Does anyone know if your cable internet is buffered meaning is passed through some memory source before it is displayed? I heard that it is buffered 3-5 seconds? Might be a stupid question so please don't grill me about it.
Its not stupid but its non-sensical (as in why would they)? All network traffic is buffered to some extent at different points during its journey but there is nothing inherent in cable internet technology that would make this buffering more then other non-cable ISP's and certainly nothing on the order of seconds, the latency is measured in ms. If you do a "ping" test that is what you are measuring - the roundtrip time it takes for a packet from you to reach the destination and return. If cable internet were buffered several seconds you would always see ping times in the thousands of milliseconds.
buffered is probably not the best way to look at it; but it is happening.. data flows from your home via coaxial cable to a fiber node; Fiber nodes connect to distribution hubs, which connect to regional facilities, which eventually get you to an IP backbone then onto the internet.. Depending on the architecture of your provider, You and up to 2000 other homes are connected via coax cable to fiber nodes which essentially form a LAN; The total available bandwidth over this LAN is 27 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream. What they don't tell you is that it is a shared utility, and your actual 'realized' performance is dependent on how many other subscribers on your distribution hub are actively 'downloading' or receiving data at the same time. In an oversubscribed area, you may frequently be reduced to speeds as slow as 500K, or less !!!... divide 27Mbps by 1000 users... 27K.. slower than dial up. It is unlikely that all 1000 users are downloading at the exact same time, but as VoIP phones, Home Web CAMS etc grow in popularity, odds are increasing against you...
What fiber connection only provides 27/2Mbps? Did you mean Gbps? Even that sounds low for fiber. Wiki page on HFC networks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Fibre_Coaxial
This is dated information.... Check with the Util and you'll find that they have been redistributing their technology more in line with that of DSL... They saw the shared issue and FINALLLY worked on it...
You misunderstood me; (or I was simply not clear) The 27/2 is the copper that sits between all the end points and the fiber. these speed limitations are imposed by the architecture of how CATV is carried over the copper leg; - they sliced out one 'tv channel' for upstream and another for downstream.
In HFC networks there isnt a single piece of copper between the fiber node and all homes serviced by that node and I don't know of any cable networks that are constrained to 27/2Mbps shared bandwidth for all customers off of a node - that's insanely low. I'm not a big fan of cable ISP's but I think you are painting an overly pessismistic view of how they are designed.
He is spouting OLDER design tech... As the race to provide bandwidth has progressed, the Cable Operators (CO) have paid attention and gotten their acts together.. On any given day, I can speedtest my system and get an average Throughput or 15Mb down and 1.2Mb up.... Best case is 1.5Mb up and 21.2 Mb Down.... During heavy traffic times (after work, weekend, etc.) my up compresses to about 1.1-1.2, and my Down compresses to about 13 to 15 Mb down.... Cable is so much better than it was a mere 4 years ago, that my DSL line is ONLY a backup connection... The price for Cable compared to my DSL lines is fantastic.... I remember paying 129.00/month for slow as mollassa 760K back in 2000 and now for half that I get promised 8.0/768 and they deliver 20.0/1.5. Once FIOS hits my area.... I am jumping in. The prices are reasonable FINALLY. With decent up rates..... 15.0/2.0 = $50/month Meaning 30.0/2.0 pricing will be coming down soon.
guess I need to move up to your neck of the woods... and unfortunate for many - there are actually regions in this country that still live with OLDER technology....