I found this terminology confusing for many years, hope this clarification is helpful:
- “Coaxial” refers to the design of the physical cable (Wikipedia has a better explanation than I can offer)
- CATV refers to “Community Antenna Television”, the first cable systems in the USA, which fed the signal from a shared “community antenna” to homes in areas with poor broadcast reception.
- “Cable” is the generic term for pay-TV and ISP services over coaxial cable
Yeah, the problem is indeed that everyone points to the same general concept but isn't using the same terms which adds to the confusion.
Technically you are using a DOCSIS connection which happens to use a coaxial cable. But not the same cable one as you'd have with CATV because that one didn't have the same ratings. There is also a difference with one-way broadcast and two-way communication where you also need a CMTS for that purpose. And to make it worse, sometime EOC is used which in itself is Ethernet, but not over CAT5/6/7 cables.
However, all of those words are better than people calling it 'the internet wire'.
- “Coaxial” refers to the design of the physical cable (Wikipedia has a better explanation than I can offer)
- CATV refers to “Community Antenna Television”, the first cable systems in the USA, which fed the signal from a shared “community antenna” to homes in areas with poor broadcast reception.
- “Cable” is the generic term for pay-TV and ISP services over coaxial cable