What makes the idea of fiber in the home revolutionary is that the typical home user has not yet installed a home network, and wouldn’t have a clue as to how to purchase and install a router, an expensive piece of hardware needed to connect to fiber. Fiber is great for those who want the best of everything. So’s a Lamborghini, but the Chevy will get you to the grocery store just as efficiently (perhaps more, since you can rest assured that the Chevy will still be in the parking lot when you come out with your groceries. But that’s another story.) 

Fiber is not available for home users in San Antonio, so this is a moot point for us. We do, however, have some viable alternatives that are less expensive and can prove just as efficient as the old Chevy. Cable Modems and Digital Subscriber Lines are both available in the San Antonio area. 

John Woody, in PC Alamode’s Comm Corner, wrote an excellent series of articles comparing the alternatives, specifically DSL and Cable Modems. After reading these articles, my family first leaned toward DSL, since I sometimes telecommute and thus welcomed DSL’s greater security options. But when we called for quotes, we were told that that our home is located outside the service area. 

With that decision made for us, we ordered a cable modem. Since we have a home network, the required Ethernet cards and cables were already installed on our computers. Our only extra expense was the installation and the modem itself. The monthly service expense was pretty much covered by canceling AOL and our second phone line. 

The installers ran a cable to our house that was separate from our TV cable and placed the hookup in my office. Not surprisingly, it looks just like a TV cable hookup. We connected the cable to the modem using a standard coaxial cable (like the one on your cable TV). The modem then connected to our network hub using a network cable (a Category 5 Unshielded Twisted Pair cable with an RJ-45 connection — that is the connector that looks like a fat phone connector). If we didn’t have a hub, the same type of network cable would have attached the modem to an Ethernet card installed in the computer. 

The original installation was about a simple as it could be. We ran across a single problem: Our hub originally didn’t recognize the connection. We hemmed and hawwed around and thought about it a while.  Even considered reading the instructions. But before we could get out the reading glasses, we realized that the fourth port on the hub serves two purposes: as a standard port, it connects another computer; as an uplink port, it connects to another piece of hardware that serves the network. We reasoned that the cable modem fit that description, so I got down on the floor and pressed the button that transforms the fourth port into an uplink port. Bingo! We had cable modem. 

The up side of cable modem: 
My son says it’s the immediate access for web surfing and the file transfer speed. My husband appreciates the smooth viewing of video broadcasts and the ability to listen to radio stations on the other side of the planet. Just the other night we were listening to rock music from Moscow. For me, it’s the ability to keep my e-mail running all the time, and never again have to deal with a busy signal. 

We had heard that only one computer on the network can user the modem at a time. All three of us have used the modem at the same time, with no ill effects and no noticeable degradation of service. 

The down side of cable modem: 
Because we heard that lack of security is a problem with an always-connected cable modem, we had to install a firewall. Firewall software is a complicated product that takes a while to figure out. Until we got the hang of it, it effectively kept us from accessing each others’ computers on our network. 

Another downside: 
I’m itching to get started on my new five megabyte web space, but unfortunately, I can’t get the WS_FTP software offered on the Road Runner web site to work. The first problem is that the instructions for installation and setup are vague and the example screens in the instructions don’t match the screens that appear in the software. The instructions themselves leave much to be desired. They read as if the author is trying to cover up for the fact that s/he really doesn’t know how the software works. Judging from the content of the WS_FTP log file, however, it looks like this problem may be a server side. The log file shows that the connection makes it to the point of checking the password, at which time access is denied. I’ve tried four different passwords (and, yes, I do know that passwords are case-sensitive). I keep writing to tech support and they keep resetting my password, but they won’t explain to me what they think the problem is, and the passwords they give me don’t work. 

The instructions for setting up Netscape Communicator to retrieve e-mail are equally vague. And if there is a way to simply display the member pages and check your mail on the fly (the way you can with Yahoo and AOL), I haven’t found out how to do it. My traveling daughter therefore set up her Road Runner mail to automatically forward to her Yahoo address. Mail forwarding is a nice feature. 

I might interject that setting up Outlook Express to check my Road Runner mail was a no-brainer. After a super-simple setup, I was able to connect on the first try. 

The modem manager software itself appears to be a little quirky. Clicking the modem manager icon logs you into the Road Runner web site member area. However, the icon appears to get disabled after use, and I have to reboot the system to get it to work again. A workaround is to manually log into the Road Runner web site, although this is a little more cumbersome.