What DOCSIS modems and NIC Cards are recommended?

[Origen]

I've been out of the computer networking world for a bit having to live w/ my trusty old dial-up net access, but finally (after years of waiting) cable modem access is going to be available in my area in about two weeks. The hardware needed is a 10baseT card at least and a DOCSIS cable modem. So what tends to be the best parts available for this? I used to use the 3Com 905x series of NICS are they still good? I know next to nothing about DOCSIS modems tho any help there would be much appreciated.

This is for a single Win9x machine using Cox Cable as the cable provider in Northern Virginia.

 

[JackMDS]

There is not objective info about this issue.

Almost all people take the Modem that is offered as part of the deal by the Cable ISP.

If you want to buy your own there is no more then few modem available in the retail channel.

Judging from the posts on broadband related BBSs it does not matter.

The most important thing is to get an external Ethernet modem ( no internal or USB), so you have the flexibility to network it in different ways.


As for NIC cards, look here:

Network Card Roundup - Which is the Best PCI Network Card?

 

[Origen]

Thx for the info. From snooping around the net I found out there is a group which does cable modem testing, The Tolly Group. But they're not doing their 2001 testing until late this year and their 2 tests in 2000 were hardly comprehensive. From reading their 1999 report and looking at feature sets of recent cable modems it seems cable modems based on the Broadcom BCM3350 (or BCM3352) perform good and have a full feature set. The best of these seems to be the Com21 DOXport 1110 but I can't seem to find any store which sells it. Seems alot of these companies just sell to the ISPs for rental to users. =\

 

[dbwillis]

I set up a 3com 4100 cable modem last week, it was really a breeze and its docsis certified, I used it with a 3com 3c905tx 10/100 card, no problems and its pretty fast