modem and ethernet

[pascal]

i have a question that is very dificult to find the answer in the manual. i'm running on linux mandrake 8.1. as i know, there is no usb modem support yet. right now i'm planing to download version 8.2, since it supports usb modem. but i didn't use any old usb modem. my modem is a cable modem (prestige 942e & and working fine with the ethernet card) but connected through the usb port. will it work with mandrake 8.2? or anybody knows other software/distributions that will make it works?

[mdwatts]

It's usually the newer kernels that gets you the hardware support. You can either get the latest distro that has the latest kernel version or just upgrade the kernel on your current distro.

Have you checked the new hardware compatability list for Mandrake 8.2?

[keninman]

I don't know if this is much help but I know that in this area Insight Digital cable are recomending not using cable modems with USB but instead recommending using an ethernet card connection because they were having so many problems with the usb connections even in windows.

[rdeschene]

I'm using DSL rather than cable, however, I would agree with the comment to go the "network card + cable modem" route. USB compatibility in all OS's has been borderline flaky for years and years. I don't know if it's a poor adherence to standards, or what but, strictly from a user perspective, I CAN'T help the manufacturers with that...

BTW, if you only have a free ISA slot the theoretical difference in sustained throughput between ISA network cards and PCI network cards connected to DSL/cable modems is huge. In practice, the difference in performance is minimal while surfing, and even when downloading from FTP the server is often the slowest part of the connection.

PCI is still worth in from a Plug-n-Play perspective, though.