Cable vs. DSL ?

[Scrapster]

I'm moving out into the real world (well, shared housing near my school). And I'll be kissing goodbye my ethernet connection in the dorms. So I'm probably going to be introduced to either cable or dsl shortly. Which do you prefer? Are there pros and cons to either? I will definately be having roommates and I already have a router so we could split the connections. I don't know if this would hinder one more than the other though.

Any suggestions?

 

[RossMAN]

Here's a similar thread just below yours which talks about cable and DSL.

I prefer cable here in Portland, Oregon because it's fast and cheap, plain and simple.

It all depends on where you live, the cable or DSL provider, and which package you get. Can you give us any more info?

If you're asking as a general question, cable rules.

 

[OutlawWolf]

Right now @home 6 mos./$126 is best deal in my location.

 

[shiznut123]

I got cable and love it very much. Low pings in gamesand superfast downloads.

 

[Scrapster]

Seattle. I have no idea if this area prefers either-or. I have a few friends here who use cable and seems to be working great for them. If there is a big price difference I will definately choose the cheaper system. And from a quick concensus, cable looks to be the cheapest so far.

 

[SaX0N]

God damm i wish australia was advanced as america... well, you can get the same types of products, but its just location that screws ya over, and the amount of money your charged...

 

[LordMaul]

CABLE AAAWWWWL THE WAY!



But AT&T sucks fat sweaty rat balls. *shrug*:disgust:

 

[Muadib]

It really depends on who's going to be your provider. For me the choice was cable, and I'm with @home. Yes, their service sucks if you have a problem, but lucky for me things have been great for the most part. For dsl it's Verizon in my area. Sad to say, but they suck. Check out dsl reportsfor info in your area.

 

[KevinH]

It's all location dude. You're gonna get conflicting reports from everybody. My best advice, is to know where you're moving, and ask around the area (friends, etc). Someone can tell you their cable is fine or their dsl rocks, but all in all, it's useless to you since it may not be the case for your area. The only advice which you probably already know is that DSL gives a better chance of having a decent connection while cable, under optimal conditions (few people on your node) is ridiculously fast. In essence, the median dsl speed is probably slower than cable but their is MUCH less variance in packetloss, d/l etc with dsl as opposed to cable.

You should actually tell us were you live, that way someone in your area may tell you their own experiences. Like I said before, me telling you that cable blows by UC Irvine but rocks in Century City is beyond meaningless and is as useless a bit of advice as can be had .

 

[buck]

I work for Road Runner and I have to agree with the others, its all in the location. Some people have insane speeds while others are bleh. Dsl wasnt to bad for me when I lived in Cinci last year, I was close to the node or whatever though.
I heard some dude in Charlotte NC, is getting some oc3 deal for $150 a month though......*drool*. He might have been blowing smoke up my ass though.

 

[cipher00]

Agree with above. Location, Location, and who's got the best deal. More that several k-feet from a cso (central switching office) with dsl and you might as well run a string with 2 pci tin cans. Details from cable help: do they limit speeds, etc. Maybe check out both and see who will give you most of your money back if you cancel and try them first?

Good luck, and happy splitting.

 

[Sundog]

Depend on location. My RR cable puts our T1 line at work to shame!

 

[fir3wir3]

I have both

I use cable for internet and downloads (up to 700 k/s

But it loses packes like you wouldnt believe so gaming w/ it is out of the question...use my dsl for that

 

[BDawg]

I've found that DSL is far better than cable for any sort of hosting. Cable is optimized for download, while DSL (often) is more balanced. I'm getting 768/768 kbps.

 

[mrCide]

Both can either be really good or really unreliable, my options happen to be unreliable.

Stay away from Telocity whatever you do.. the bastards had downtime and now my best connections have gone down to nothing (180k/s to 25k/s) stupid 13 hops to get out of their own network. bah.

 

[MustangSVT]

First, goto DslReports and look for how ppl reviewed dsl or cable in your area, you should also check the available services and the distance from your house to the main co.

From my experience, Cable is much better solution when there is no problem. in my area (north west chicago subs) there isnt that much cable modem user, so i get 3Mb/s down connection. (up is capped at 128kb/s). And i get great pings and not much packet loss. I've been using this serivce for about 7 months and price is usual $40 a month and only bad thing is, when there is trouble (for a month i had huge packet loss 80%) it'll take awhile to fix. And even tho i told them something is wrong on the serverside, they insisted that something was wrong with my computer or the line. And so they replaced the whole cable line coming to my house but guess what, IT DIDNT FIX IT! it was some hardware/software problem at co and now it's good.

Some of my friends tell me that DSL is great but they are usually much more expansive for same speed u get with cable. So, check with dslreports to see how it is in your area.

Good luck.

 

[Spamela]

i have DSL & like it a lot - speed as well as reliability. the only problem i had was non-technical (PacBell tried to charge me for more than 1 installation & couldn't seem to remove the extra installations from the phone bill). my co-workers have cable & definitely aren't satisfied with the service, but don't have any alternative.

 

[dabuddha]

if you're looking for half decent tech support, stay away from @home
my connection went down from over 6-700kbytes/sec to around 2kbytes/sec
and all they say is "we're working on it"
"whats wrong with it?" i ask
"not sure"
they can't tell me when it'll be fixed either
or whether i'll be compensated for the lost day
pretty sad if you ask me but i've been bitter towards Charter@home for awhile now
crappy service + support
I'm seriously looking into DSL myself but the fastest i've seen down here that is reasonably priced is only 1.5 mbps down, 128kbps up
unfortunantly, my cable was faster than that so i'd be downgrading