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Even when you "bring your own modem" ISPs tend to demand exclusive control while it's in service. It really is intended to be part of the ISP's network rather t
by superuser2 13y ago
Even when you "bring your own modem" ISPs tend to demand exclusive control while it's in service. It really is intended to be part of the ISP's network rather than yours, so while (unlike a rental unit) you could walk away with it and take it to another provider, sell it, run your own copper infrastructure, etc. you usually still can't modify the settings of existing connection.
One of my cable installers told me that rate limiting is done in the cable modem, so people would run pirate firmware that eliminated the artifical limits and run at the natural limit of the connection. People had fun with this for a while until the network engineers figured it out, and now people exceeding the speed limit get their connections shut down pretty quickly. But anyway, it makes sense the the cable modem really isn't the customer's to control.
I own and control my own wireless router because I want to play with things like DD-WRT, use OpenDNS, etc., but I see the cable modem as no different from the utility box down the street.
- ryanhuff 13y agoTime Warner wants nothing to do with my (own purchased) cable modem beyond allowing me to use it. The vendor will only provide firmware patches to cable operators, and Time Warner won't touch my modem to help get the firmware upgraded.
- midas007 13y agoI've always had naked DSL because of not wanting to pay for cable TV or another line. For DSL and similar services, BYOE tends to be hand-off. With cable modems, does/can the provider push firmware?
- tonyb 13y agoWith DOCSIS cable modems only the provider can update the firmware. And end user doesn't have the ability to update the firmware, even if they own the modem. That is part of the DOCSIS standard.
- alexwright 13y agoAll the cable modems I've used (UK) have always downloaded a an image over TFTP on boot. As I understand it they can come up with a very minimal loader and reach out for their config to the local "node" for configuration, and this can include new firmware. On the support line they're adamant that you reboot the things before proceeding past the IVR. Which makes sense. The last I heard about it the different levels of service (bronze/silver/gold they were at the time, 5/10/20Mbit/s) are just based on the MAC the modem sends on this initial config/handshake. When I moved from 20 to 50 I was told to reboot the modem and it came up will an all new shiny more craptastic than ever web interface as well as setting it's WAN port to 50Mbit/s