> On Nov 26, 2015, at 14:44, Neal <nsed...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Think of cable modems as being hooked to a hub whereas xDSL modems are > connected to a switch. The local loop is shared among several/many cable > modems but a xDSL modem goes directly to the ISP. Of course from there on > they're all sharing the big internet pipe to the internet proper.
Well, sort of. The Cable companies have gotten better about isolating their customers from each other, but they do all share the same pipe back to the head end, usually at the cable office. A DSL line is only individual from the house to the CO. Once it gets there, it enters a concentrator, called a DSLAM, where it joins all the rest of the traffic. It could go to any number of places from there. If you DSL provider is not your ISP, it may go out onto the Internet before reaching your ISP. I had that arrangement in Aloha for a while. Everyone was putting down Cable because it shared the pipe from the house to the concentrator, but there's a bunch more bandwidth available over cable, since the signal is more closely related to radio over that pipe, where on DSL, it's closer to Ethernet and you can't mix signals on different frequencies. -Russ _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
