How do cable companies operate?

Question

Hi,

I have always been curious as to how cable companies operate their infrastructure. How does management work? How are they able to login to modems? What sort of back end equipment do they use? Are most cable network's fiber until the neighborhood? How much bandwidth do they actually have? How are the modems individually controlled (is it IP based, for instance)? How far away can the modems be from the substation?

Thanks for any info!

P.S. I am not asking this information for any type of malicious purpose, I am quite happy with my cable company and am simply curious as to how they operate.

Answer 1

Well, you are asking two different kinds of questions. The first ones appear to be about how the cable delivers media and manages its original product - television signals. The second group are all focused on modem stuff.
The distribution of the television signals begins with collecting them from large satellite dishes (for a strong received signal) where they are processed and buffered onto the cable at the frequency assigned to them - basically 50 or 100 or more transmitters, one for each channel mounted in racks.
The signals are then fed over the wiring to be received by the cable box. Pay per view and pay channels are encoded and the cable box is sent information to unencode them. Under the old system, the cable box had to phone for pay-per-view payment processing, but that can be done digitally with the cable modem capability.
Whether a system is partially or all optic fiber depends on the company. Many older systems have partially upgraded to use fiber optic to get signals out to nonfiber distribution hubs.
The modem stuff is done by treating all the houses on a section of the cable as a branch network where collision avoidance is used like any other kind of network. This is why everyone slows down when a lot of people get on and why you are at risk from your neighbors with a cable modem if you don't also have a firewall. The branch of the network is connected to a hub to multiplex the signals back to the internet connection. Each of the modems is responsible for the local management of collision avoidance.

Answer 2

Go for it.