Newbie question about DSL speed / quality?

[mshan]

Yahoo and Verizon have just announced a $14.95/mo basic DSL package:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stori...www/story/08-23-2005/0004092978&EDATE=

I want to upgrade my dad's Dell 8200 (Intel 850 chipset) to use DSL, but will need to add a LAN card. Will any card do or is the Dell finicky about what I can use? Also, are there any cheap but quality brand PCI LAN cards available?

More generally, I've read that DSL quality depends on how far you are from the DSL source / office. If I get a poor signal, does this mean that speeds will be slower than optimal and / or that I will get frequent disconnects from the web?

 

[imported_Kensai]

Any NIC should work nicely.

 

[Valkerie]

No, that's cable, how far you're away from the company, and has less to do with DSL. DSL is actually more revolutionary standardized for optimal computing than cable. In fact, dont' be surprised if you don't see cable Internet companies ten years now.

The 15 USD a month is most likely a scam. That will be for a few consecutive months, and then they will start charging you 50 USD, high likely according to what I've seen with high speed Internet companies, correct me if I'm wrong. Otherwise you make a very long commitment to have 15 USD a month.

 

[mshan]

Are there any software drivers for these LAN cards are should they essentially be plug and play in any Windows computer, irrespective of chipset or operating system used?

 

[gfngfgf]

Originally posted by: Valkerie
The 15 USD a month is most likely a scam. That will be for a few consecutive months, and then they will start charging you 50 USD, high likely according to what I've seen with high speed Internet companies, correct me if I'm wrong. Otherwise you make a very long commitment to have 15 USD a month.

My parents have a one-year commitment for 29.99 per month with Verizon (for 3000/768 service). I believe that's the regular price.

 

[suse920]

Originally posted by: Valkerie
No, that's cable, how far you're away from the company, and has less to do with DSL. DSL is actually more revolutionary standardized for optimal computing than cable. In fact, dont' be surprised if you don't see cable Internet companies ten years now.

The 15 USD a month is most likely a scam. That will be for a few consecutive months, and then they will start charging you 50 USD, high likely according to what I've seen with high speed Internet companies, correct me if I'm wrong. Otherwise you make a very long commitment to have 15 USD a month.

your wring on all accounts. Your distance from the c.o determines how much speed you can get. For instance with verizon if you are under 10000 feet you can get a 3/768 package and over that you get 1.5/384 and so forth. the yahoo verizon deal i believe is 14.95 a month, but the speeds are limited to 700 down. You will need to check on this though. i good place to check out is dslreports.com

 

[imported_Kensai]

Originally posted by: mshan
Are there any software drivers for these LAN cards are should they essentially be plug and play in any Windows computer, irrespective of chipset or operating system used?

If you're running Windows XP, most NIC's should auto detect.

Generally, if you buy a NIC, it will come with a driver CD or floppy.

 

[daftpunkit]

Originally posted by: Valkerie
No, that's cable, how far you're away from the company, and has less to do with DSL. DSL is actually more revolutionary standardized for optimal computing than cable. In fact, dont' be surprised if you don't see cable Internet companies ten years now.

The 15 USD a month is most likely a scam. That will be for a few consecutive months, and then they will start charging you 50 USD, high likely according to what I've seen with high speed Internet companies, correct me if I'm wrong. Otherwise you make a very long commitment to have 15 USD a month.

DSL is affected by distance, but no neighborhood traffic really.
Cable, the more people in your area that use it, peak times you'll experience a slower conenction since you all share it.

Usually DSL you don't want to be more than 3 miles from the CO. I had SNET DSL when it first came out approx. 6 years ago and it was awesome. Ahead of the cable movement in my area, and it was 1.5MB down 256k up, which was great. I lived across a lake from the CO too so I was < 1 mile of wiring away vs. my Friend who lived a few streets down but like was 3miles or so away, I easily had the faster connection.

