.
Cable: not just for television

The fibre networks that bring you cable TV at home can be more than an addition to your viewing options — it can also be your means to fast Internet access.

HFC (hybrid fibre-coaxial) networks that are used to carry cable TV pictures are also capable of carrying data at very high rates. The current cable TV signal doesn't take up all of the available bandwidth, because these cable networks were designed to carry a digital TV signal, rather than the current analog signal — and this spare bandwidth can also be used to carry Internet data. In theory, if you can get cable TV, you can get cable Internet.

Unlike DSL a cable service is "shared". This means all subscribers on a given neighbourhood or node (a connection point) share a fixed amount of bandwidth. In theory the more people connected to a node, the slower it takes to download information off the Internet. In other words, a node accessed by only 250 people will generally provide a faster service than a node with 2,000 users.

Cable companies have tricks to get around this. Cable operators scale its network (where more connection points are added) to suit the number of customers in a particular area of the network. Adding more connection points means they are able to rebalance the network so that customers in all areas of the network are receiving equal performance levels. Scaling the network is also known as Node Grooming.

Once the cable is installed, you'll need a cable modem to get connected. This connects at one end to the cable, and at the other end to your PC, either through an Ethernet or a USB connection. Cable modems can transfer data at theoretical speeds of up to 3Mbps. However, because cable is a shared medium with many other users on the same line, performance varies with the amount of subscribers using that particular stretch of bandwidth, as well as the usage patterns.

.