Just when I thought I’d begun to understand a few things about the cable Internet world, I find I must go back to school.  Let me explain.

After reading a post on this forum about accidentally selecting the standby mode on a cable modem, I perused the manual that came with my RCA DCM245R modem.  Please note this modem was not bought from Adelphia nor leased from them.

Among other things, I discovered the manual states very clearly that my modem supports data rates up to 3000 Kbps.  Well, I have run tests by Adelphia and testmy.net that indicate data rates just south of 4000 Kbps, which is the limit of my Adelphia service.

So, why is my modem being so good to me?  Was it designed to accommodate speeds higher than 3000 Kbps, and the manual is out of date or something?  Or, did Adelphia somehow update the modem via their network, thus increasing its top speed?

Two things suggest Adelphia might have reprogrammed my modem or be reprogramming it periodically.  The first occurred the first time my downloading speed jumped from the mid teens to the high 3000s, as measured by Adelphia’s and testmy.net’s tests.  I suddenly lost my Internet connection, my modem was remotely reset (I think), and then my connection was restored.  Suspecting something good might have happened, I immediately ran a downloading speed test and found it to be 3766 Kbps, as measured by testmy.net.  The other thing is an Adelphia analyst thought it could be possible my modem wasn’t responding to changes made to the Adelphia network.  Because Adelphia wanted me to buy or lease another modem from them to run a test, the analyst’s theory was never investigated.