DSL or Cable?

[James Bond]

Hi.
I live in a fraternity house with 15 other guys and we've been having internet trouble for a couple years now. We go to school in a very small town that is completely monopolized by terrible ISP's. Generally, there will be a couple of people playing video games, and a couple surfing the web; we don't allow downloads until midnight.

About a year ago we used DSL from CenturyTel (the only provider, then and now). It was either 768/768 or 1.5/768.. something around there. Since the house is being shared by so many people it is constantly lagging, period. Even if there are only a few people on (and nobody downloading), I still couldn't ping better to 90 in any server etc.

Then a local cable company started offering Cable Internet. We picked it up. It was advertised, as their fastest speed, at 3mbps. We put up with disconnects and slow speeds for an entire year, and finally one of the employees flat out told me, "it will never run at that speed, but thats the highest it can go". It's such a small town, I'm sure we're sharing one node with about 500 people.

Just the other day I found that the original company that offered the DSL has now upgraded their speeds to 3mbps/512kbps.

I would love to try it out, but I'm a little worried that because of the upload speed it might not be such an upgrade. Its about the same price.

What do you guys think?

 

[Tsaico]

I would go with the cable company, since you are already having problems with the DSL. You could try to see what other people are saying, though that won't give you too much since you are in a special situation.

But I would also check out your router. Sluggish performance might also be caused by poor wiring, IE high attenuation levels, crosstalk, etc. Especially if it was setup by someone who doesn't do it day in and day out. Check it all out before you completly blame external issues.

 

[MrControversial]

Both Cable and DSL suffer from the same issues. In both cases you're using a shared circuit so at peak hours you won't get anywhere near the advertised speeds. However, in my experience, Cable always offered the best speeds and reliability. Every residential DSL service I've dealt with always suffered from drops due to line noise and just plain crappy equipment. Secondly, Cable modems are easy to come by. You can go into Walmart and pick one up. The same can't be said about DSL. You're usually stuck with the crappy equipment your vendor leaves you with.