up but you never know.

Interestingly, this site, Pcmech and the tech forum is a relatively slow load site compared to other sites. Don't know why. I have tried it going through AOL, IE5.5 and through the @home browser. Doesn't make any difference. I would have thought that this site would be one of the more "high tech / speedy" sites. Just my $.02.

Thanks for all of the info.

[Omletteboy]

It's the ad banners that bog down the sites.

[hackercarlos]

It will be best for you to use the NIC. ;)