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Cable Internet bandwith question

T

Tullphan

Diamond Member
Cable internet is here & I have a question regarding bandwith.
I'm not familiar at all with cable internet, but have heard stories about bandwith being decreased as more people subscribe/logon. I also read something in PC Magazine, I believe, where they compared DSL & Cable Internet & tested both in a metropolitan area. They said there was no noticeable difference in speed, etc. I've heard the term "switched & unswitched", but when that question was presented to the installer, he didn't know. He said it was a giant loop.
Can anyone help?
TIA
 
Ignore all the "sharing" myths. All Internet services get shared at some point. Cable just happens to start the sharing closer to where you are, and in fact can actually have greater bandwidth available for fewer people because of that. You just have to pray that the provider doesn't oversell too much.

If you're getting Comcast, cancel now. 🙂
 
Not Comcast...Mediacom.
But in general, all cable companies are crooks, aren't they? hehe
I've got DSL now, but it's $59.95 in addition to my $45ish phone bill. I'm hoping i'll like the cable just as good & cancel both the DSL & phone line & use my cellphone.
 
Cable was great for us for awhile, absolutely loved it. But then it got sold off, and changed hands or was spun off 3 times in 3 years. We finally cancelled when Comcast took over because performance was horrible then, and we didn't want to go through switching email domains yet again and still not be sure we wouldn't be sold again. Cable companies are monopolies, plain and simple.
 
I was on Charter Pipeclog and that pathetic organization is a joke. They are well known in the SE for not providing enough bandwidth to the backbones. Went to Bellsouth and have been happy on DSL. My problem with Bellsouth has been email server issues but that has stabilized in the past couple of months. Like it was pointed out, cable is REAL easy to oversell, it takes some serious talent to oversell DSL. My speeds on BS have been 1200/200 the past couple of years I have been with them.
 
They are well known in the SE for not providing enough bandwidth to the backbones.
Like it was pointed out, cable is REAL easy to oversell, it takes some serious talent to oversell DSL.
Click to expand...

Huh? It takes no more talent to oversell your backbone no matter if its cable or dsl. One doesn't provide magically more capacity than the other for their backbone connections. If you have a poorly designed cable network your nodes can become congested, but it still doesn't relate to the backbone connection. In either case though if you put too many people online without enough backbone bandwidth and you're screwed.

fwiw: in southern illinois charter is awesome
 
I used to work for an ISP using Covad as the provider for DSL services. We went through several periods where certain regions of customers were constantly complaining of bandwidth problems because Covad didn't have enough backbone bandwidth to carry the traffic between the DSLAM and the ISP's network. Covad couldn't get DS3's and OC3's installed fast enough. Then once it was on our network, we had our own issues getting lines installed and running, and getting enough connections to higher tier networks.
 
Originally posted by: Soybomb
They are well known in the SE for not providing enough bandwidth to the backbones.
Like it was pointed out, cable is REAL easy to oversell, it takes some serious talent to oversell DSL.
Click to expand...

Huh? It takes no more talent to oversell your backbone no matter if its cable or dsl. One doesn't provide magically more capacity than the other for their backbone connections. If you have a poorly designed cable network your nodes can become congested, but it still doesn't relate to the backbone connection. In either case though if you put too many people online without enough backbone bandwidth and you're screwed.

fwiw: in southern illinois charter is awesome
Click to expand...

When you go from 30ms to 400ms from Charter's network to let's say.... Level3, that is lack of bandwidth. Packets are queing up waiting to be transmitted. In most cases from Charter that is where the problem was. They would add a DS3 and magically the pings would return to normal for a little while... about a month later it was back to the same old. So yes, it was bandwidth to the backbones.
 
They would add a DS3 and magically the pings would return to normal for a little while... about a month later it was back to the same old. So yes, it was bandwidth to the backbones.
Click to expand...
Okay so they didn't have enough backbone connectivity to the internet. It can happen just as easily with a dsl provider is my point.

Cable: can choke with too many users on a node to the head end, or choke with not enough backbone bandwidth to the internet

dsl: can choke from the CO to the ISP's equipment if there isn't bandwidth, or can choke when there isn't enough backbone bandwidth to the internet at the ISP's equipment

My point was its, just as easy to over sell one service as it is another no matter how the users connect to you, even dialup
 
I have Road Runner in the Midsouth area. 4 months with no problems, 2200Kb/sec consistantly (peak/off peak) down and 440kb/sec upload. The only outage I know of was for 1-2 hrs. at about 3am for planned mantinence.
I love it so far!
 
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