[11098] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re[2]: Two-way Internet service from Continental Cable?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Wolff)
Mon Mar 21 23:51:54 1994
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 11:12:27 -0600 (EST)
From: Stephen Wolff <steve@nsf.gov>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: schoff@psi.com
> > >Two-way amplifiers on the cable. It lets them do essentially ethernet
> > >over cable.
> > Yup -- actually I heard 4 ethernets over a 6MHz cable channel.
> >
> > But I was disappointed with the pricing. 100$/month for metro access (read
> > other CCTV customers) 125$ for internet access. However, this is just
> > for ONE computer in your home. If you have a little subnet running at
> > home (now -- let's see now, how many of us are there), the price jumps
> > to 1K$/month for routing stuff.
> >
>
> Are you surprised by this? Further, there is a problem with this setup --
> you are on a broadband connection, which means it effectively <is> an
> Ethernet -- that is, you are sharing the wire from the repeater to the house.
>
> This means that you're working with a shared MAC arrangement, and thus the
> <actual> bandwidth you can expect is not really the entire thing. The
> level of engineering is very, very important, as well as how and when they
> decide to split areas to have more segments.
If it's a shared medium, how difficult is it for a moderately capable one
of PSI's customers on the cable to listen in on what some other customers
are saying? Presumably it's slightly more difficult than hanging a
Sniffer on a vampire tap, but I wonder what safety mechanisms PSI has to
prevent their customers from wiretapping each other?
-s
