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Consider this question about point-to-point networking:

I have two old docsis 2.0 modems and my cable company has decided to force all customers to upgrade to 3.0 or loose service. I hate to have them go to waste and selling them is not practical for me....

I am thinking of trying to make use of these modems as a point to point setup so I could send the signal over the coax lines, of which I have several of substantial length. Coax seems in my opinion much easier to mess with than the cat5 ethernet cables....

I would like to be able to plug one cable modem into my router hub via ethernet, send the data over the coax to the second, which could then be plugged into through its ethernet port with a second router or an old pc without wireless capabilities....

  • First, is this possible to be done right off the shelf?
  • Second, if not, how involved would it be to make it possible?
  • Third, would I be in any threat of legal repercussions for modifying hardware I own for this purpose (I have read articles online of people being arrested for modifying cable modems but that was for stealing services...the objective here would not be to alter my existing services from the company as my modem would only be running in my own loop with my new docsis 3.0 still regulating all traffic to and from my isp)

Is Super User a good place to ask this?

If not, what's a better place to ask it?

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  • Cable modems aren't designed to do that. There is specialist equipment at the head end (the cable operator equivalent of a dslam) that is required to talk to the cable modem. You can't just connect two cable modems with a run of coax and have them talk to each other.
    – DavidPostill Mod
    May 16, 2016 at 21:07
  • @DavidPostill has a good point, the question needs further research to make more sense. May 16, 2016 at 22:18

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I asked a similar question on Meta a few years ago, discussing whether or not home networking questions were on-topic, and we came to the conclusion it was. A good example of a good on-topic question like this can be seen here.

Of all the SE sites, I feel Super User is probably the most on-topic for that question. It may benefit from being worded a little better, and perhaps a diagram of what is trying to be achieved could help out as well.

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The first place to visit is the tour. The next thing to look at is the help center article What topics can I ask about here?, which includes in the list of on-topic subjects:

  • personal and home computer networking

The question was migrated from Theoretical Computer Science to Server Fault, where it was closed as being not about business systems. Evidently, they consider it a home networking question, and such questions are on-topic here.

However, the poster definitely needs to narrow down the scope of the question before asking it here. We don't deal with legal issues (since they vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and aren't really about computing). Also, it's much better to ask how to do something than how challenging something would be. To help the poster, we'd need to see what was already tried and a specific technical goal.

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  • Thanks. Note that I'm not the OP.
    – GreenGiant
    May 16, 2016 at 23:04
  • Ah, I thought you might have accidentally created an extra account at TCS. Answer has been slightly adjusted.
    – Ben N
    May 16, 2016 at 23:11

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