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Old question, more advanced discussion - Cable vs. DSL

The Sauce

The Sauce

Diamond Member
My DSL is totally fusked up since Sept 11 and I'm being routed through Seattle with horrible latency. My contract is up and its time to decide whether to stick with DSL or move to cable. I would like to hear from people with cable specifically with respect to latency and ping.
Even when my DSL was working well my pings were around 40-50 at best. On my father's system in New York with Roadrunner Cable i got pings in the 20's. I appreciate any input you guys might have on this.
 
From my experiences with DSL, it is not that reliable. I've heard that you have to pay extra to keep from being disconnected every 2 hours, but that's just what I've heard. I am totally satisfied with my cable, my ping rocks, but it is still 13 hops to get from my apartment back to my university, which is 2 blocks away 🙂
 
heh..

i have 6 comps on one cable line.. although they arent all playing UT or serving up FTP at the same time. my regular ping is about 45-60 to local socal servers, and latency is beyond what i expected. i get 2500kbits/~400kbits. i love cable.
 
Well I'm from the ny area too and my dsl was down for 3 weeks, then finally got notice from earthlink that they no longer offer the service in my area. So I ordered Road Runner from time warner cable. I also ordered verizon dsl since verizon has a 30 day money back guarantee. I used verizon for a year before switching to earthlink.

My cable speeds varies from 350kps to 2000kps, while upload stays pretty consistent at 350kps. Verizon DSL I get 710kps and 110kps upload. Pings with verizon dsl were still great even after the WTC disaster. I was getting around 50-80ms ping to my favorite q3 server. While on the other hand with road runner the ping would vary from 50ms to 200ms, depending on the time of day. Later at night the lower the ping.
Since I'm a new Road runner customer I wouldn't know how reliable there service is. Verizon dsl I use to have problems maybe once a month, but it was getting better towards the end.

Right now i'm using Road runner, but I miss the pings I use to get with dsl, or I just wait until really late at night to play q3 😛
 
Oh also, what is the difference between a dynamic and static IP? I mean, i know the actual difference is but what is the practical difference? All i have ever had was static. If i get dynamic will I have to log in somewhere? Is this a hastle? Should I pay more for a static if I'm not serving up web pages and just gaming?
 
I got DSL (on a 5 static IP address plan @ 384Kbps) about 2 years ago and used it for 18 months. It was fairly reliable and had decent speed (about 90K/sec max, about 80K/sec avg).

When my roommate moved out I decided I didn't want to pay for 5 static IPs anymore, checked the prices on DSL vs Cable, and decided to give Cable a try. Unlike DSL, which had a 2 month installation waiting list, I was able to get the Cable installed just a few days after ordering it. I fired up the computer and tried a transfer...WOW! It was 15-20 times faster at downloading than my DSL ever was. I've had it about 6 months and the service has been flawless. Sometimes it slows down a bit (to maybe only 10x faster than my old DSL), but that's not really a problm. Upload speed is about the same as the DSL was (about 70K/sec).
 
Alot of DSL has started to using PPPoE (point to point protocol over ethernet) , which will requires a crappy software interface (like WinPoet) to "log-on" to your internet connection when you want.
Fortunatey PPPoE has been incorporated to most newer routers (if not check for a firmware update, it might be there).

I have Sprint (earthlink) DSL, and a linksys router. I have my PPPoE login info in the router, so the rest of the network is a true ethernet and ther router handles the PPPoE rather than the computers. It's as fast as my buddies RoadRunner cable.

I think it all varies so much that you can't really say one is better than the other withour testing each at the exact location of use. DSL's performance has alot to do with distance from the switch, the farther you go the slower it gets.

 
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