I have cable internet. It is one wire that comes in my house, on the end is a splitter, which splits the wire into 2 wires. One is then plugged into my modem for internet, the other is plugged into the tv for cable tv. I am curious, does splitting the one wire divide the bandwidth of the line? Since half of the wire is then used for cable tv? And half for internet? I think this maybe, so should I remove the splitter and use a single line for higher bandwidth? Or is this a rediculous hypothosis. Thanks!

Your modem is much slower than the carrying capacity of the wire. Therefore it is the limiting factor on your internet speed, not the cable. I suppose that the TV may consume some bandwidth, but you won't make your internet connection faster by unplugging it.

That said, the modem isn't really the limiting factor either. What slows down your connection is all the servers and their connections between you and the site you're surfing.

....and the cable company puts a limit on your bandwidth that is much lower than the capacity of your modem. The most I've ever gotten was 274kbps, and the modem will work at up to 10Mbps.

Hope that clears things up.

Absolutely not, TV and DATA are travelling over the wire using different frequency ranges. However, several splits could affect the quality of signal.

274 kbps is your max??? That is terrible for a cable modem, call and complain. I generally pull between 2500-4500 kbps

I only get 50k-100k during day hours, at night I can push a max of 256k. Cable in my town uses 10mb pipes that is divided between everyone in the community, thus, the more people on, the slower the bandwidth.

right toe there Ian, cable is a BUS topology, every one on the same bus shares bandwidth. when no one is on, you have it all and it flies, when every one is on at the same time, bogs down big time.

A splitter doesnt divide the data, it just sends it to multiple sources. Which means your cable tv signal is also being sent to your cable modem, and your isp data is also being sent to your tv. Thing is, they are on different frequencies, the tv doesnt recognize the internet and your cable modem doesnt recognize cable tv signals, so they can work fine even though they are getting the extra signals. Removing the splitter will in no way affect your internet performance unless the splitter itself was causing some sort of interference. Having multiple splitters together can do this, but not just 1.