Well there's this: https://github.com/ucsdsysnet/corundum But that's more intended for optical networks. Useful reference at the very least.

Really, we need more fiber optic everywhere. It's easier to hack on, because cable modems are technically radios, and run into the usual FCC red tape. Plus, fiber is just better.

Our ISP (Spectrum) refuses to work with customer-supplied equipment. Even when I have proven their equipment to be faulty - I still had to wait a day or two for a technician. And having a business account, at least it was that quick. My residential neighbors can sometimes wait up to a week for remedy, and are frequently told things like "check with your neighbors to see if they have service" when reporting service problems.

Eh? I have Spectrum and use my own modem and router... It's even advertised as something I can do.

You both seem to be right. According to [1], residential customers can use Spectrum-approved modem models, but business customers must use Spectrum-provided modems. (I use my own modem with Spectrum too.)

[1] https://www.spectrum.net/support/internet/compliant-modems-c...

I have Spectrum and got really lucky with the one technician I've had. He spent over two hours fixing the faulty cable line from the utility pole to our house, and then another 15-20 minutes on the phone getting them to activate my customer-owned modem (why that's a 20min call is beyond me).

But tbh that's been my experience with most technicians accross ISPs, they're generally nice and willing to fix a problem once they're there. It's getting the office to actually send one out (like you said) that's the issue...

similarly lucky as the other person who replied

checked the spectrum website for compatible modems available on the market, ordered a DOCSIS 3.0 Motorola Surfboard and when the technician came in, he pulled cable across our (admittedly tiny) apartment to where I had all my networking gear mounted to the wall on 3M strips

great experience

the actual internet itself, not so much, but that has a lot more to do with the terrible nest of interconnects in older apartment buildings in New York than Spectrum's upstream network capacity

Good luck with that. I think you’d be better off leveraging an existing open SDR board for the different waveforms these modems support. Even still I don’t think there are any affordable SDRs out there that can support the high order QAM modes of even just the old DOCSIS specs much less 3.0 and above

DSL has the same issue. You can run a PCI DSL modem (Sangoma S518 [ADSL1], Sangoma S519 [ADSL2], VigorNIC 132 [VDSL]) but it either uses a proprietary binary blob for the firmware, or it abstracts the interface to a generic RTL8139 or whatever (which works with many OSes).

The VigorNIC is really just a Vigor130 on a PCI card. It has it's own Linux-based modem/router firmware running on it and you configure it by accessing the usual web interface exposed on the virtual ethernet port.