Surfboard® SB4200 Cable Modem Review

If you are one of the thousands of traders on the internet, you have a choice of using a connection with either a phone modem, DSL modem, cable modem, T1 line or through a satellite dish. Faster communications is essential to your trading. You must receive your eSignal quotes, technical charts, enter orders and receive fills as fast as possible without any delay. The cost of the various internet services are as follows per month: phone modem - $10 to $30, DSL - $40 to $65, cable modem - $45; T1 - $600, and a satellite dish - $100. The most popular and cost effective method used by traders is the cable modem. Most of them can currently transmit data up to 10 mbps. That’s around 100 times faster than the phone modem. The only disadvantage of using cable modems is that if a lot of users are on the system the speed will throttle down to around 3 – 5 Mbps. The lower speeds usually are at night when most of your neighbors are at home from work and school. So if you are a trader during the day, your speed is usually near the 10 Mbps.

Most cable companies rent you the cable modem for $10 per month. Usually the one they rent you is an older model, which has outdated component parts not as good as today’s cable modems. These older modems are subject to data lockups and are slower. One of the best investments you can make is to buy a new cable modem and return the older modem to your cable company. You will save the $10 per month cable rental fee and have a faster and better modem.

We looked at several cable modems on the market. The one we recommend is Motorola’s Surfboard® SB4200 Cable Modem. It was just redesigned and features a convenient top-mounted stand-by switch. It can disconnect its USB or Ethernet connection to your computer without disconnecting the modem to the internet giving you extra security. It has the latest high performance Broadcom BCM 3345 processor, and is software upgradeable over the internet. It is DOCSIS 1.0 AND 1.1 CableLabs certified. Eventually your cable company will upgrade to DOCSIS 1.1 and you’ll have a cable modem with speed capability of up to 38 Mbps. This cost of this modem is around $100. By buying this cable modem and eliminating the rental cost you will save big money. In fives year you will save $600 in rental costs. This is a 500% return on your investment.

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