Cable options expand
By Carmen Nobel, PC Week Online
05.25.98
Business users yearn for cable
Small businesses seeking inexpensive pipes to the Internet may soon get some relief, as the recently adopted cable modem standard gets beefed up with more security and vendors ready cable-based routers.
With products based on the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification cable modem standard, Cable Television Laboratories Inc., in Louisville, Colo., is already at work on addenda to the standard to improve security.
The current version of DOCSIS offers encryption that protects information over the cable network from the provider to a residence. Cable Labs is working to push security to the corporate backbone, for such applications as virtual private networking.
Another addition to the standard, expected by January, will enable operators to easily table individual usage on the head end. This will allow cable operators to charge customers on a usage basis, according to sources close to providers MediaOne Inc. and @Home Network.
Being able to offer different levels of service will give cable providers a way to provide usage-based billing. Now, most providers offering service to small businesses charge about $300 a month for five users sharing one cable modem; a residential package costs about $40 a month. But those fees are based on the assumption that business users consume more bandwidth rather than on actual usage.
And, while $300 for 1.5M-bps speeds may be a good deal, some business owners chafe under the yoke of higher rates.
"They set the price already at $40 per month," said Steve Durst, a network consultant for an Air Force research lab, in Arlington, Mass. "Why should I pay more just to hook the cable up to a LAN? They're providing me with a wire. That's what I'm paying for. What I do with it is my business."
Meanwhile, several networking equipment vendors, including Bay Networks Inc., Multi-Tech Systems Inc., Cayman Systems Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and 3Com Corp., are readying small-business routers with embedded cable modems, for release by year's end, that incorporate LAN connectivity features.
Bay, of Santa Clara, Calif., has assembled a "cable commuter" team chartered with the task of developing products that include encryption on both the client side and head end, sources said.
At PC Expo next month in New York, Multi-Tech Systems will release a device that can be connected to a cable modem. The Multi-Tech Proxy Server will retail for less than $600, said sources close to the Mounds View, Minn., company. Cayman, based in Stoneham, Mass., offers such a product at a cost of about $900.
These products, as well as similar forthcoming devices from Cisco and 3Com, will be able to dynamically assign IP addresses and enable network address translation to bridge a cable connection to a LAN. |
