This paper presents an experimental testbed to study the noise effect on the performance of the transport layer over Hybrid
Fiber Coaxial (HFC) networks. We have successfully designed and implemented an integrated complex testbed, which is suitable
not only for laboratory environments but also reusable for real-world networks. The main purpose of the testbed is modeling
the residential broadband data network using hardware simulation under several noise conditions and observing the effects
on the performance of popular Internet applications as well as native TCP/UDP performances. A large number of public domain
Internet measurement tools have been evaluated, from which several selective software tools have been used. In addition, new
software has been developed to combine all software and hardware devices. Based on the testbed, we were able to study several
issues of TCP/UDP over HFC networks by making a large number of automatic measurements and analysis. The testbed infrastructure
would be very useful for cable operator and end users for monitoring and troubleshooting HFC networks, and can be effectively
reused for related studies in similar environments such as wireless and DSL.