Cable or DSL?

[fusion76]

Which is a better connection to the net,DSL or cable? I just moved to an area where DSL is available and heard it is considerably better than cable. Only difference that I can see between the 2..judging by what I've heard, is that cable has a fast upload time and dsl has a faster download time..up to 7oo something K a second. Also I heard that the transfer rate on DSL doesn't go up and down like Cable..it's one constant speed no matter how many users are logged on. Which one should I get?

 

[Mutilator]

I'm a good person to answer this
I had cable from RoadRunner for the last 6 months up until I moved. The downloads were fast avg about 300KB/sec... uploads were about 40KB/sec (3mbit/384kbit caps I believe). Now that I moved into my own apartment I don't have the same cable company so I had to go with DSL. Just got it installed yesterday and it's running very well. The caps are lower (1.5mbit/256kbit) so the download speeds aren't nearly as fast, havn't had much time to test this since I've only had it for about 16 hours now but from what I saw I'll avg about 150KB/sec. But with DSL things seem A LOT quicker... webpages load much faster.. in fact their loaded and my computer becomes the slow down once again and I'm on a Athlon 750mhz... pings are much more consistent.. before with cable I'd have about 10 sub 100 pings to games and the rest would sky rocket up over 3000 very quickly with dsl I avg about 60ms to most places. I'm about 9000ft or so from the phone company and am connecting @ 1.47mb on a 1.5mb connection which is very good... so far I'm liking dsl better than cable because it's overall much quicker then cable... and there isnt as much latency and packet loss. If dsl is available and either cable is not or they cost about the same price (I'm paying $40/month from bellsouth) then I'd go with DSL. Only downside with dsl is the installation time... sometimes you have to wait weeks.. I had to wait 11 days.. 7 business days

 

[ArkAoss]

hey mutilator, i think you might have made a dsl convert outa me, i'm gonna hafta give it a try

 

[Windogg]

Shared bandwidth like cable can really bogdown at peak times if your providor put's too many people on the same line. DSL is dedicated bandwidth which means you're speeds are guaranteed. Cable is usually easier to setup. Call the cable people and they are usually in within a day or two. There are no requirements beside being near a cable TV line. DSL gets a bit funky, you have to coordinate with your providor and the local telco to make sure you're phone line is ok, you're close enough to a central office, etc. etc.. It can take weeks to get it all going.

I'm on cable and it sucks at times. It doesn't take more than one idiot on Napster, Gnutella, FTP, Scour (R.I.P.), or other bandwidth hog to bring everyone's connection down to a crawl (Whoops.... that idiot is usually me )

 

[Mutilator]

Yeah windogg is right... at night time my pings would usually double if not more as more and more people got home from school/work... and couple that with the problem RoadRunner had with that hop in Atlanta my pings sucked for about 2 months... 600ms+ heh. Welp no more of that... I get the same ping all day long
And before anybody asks NO YOU CAN NOT UNCAP DSL OR CABLE but you can get tweaks for your operating system at places like speedguide.net

 

[AntMan]

It all depends, if your close to a tel co station, witch your dsl access will be routed through, then your connection will be great, and a dsl connection would be much faster than a cable modem connection. If your far away from a tel co station, or just barely in the range to get dsl, then you'll barely ever , if ever hit the speeds they say you will.


I have cable, and have tried to switch to dsl, but the tel co station was too far away. Cable has been good so far, it does bog down at times. Most of the time it's just some person in your neighboorhood node that's running a ftp server and all you need to do is call your cable provider and they will take care of the person hogging all the bandwidth.


I may be wrong on this, but I suggest unless your close to a tel co station that you can get dsl routed through, I would go with cable. To see if your close to a station I think they have some good tools at www.dslreports.com


AntMan

 

[Kanly]

I've had DSL for over a year now in Washington, DC.
The install was a pain mostly because of Bell-Atlantic. Thank God they aren't my provider.

I got lucky with it because at the time Covad was doing installs here, they were just trying to get everything in and not worrying about the details so my 768/384 ADSSL line is really 768/768 SDSL. Get about the max upload and download speeds.

Only problems I've ever had was when H*ll-Atlantic equipment fails in the area.

