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It's All in the Broadband Family: The Olszewskis Get a Cable Modem
It's All in the Broadband Family: The Olszewskis Get a Cable Modem |
Chuck Olszewski knows a thing or two about technology.
He holds a master's degree in computer science. Now 46, he's the chief technology officer with a Milwaukee, Wis., direct marketing firm. And he uses ISDN and super-fast SDSL broadband services at work.
And so when the technician from Time Warner Inc. came by to install digital cable TV service in his new home in the Milwaukee suburbs in June, Chuck took him up on his offer to add a broadband Internet connection.
The installation's cost: $79. The tab for monthly service -- the downstream speed is a lightning-fast 1.9 megabits per second; upstream speed is a blazing 768 kilobits per second -- is $39.95. To Chuck, that's money well spent. After zooming around the Internet on his Road Runner cable modem for two weeks, he jokes that "by this time next year, I may have three of these lines."
"I'm doing so many things that I've never done before with a dial-up modem," he says, ticking off things like downloading MP3s, listening to out-of-town radio stations, and shaving hours off the time he used to spend conducting job-related research over the Internet.
Chuck adds: "The fast speed makes jumping around and searching on the Internet much more of a pleasure. I have no tolerance for waiting anymore. Besides, I wanted a faster connection because of the richer content that's becoming more common in most sites."
His two teenagers are having a ball, as well.
"The kids, who are out of school for the summer, have zero fear of computers," Chuck says of his 13-year-old son, Brandon, and 18-year-old daughter, Morgan, who's heading off to college. "They're into MP3, multimedia games, and a lot of other things that just astound me. I find what they're doing totally fascinating.
"I think that the price point of this level of bandwidth and ready availability to many consumers will open up the Internet to a whole new generation of applications."
The Road Runner installation wasn't a picnic. Two Time Warner technicians didn't have much luck in the three hours they spent trying to install the cable modem's software. Finally, Chuck sat down with the installation instructions, reconfigured his computers, and voila! Everything worked.
He also set up a home network using a Linksys 10/100 auto-sensing hub. Right now, he's using a crossover cable to hook the cable modem to the hub. The downside is that his household's four PCs have no protection against hackers. However, Chuck has purchased a second network card for his main PC and plans to use Acer Sygate software, which he's already familiar with, to provide firewall, or "anti-hacker," protection.
Chuck's next broadband step?
"I do a lot of work at home, and so do a lot of people at the office," he says. "Now, I'm considering deploying a VPN to allow key employees access to our internal network over the Internet."
