Cox Gigablast

Coaxial cable internet is the most widely used internet cabling system introduced as of today, December 2023. In the first days of my career in internet technology we used coaxial cables connected to what is called a “token ring” network. In a corporate office we had these rings of copper that were large circular devices with ports on them. We ran coaxial cables to each office and/or desk and plugged the coax cable directly into the PC at the time. This allowed many users to print, share files and access server resources.

Fast forward to the internet age in 1998 and the cable news network companies that sold us all television programming figured out that they could use the same cables they laid all over the earth to carry access to the newly founded INTERNET!

Fast forward again to 2023 and you’ll see that the implementation has just grown in speeds, technology and more. Although it’s the oldest type of network it has it’s limitations. Most importantly on the UPLOAD speed from your device to the internet. Typical coaxial internet speeds can boost to 1 Gig or more down that same old cable because of the amount of power being sent DOWN the cable from the cable provider. However, your device or modem in your home only has enough “power” to send signals back to the internet at a fraction of the speeds that can be “pushed” down to your home.

Typical speeds on a coax network are 5 to 10% of the download speeds for upload. For example, a 1 Gig Cox Gigablast network usually only allows 35 to 50 megs of upload which is a fraction of the speed to download. Recently the cable providers have been rolling out speeds of 100 megs on the upload which is still only 10% of the download speed.

But what does that mean to you?

1. You’ll experience fast download speeds for streaming and downloading

2. You’ll have buffering and blurry video being broadcast from your device when on video meetings however the video you’re watching will likely be crisp and clear.

3. You’ll have clicking and unstable audio for WiFi calling because your device is having to work very hard to “push” the video and audio from your device up the slower network.

Sometimes Coax is the only game in town and in those cases you’ll want to invest in the highest speed you can buy affordably.