Michael Thomas wrote on 18/02/2024 21:18:
So it has its own wireless? I seem to recall that there were some economic reasons to use their CPE as little as possible to avoid rent. Has that changed? Or can I run down and just buy a Cablelabs certified router/modem these days?
There's no short answer to this question. A third party cable modem will work with a basic CM config file if you can convince the cable operator to provision the device, but cable operators don't like running third party kit on their network for a lot of reasons. One of these reasons is bandwidth channel utilisation. Another is support. Another would be software upgrades, which can lead to issues with security. Also, if you use a vanilla cable modem config, you miss out on many of the more interesting configurable bits on cable modems.
The root issue here is that cable networks are shared resources, and the cable modem polices the customers' bandwidth utilisation on instruction from the CMTS (head-end cable router) and the provisioning system. The system works well from a technical perspective when the operator has full control of all modems and they're all relatively recent, properly supported units, fully managed by the cable operator. If you start adding poor quality cheap units into the mix, it can cause service problems.
For example, some cable modems provide basic spectrum analysers on the provider interface (yes, cable operators can remotely log in to cable modems) and good quality reporting about RF noise. If you get some hobbyist demanding to use their own modem, and then you run into an RF problem at their premises which could normally be diagnosed remotely using the internal cable modem diagnostics, but you can't do this because the customer has used their own kit which doesn't support this, then you've instantly driven up your cost of service because now you need to schedule a call-out for something which could previously have been diagnosed remotely. So you can see why this might be frustrating for the cable modem operator.
Cable modem rent is a political issue. Nick