 

[Ike0069]

Originally posted by: Valkerie
No, that's cable, how far you're away from the company, and has less to do with DSL. DSL is actually more revolutionary standardized for optimal computing than cable. In fact, dont' be surprised if you don't see cable Internet companies ten years now.

The 15 USD a month is most likely a scam. That will be for a few consecutive months, and then they will start charging you 50 USD, high likely according to what I've seen with high speed Internet companies, correct me if I'm wrong. Otherwise you make a very long commitment to have 15 USD a month.

Wow! That's really bad info there.

 

[boomerang]

I'm having a hard time believing that system doesn't have an onboard NIC.

 

[mshan]

It wasn't integrated into this Dell mobo. If you wanted one, you had to pay extra for a PCI slot NIC.

If I get a poor DSL signal, does that mean:
-slower connection speeds only?
- or does that mean that I will get constant, annoying disconnects from the internet?

 

[Hacp]

700 kilobits persecond is around 100 Kilobytes persecond, which is pretty slow, but PRETTY GOOD for 15 bucks a month.

I don't think you will get constant disconnections. 100Kilobytes persecond is still pretty good. I max out at 350 but the only things I DL are fromm BIttorent so 100KBps is pretty much what I effectivly use heh.

 

[mshan]

May I ask how that number compares to 56K dial up service? (is this bits or bytes?)

 

[leading edge]

Originally posted by: Ike0069

Originally posted by: Valkerie
No, that's cable, how far you're away from the company, and has less to do with DSL. DSL is actually more revolutionary standardized for optimal computing than cable. In fact, dont' be surprised if you don't see cable Internet companies ten years now.

The 15 USD a month is most likely a scam. That will be for a few consecutive months, and then they will start charging you 50 USD, high likely according to what I've seen with high speed Internet companies, correct me if I'm wrong. Otherwise you make a very long commitment to have 15 USD a month.

Wow! That's really bad info there.

Coming to Valkerie's defense, the info is not bad. A few more details would have lead to a more clear point, but the info is not entirely incorrect.....

Cable companies try to limit the cable feet per server, so the speed differences you see with cable alone look like a saw tooth. Factors affecting the speed are: the # of customers online at a given time and the amount of servers in that area. For instance, (I'm just making up #s here for discussion) if there are only 5 customers using cable in an area, you'll have good speed/throughput. As more customers are added the speed wil go down, so at 24 customers, your speed has declined quite a bit. Then if 25 is the magical #, the cable company adds another server and BAM! the speed increases because you now have a low # of customers (and therefore low cable feet) per server.

As far as the DSL price/performance/commitment packages, Bellsouth here in the Pensacola area does offer a low introductory price for new customers (normally about 6 months) then the price goes to whatever the regular price is after that. Bellsouth also has 3 different DSL packages all priced according to speed (so you pay more for DSL Ultra that for Standard DSL).

Hope that helps clarify a little.

 

[mshan]

http://promo.yahoo.com/verizon/

I believe this is a legitimate $14.95/mo basic DSL plan, ala what Yahoo and SBC offer on the west coast.

Hopefully, this will trigger a little competition and eventually force Time-Warner to offer Road Runner Lite at $19.95/mo, like they did on the west coast.

 

[Aquila76]

Originally posted by: mshan
May I ask how that number compares to 56K dial up service? (is this bits or bytes?)

You'd compare the 700K DSL to the 56K Modem, both are as data transfer bits. The DSL connection is roughly 12 times faster.
Your 56K modem downloads will show up on screen in the download boxes as storage context bytes (56K modem ~ 6K per second, the 700K DSL ~ 80K per second).

EDIT: I had DSL in the past, but it would disconnect a lot so I switched to Cable. Most of it had to do with my apartment building's old wiring though. I rewired what I could without getting arrested, but it still would dropout and my DSL modem would lose connection. If you're in a house though, you shouldn't have any issues. Make sure you get some kind of trial period though, just in case your speeds are too low or you have dropout issues.

