I was told that having cable internet means that the data transmission line is through an entire network of houses. Therefore, everyone on that line has a similar internet speed.

So my question is, should I just get the least expensive cable internet package? Lets assume usage allowance, no of email addresses, etc are not improtant.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Not entirely sure what you are asking.

You'll need a cable modem to connect to the cable company. If you attempted to install multiple cable modems on different cable jacks in the house you would be unable to do so without cooperation from your cable company. They would likely attempt to charge you for one account per modem, so you wouldn't save money.

You're better off sharing a connection from a single cable modem through the house.

To clarify, what I'm asking is this...

Lets say I have Plan B from my cable service which says speeds up to 28Mbps.

My neighbor has Plan C which says it delivers up to 18Mbps.

Based on what I've heard, the advertised speed is insignificant because all cable internet runs off the same line in the neighborhood. Also, the sites' download speeds is limited to their servers which is well under these advertised speeds. Therefore, both my neighbor and I will essentially have the same internet speed. Maybe my understanding is off here, but this is what I have been told.

That is incorrect. Generally the line coming into a neighborhood/house is capable of much higher speeds than the cable company is offering you. It is normally limited by the cable modem, which pulls its configuration down from the pipes. There have been methods in the past for hacking cable modems to install alternative configuration to remove restrictions on speed, but violators are normally caught and life-banned by the ISP.

it's only technically incorrect. if dealing with bandwidth that is being capped by the server he is accessing (like he mentioned), neither him nor his neighbor will see the advertised speed their connections are capable of. if an httpd is running over a 56k modem, accessing it from a t1 will not make it any faster. most modern cdn's do in fact enforce bandwidth limits like this. he and his neighbor will most likely share the same cable pool, and have the same latency and backbone routes for their connections & packets. if all the 2 of them ever did was play poker and browse the same couple large websites, there would be no effective difference in the speeds experienced, despite what comcast might want you to believe.

While customers on a cable loop receive service over the same infrastructure, the ISP can assign classes of service to individual customers, so yes, you will definitely get faster bandwidth by paying more. To clarify what unlurkability stated, much of our Internet access speed is governed by how much bandwidth the server machines are willing/able to allocate to us. However, when fetching large files from fast servers (ex., ISO images/Bittorrent), streaming media, or accessing multiple sites at once (on the same computer, or multiple computers), there most definitely will be a dramatic increase in real and perceived speed from a higher-speed connection. It depends mostly on your usage patterns whether it will be worth the extra cost to you.