[geeks] Cable modems/routers

[Thomas Gallaway]

mrl wrote:

>Just got cable installed at the house (after slogging along for 2 years
>with dialup and 6 months with 90$/mo ISDN), and the cable modem they
>give us sucks (at least it's a no-extra-fee "loaner", tho). Looking to
>replace the thing, but I want to make sure that it's not something that
>I have to power cycle all the time, a la the ISDN modem, some
>"consumer-grade" switches, the DSL modem at work, etc. Does anybody have
>any recommendations?
>
>Oh, and if I purchase a PCI cable modem, are there any gotchas? My dad
>is of the opinion that just because it's PCI, that doesn't mean that it
>won't require a power-cycle every once in the while (which of course
>means rebooting the entire machine), although that doesn't make much
>sense to me (as in, there's no way a card-manufacturer would put the
>thing on the market if it had a flaw like that, right?). Anything,
>related or unrelated, to look out for?
>
>On a related note, one of our switches may be failing. Any suggestions
>on what to replace it with are welcome (in the 4-8 port range, nothing
>huge).
>  
>
I used to have an RCA for the longest time but it required powercycles 
all the time. Or it cycled it's own power. Now I have an Toshiba that I 
bought maybe 1 year ago and never had to powercycle it ever.

I heard the Cisco cable modems are crap. They do run IOS but have issues 
deteting the carrier signal.
This was with the older cisco ones so I dont know if they improved the 
newer ones. The older ones had the neat feature that they did Voice over 
IP and had an IP to POTS converter built in.

Again the Toshiba I have I am very happy with. Then again also our cable 
service here is outstanding good. It has been nearly 3 years with no 
major outage. Maybe a few smaller ones but I think those where related 
to a) a truck taking down a pole with core fiber and b) them upgrading 
their equipment.

-- Thomas