There is nothing intrinsically wrong with cable / cable modem networks. *ANY* network hardware could have similar problems.

Often, however, there is a significant portion of complex hardware and wiring between you and the cable company, and this has a pretty high likelihood of being the suspect if you're having problems.

Anything in your setup could be causing packet loss, including the ethernet cable between you and the cable modem. The most likely culprit is the coaxial cable, however, or possibly the 4 way splitter. Please note that we aren't experts in *solving* networking issues - we specialize in helping you localize them. The company/organization/individual who installed and configured your cable modem setup is much more qualified to comment on the possible problem areas and solutions that we are.

Also, don't be *too* quick to attribute the problem to the hardware / wiring between you and the cable router. In many cases, the cable hardware doesn't report in with traceroute at all, and the *far* side of the cable setup is the one that is actually reporting in with an IP address - which may be miles away from you. Be sure of the cable topology before making too many decisions based on this.

Be careful, as well, that you don't spend *too* much time chasing something that will never be a problem. 4 lost packets an hour probably isn't worth spending too much time on unless it has a number of the following characterstics.

* If it exceeds 1% of the packets you're sending, then it may be worth investigating (ie: if your interval is 10 seconds and you're losing 4 packets, then this is 1% of your packets and it might be worth investigating).
* You're experiencing other network problems.
* The packet loss rate varies depending on time of day (which likely means it depends on network load),
* The packet loss rate varies based on the weather (if you get higher loss rates when it's wet, then it's probably worth checking in to since these types of situations often degrade over time).
* You have a ton of extra time and you want to spend a lot of it troubleshooting something that may have very little affect on your network performance.

- Pete