Also, when Covad hooked me up, they weren't doing interleaving on the circuit. So my ping times to my gateway and game servers are amazing.
Some ISPs have listened to the complaints about interleaving and let you get that taken off.

here's a small list of my Counter-Strike pings, there's a lot more sub-50 ones there:

19 0 209.249.117.95 27016 Icehawk hosted Fx/[ de_aztec cstrike 0 of 16
21 0 208.185.73.200 26000 Teamplay.Net East2 as_oilri cstrike 0 of 14
23 0 209.249.117.95 27015 Icehawks [~] Prophe de_prodi cstrike 20 of 20
24 0 206.161.123.223 27015 Nachos.net Clan UD cs_milit cstrike 4 of 14
24 0 130.167.236.56 27015 [NHG] Joe Who? Coun de_afgha cstrike 10 of 20
25 0 63.248.98.153 27015 Circular Luvin cs_estat cstrike 1 of 12
25 0 63.215.149.2 27015 GameWarrior's 56K M cs_assau cstrike 12 of 14
25 0 209.49.108.18 27015 cybertron.teletran- de_dust cstrike 3 of 18
25 0 198.69.131.17 27015 Playway.net Executi de_nuke cstrike 9 of 16
25 0 216.167.2.72 27015 Pyro CS Server de_train cstrike 0 of 16
26 0 63.90.162.245 27015 [UU] Valhalla 2 COU cs_assau cstrike 12 of 12
26 0 207.172.7.92 27016 RCN Public CS Match de_prodi cstrike 0 of 16
26 0 216.25.206.91 27015 Playway.net Air Can cs_milit cstrike 0 of 16
27 0 216.254.95.10 27022 GameSpy - SpeakEasy cs_siege cstrike 11 of 12
27 0 208.241.66.36 27015 [TMF] Swat Server de_aztec cstrike 20 of 20
28 0 209.48.40.245 27015 -Pk- Clan Server cs_milit cstrike 15 of 18
28 0 208.231.27.46 27015 www.natoclan.com (3 cs_offic cstrike 0 of 14
29 0 63.90.162.244 27015 [UU] Valhalla 1 COU cs_italy cstrike 12 of 12
30 0 209.48.42.18 27015 Reverend's CS *7.1* cs_italy cstrike 6 of 13
30 0 136.142.56.66 27015 Counter-Strike 1.0 cs_backa cstrike 0 of 16
30 0 207.168.74.150 27015 [SC]SniperCutter's cs_siege cstrike 0 of 12
30 0 198.82.107.48 27015 Ulozas@payne's DANK cs_arabs cstrike 8 of 14
30 0 216.12.89.62 27016 [LM]ClanHq de_cbble cstrike 9 of 20
30 0 208.231.27.46 27016 www.natoclan.com (4 cs_offic cstrike 0 of 18
31 0 198.69.131.24 27015 Playway.net Operati de_dust cstrike 4 of 16
31 0 216.142.108.17 27015 Clan MoB DeeP - Dus de_dust cstrike 0 of 18
31 0 24.147.31.27 27015 BenTheKuno & Slaugh cs_milit cstrike 0 of 8
31 0 128.253.203.149 27015 Maximus de_aztec cstrike 10 of 24
32 0 216.254.95.10 27021 GameSpy - SpeakEasy cs_assau cstrike 12 of 12
32 0 209.61.192.10 28015 GNG's Tourny Server de_train cstrike 0 of 5
32 0 128.103.113.58 27015 Viagra's Zippy serv de_aztec cstrike 0 of 8
33 0 128.91.70.169 27016 [KAO]Killing All Op cs_italy cstrike 15 of 20
33 0 128.143.128.239 27015 ClanSIG CounterStri de_vegas cstrike 17 of 20
33 0 24.147.26.113 27016 [E=mc2] Dog Pound de_dust cstrike 7 of 12
33 0 198.138.221.64 27016 Domain of DEATH! [D cs_backa cstrike 6 of 16
33 0 209.100.20.7 27015 #1 Quik 1.0 Counter cs_assau cstrike 8 of 10
33 0 207.29.192.102 27015 Elite Forces [EF] C de_nuke cstrike 15 of 18
33 0 24.48.94.62 1025 USMC Server Toms Ri as_oilri cstrike 0 of 20
34 0 205.229.76.160 27015 Counterstrike @ ugo de_jeepa cstrike 0 of 24
34 0 198.45.22.8 27015 [DOA] Counterstrike cs_milit cstrike 14 of 16
34 0 24.128.190.78 27016 NETWORK GEEKS Count cs_milit cstrike 0 of 20

 

[Daniel]

Wow 1.5 megs/sec 9000ft away from the CO is really good, I'm like 11,000 feet and the fastest I could get was 384/384, which was really about a max of 250-290s. I just got @home, no contract to check it out, as long as too many people don't subscribe here I should be good, it's cheaper than my dsl was and I'm getting about 3 megs/sec down and about 1-1.5 up, they said it was capped at 128k but it's not for me and I'm surely not going to call and ask about it. Alot depends on your distances, your providers, etc, some people have had good luck with verizon but until reciently here you got 640/90 for 50 a month, pretty steep considering what some others pay.

