I have a net gear CG4500bd and am new to messing with settings and want increased speed +info lots

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eastlospunx7 wrote:

So I just recently spoke with  A family member who said I could do something like check which channels are least used in my neighborhood so as to maybe get a better connection as far as speed .   A friend who was working for century link a while back said that basically with my 50 MB per second connection that I'm paying for through Cox is not my own line so like basically whoever is paying for higher speeds within my neighborhood are basically getting  ripped off in a sense because houses that have lower connections are benefiting from the speed I am paying for ?   I actually do not even know if this is true or how that works at all but she basically told me if I got my Wi-Fi through Century link I would have a private connection .  I understand this is a lot to ask for from any one single person but if anyone has any input or could maybe direct me to literature or videos I would really greatly appreciate it .  

Do a Google search for cable vs dsl and you will find some good, high-level articles.  There is some truth to your friend's advice.  In the last mile, cable is a shared medium.  Some cable providers use the same cable to provide service for as many as 500 homes.  Obviously this cable has limited capacity but cable providers can and do sell Internet service faster than what the last mile cable can handle if all users were active.  This practice is known as oversubscription.  It's like a freeway where everyone can go the speed limit until it becomes too crowded, then everyone is forced to slow down.

By contrast, with DSL, each customer has a dedicated line, typically twisted copper pair (aka a phone line), to the ISP's DSLAM.  DSL doesn't suffer from shared medium congestion that cable suffers from.  It's like everyone has their own private road to the freeway.  The speed is over the last mile is, therefore, very consistent and is not subject to vagaries of your neighbor's activities.  OTOH, user traffic ultimately merges together into high speed trunks in the ISP's network, so while last mile congestion is a factor, the overall capacity of the ISP is important, too.  DSL is considered by many a dying technology.  It is expensive to maintain and difficult to attain the high speeds possible through cable and fiber.  Over the past few years, many telecoms have been either selling off their DSL infrastructure or capping any investment.  

The choice between cable is not always cut and dried.  I used to have 50 Mbps cable but suffered from last mile congestion quite severely at night, so I switched to a slower but highly reliable 18 Mbps DSL service before ultimately getting fiber (yay Gigabit).  But for others who may have access to very poor DSL vs mediocre cable, cable may still be the better option.  Ultimately, you may have to try both services.

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I actually really love computers and coding and to be honest it just is really exciting for me to be learning all of this stuff .  My initial interest was simply wanting to change both of the network names as well as passwords and I would just like to know if anyone can help me learn as much as possible about the security of this  specific dual band router as well as everything else associated with Wi-Fi .

You can certainly Google for wifi security.  I'll keep it simple and advise you to use WPA2 security.  Generally, this should always be possible unless you have some really old Wi-Fi devices.

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I would also like to know how to set up a VPN or if that would even help me in anyway at all ,  thank you guys for your time if you actually read this and I hope to hear back from anyone soon !!! Peace n Love 

Do you want an inbound or outbound VPN?  An inbound VPN allows you to remotely access your home network while away from home.  An outbound VPN connects your home network or, alternatively, device to, typically, a VPN provider using an encrypted session.  Many Netgear routers and router/modems support inbound VPN.  The CG4500BD does not appear to have support.

I hope this helps.