 

[boomerang]

As far as the price increasing over time, my wife has been playing SBC at her office for years now. When her yearly commitment is up and they want to raise her price, she calls and points out the latest deal they have going. No arguments from SBC, they give her the low rate.

Of course, YMMV.

 

[AmberClad]

Your Dell didn't come with an Ethernet port??? I thought all Dells, even those crappy 2400s had onboard Ethernet capabilities.

 

[Aquila76]

Originally posted by: AmberClad
Your Dell didn't come with an Ethernet port??? I thought all Dells, even those crappy 2400s had onboard Ethernet capabilities.

Yup. The old P4 Dell mobo's didn't have Ethernet; even the DIY enthusiast mobo's didn't that early in the P4's lifetime. This box even has RDRAM instead of DDR2, IIRC.

 

[Hacp]

Originally posted by: Aquila76

Originally posted by: mshan
May I ask how that number compares to 56K dial up service? (is this bits or bytes?)

You'd compare the 700K DSL to the 56K Modem, both are as data transfer bits. The DSL connection is roughly 12 times faster.
Your 56K modem downloads will show up on screen in the download boxes as storage context bytes (56K modem ~ 6K per second, the 700K DSL ~ 80K per second).

EDIT: I had DSL in the past, but it would disconnect a lot so I switched to Cable. Most of it had to do with my apartment building's old wiring though. I rewired what I could without getting arrested, but it still would dropout and my DSL modem would lose connection. If you're in a house though, you shouldn't have any issues. Make sure you get some kind of trial period though, just in case your speeds are too low or you have dropout issues.

More like 96 KBps compared to 6 KBps...

 

[theMan]

what SBC did to us, is we got the 1mb/s speed for like 29.95 for 6 months, and then they said it would go up, but they could switch us to 3mb/s for 35 dollars. so thats what we have now. every time our contract expires, they just ask if we want to rejoin and get one of their cheaper deals. its pretty good. however, at the beginning we were getting like 300kb/s because we were getting tons of interference from our phone lines. what we had to do is put a splitter in out phone box, so we only needed 1 phone line, and we used an insulated cable. now we get like 2.7mb/s. also, speed depends on how close you are to the CO station. if you are too far away, you will get a slow speed. fortunately there is one right down the street from us. you can find the distance by going here

 

[daftpunkit]

Originally posted by: Hacp

Originally posted by: Aquila76

Originally posted by: mshan
May I ask how that number compares to 56K dial up service? (is this bits or bytes?)

You'd compare the 700K DSL to the 56K Modem, both are as data transfer bits. The DSL connection is roughly 12 times faster.
Your 56K modem downloads will show up on screen in the download boxes as storage context bytes (56K modem ~ 6K per second, the 700K DSL ~ 80K per second).

EDIT: I had DSL in the past, but it would disconnect a lot so I switched to Cable. Most of it had to do with my apartment building's old wiring though. I rewired what I could without getting arrested, but it still would dropout and my DSL modem would lose connection. If you're in a house though, you shouldn't have any issues. Make sure you get some kind of trial period though, just in case your speeds are too low or you have dropout issues.

More like 96 KBps compared to 6 KBps...

When I had DSL I had a steady 250kb per sec EASY (cause I use to play MMOs alot back in 1999, such as Lineage, and those were 600MB downloads, which only took 30min) vs. my old 56k 6kb and 28.8k 3~4kb.
It all depends on the package. Like I said, 1.5MB down was what I had, and the package really only costed 44.95 a month.

 

[daftpunkit]

according to www.dslreports.com the speed test to the Seattle, WA speakeasy:
http://www.broadbandreports.com/speedte....0;www.broadbandreports.com/1124899633

And this is with my sisters SBC Yahoo DSL in CT. She pays for only 1.5MB down and 256kb up. So according to this she is getting more than what she paid for. Although I question it's legitmacy.

 

[daftpunkit]

can't wait to get back on campus...

 

[valkator]

meh, i like my charter comm. with my 3Mbit download. WHich seems nice and all but the upload (256kbits) sucks bad.