 

[pulse8]

Well, I've got RoadRunner cable here in LA and I've seen PacBell's DSL service. If those happen to be your choices, I would go with the cable. I've never really noticed a slow down at night from a lot of people being on. I'm not sure what the average ping is, but I don't play games online all that often so I'm not that concerned with it. As for PacBell DSL. The place where I work has this. It is HORRIBLE service. They often times can't connect to web sites. When they do, it downloads REALLY slowly and their cap is like 20KB for downloads and I'm not sure for uploads. You also have to use PPOE which makes networking computers and using the same connection a pain.

Just some other stuff to think about. Hope is helps.

David

 

[Windogg]

My original post was kind of general. fusion76, do you have any neighbors you can ask? When I lived in Cambridge for 14 months, cable service from Mediaone/AT&T was near flawless. I only had a slowdown once for less than an hour and one outage that lasted 8 hours. I recently moved and got RCN cable modem and they blow chunks big time. Slowdowns on a consistant basis and 4 outages in 3 months lasting over 8 hours each. Service, whether it's cable or DSL. is really dependant on the prividor, local infastruture, business conditions, etc.. See what the people around you think. If 90% hate their DSL but 75% really like cable, then get cable. Likewise if they situation is reversed.

DSL is not immune to slowdowns either. You might have a 1.5M/384K but a slow router in your path can bog down you connection to dialup speeds. You have a big pipe but if someone like your providor or the people that handles their frame relay service is overloaded, you're not getting you're money's worth.

Just one massive warning on DSL or cable, it's like a drug. Once you get addicted to the speed there is no turning back to dialup. You WILL become a snob and look down your nose at those "unenlightened" people with 56K modem.

Windogg

 

[fdiskboy]

I don't really have a choice as DSL is available in my area and cable is not. I like DSL's dedicated circuit but Cable's faster DL speeds.

I don't think I could go back to dial-up, I'd have a breakdown.

 

[Oyeve]

Lets not forget security issues with cable. Its a shared connection so if you dont have tour PC secured someone can actually hack into your PC.

 

[Doggiedog]

If you really want DSL I suggest you make your decisions quickly because in NYC it takes a real long time to get it. I waited 2 months for Telocity then I cancelled. Then tried Phoenix waited 4 months then they cancelled. Fortunately, I had Hell Atlantic DSL during this whole time. In the beginning, I had a nightmare of a time. One time my line was down for 6 weeks after being up 2 months! HA service has definitely stabilized in my area. Last night, I was having router problems in my area and wasn't able to get on for about 30 mins. After I got on, I was shocked to find my ping rates cut in half. They went from 140 to about 80 in UT. I had never been under 100 before. I guess they were just upgrading the system.

 

[Oyeve]

My Co-op in lower manhattan just switched from time warner to rcn with dsl. They are giving the coops HUGE discounts. Something like 10 bucks a month for three years. they are trying to break into time warners territory.

 

[Wallysaurus]

If both cable and DSL were both going to become available at the same time which would you choose? This is my problem. Both have been scheduled for implimentation in January. I live only 1200 ft. from the switch and there is only about 2500 people in the town I live in so I don't think there will be a problem with over use. What do you think? First available. I' dyeing for broadband.

 

[yathinkicare]

I have had both...

I had roadrunner from timewarner....
service is fast as hell!!!... but can' often loose ip address and there tec support eats dog crap!.

I switched to telocity and got 1.5 down 128 up... but here is the kicker... get a static ip address!!.. yes... makes web hosting fun, fun, fun...

The service and instullation speed at telocity is tops.. they said it would take a month.... had it in a week!!!!!

if you have time warner... do not get cable!!!.. plus you have to get extended basic if you only want to pay $40 for broadband...
check out dslreports.com.... they have lots of info,... later.. hope this helped

 

[Zach]

Cable and DSL are both shared, cable is just shared sooner. Other customers can suck bandwidth with either servie, just that the DSL suckage hits the ISP more directly.. I've used DSL though and ISP that would have slow downs. Not as bad as my cable modem, but all things considered I'm sure that my cable modem provider handles several times the customers.

I do average faster on my cable modem though, and if you are unlucky like me your DSL costs are higher than cable modems. 256k service would cost me $40+ per month, my cable modem is $40 a month and does better than that usually (although there may be a upload limit, I've never checked). Other providers would cost me like $60-$80 for lesser packages too -- hopefully you wont be economically limited like me if there's a good ISP.

 

[IamDavid]

In my expiriences I've found that DSL is more troublesome than cable. Might just be the company though. (Qwest)