Adelphia Communications Corp. has linked up with a new multiport cable modem aimed at users of home networking.
The MSO has certified Valley Technologies Inc.'s ZyXEL P944, a combination modem and router, for its Power Link high-speed Internet service. The MSO based here has targeted the unit for the small-office/home-office market.
Tamaqua, Pa.-based Valley boasted that the ZyXEL P944 is the first cable-modem router with an integrated mulitport hub that can access the "Vendor Specific Information Field" area of the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification cable-modem software.
That, in turn, gives Adelphia control over how many household computers can simultaneously share the broadband Internet connection.
The P944 modem router also lets the MSO remotely control service activation and billing, giving users the ability to add bandwidth with a telephone call. And it can be upgraded to DOCSIS 1.1.
"Adelphia engineering has tested the ZyXEL P944 extensively both in the lab and on the live cable plant," Adelphia engineering department technical manager Ron Vought said in a news release. "We have found the P944 to be reliable, and the feature sets within the cable modem allow us to extend additional services to our customers."
Valley has also started testing a new wireless cable modem, and will begin field trials of a voice-over-Internet protocol modem during the first quarter of 2002.
