Motorola Surfboard Modem

Similar to a telephone modem, which sends and receives signals over the telephone network to a PC, a surfboard modem sends and receives signals over a cable TV system network.

For millions of people, television brings news, entertainment and educational programs into their homes.

Surfboard is a registered trademark of General Instrument Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Motorola, Inc. Motorola is a hardware manufacturing company that offers a variety of hardware products ranging from cable modems, gateways, digital television, audio players, voice modems, and many peripherals and accessories. Surfboard modems are compatible with any operating system that runs on these computers as long as the operating system supports TCP/IP (such as MAC OS, Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME/XP, Linux, and Unix).

Cable TV system networks that use the surfboard modem can provide their customers with network connections capable of delivering the Internet and multimedia services at very high speeds. A computer equipped with a surfboard modem is then connected to the cable TV system network using the same type of hook-up used for a television. In fact, almost 9 million homes all around the world are currently using Motorola cable modems. The SURFboard external cable modems run with any computer that supports USB or Ethernet interface, including PCs, Macs, laptops, and workstations.

Several Geeks recommended the "surfboard modem" so I bought it and it was so easy to connect, even I could do it. All I had to do was connect one end of the Ethernet Cable to the surfboard modem and the other end of the Ethernet cable to the router. Make certain that the plug snaps into the socket on each device and cannot be removed without depressing the clip on the connector. Upload and download speeds are affected by several factors including, but not limited to: network traffic and services offered by your cable operator or broadband service provider, computer equipment, type of server, number of connections to server, and availability of Internet router(s).

Motorola believes the future will bring many more exciting possibilities as multimedia publishers build products that take full advantage of the high-bandwidth environment enabled by cable modems. Soon Motorola will be offering our newest addition to the SURFboard family, the SBG100 Wireless Cable Modem Gateway.