Seriously.. DSL or cable?

[PlunX]

I currently have DSL and I'm not very impressed anymore with it's speed. I usually get a max of 40kbps when downloading and 13kbps when uploading. My girlfriend, on the other hand, has a different DSL service and she's paying the same amount of money and getting around 75kbps when downloading and 35kbps when uploading. I'm paying $40 a month with SWBell. I know several people with cable modems who are getting -much- faster speeds at about the same cost. But, I've also heard a lot of people saying that cable modem isn't all that great and the speed is always varying. What's the real deal with this? Which one is actually better?

 

[blstriker]

DSL varies from location to location. You might want to have your DSL company come and check out your connection. Mine was really slow until they added a big filter on the outside of my house isntead of those tiny microfilters. Things are much better now. Cable is fast, but the speed depends too much on who is on your network and if your neighbors are sitting there downloading mp3's. Cable is shared bandwidth, while DSL is dedicated speed all the time (theoretically).

 

[Zipperhead]

depends on where you live

 

[hungrypete]

I was also capped at 40kps and I talked to my provider, and I was only running at 33% capacity. Now I'm at 66% (about 768kbps+) and things are much better (even ping). It depends on the distance from the switching office or whatever, and the quality and noise level on the line. My MAX would be about 1Mbps, but only in IDEAL line conditions. That's why they set it to 66% to leave a buffer zone. I'm pretty happy with my dsl, all in all. Another good place to check for tips is here. Hope this clears things up a little bit.

[EDIT]
I didnt notice that you with SW Bell. So am I, when I get home I will try and remember to post the phone number to call and try to get your connection speed turned up. Remember though, if weather etc is bad and your dsl wont sync, you'll have to get it turned back down.
[/EDIT]

 

[PrinceofWands]

I don't know much about DSL, but I'll tell you about cable. Cable CAN be very kewl, when it works, which frankly isn't all that often. I have had downloads approaching 800KB/sec (note the big B there ). The average I've seen from my teching experience is around 200-300KB/sec, when it's working. That's a darn good deal for 30-40 a month. There are 3 primary problems with cable.

1. Upload speed is usually capped at 128kb/sec (note the small b there). Eventually all @Home upload will be capped at 128 if it isn't already. It's got two purposes: a: prevent people from running servers. b: reduce upstream noise to the headend.

2. Cable goes out a lot. It depends on your area, many people don't have any trouble. For others it takes 3 months to get hooked up correctly and then they go down every month for a week at a time or worse. I'm with @Homes tier 2 tech support and I've spent 4 months out of 9 either with no service, or with terrible connection, and I know what's going on and how to fix it.

3. There is NO customer service with @Home to speak of. @Home absolutely doesn't exist for the customer, they're there for the money. Now, that's a little simplified, there are other problems (like the individual cable companies trying to run something they don't understand) but it's important that you expect no support if you go cable. Cables rules are terrible, the cable companies are conglomerates with no knowledge or compassion and @Home is mired in so much red tape they might as well not even exist.

Any other cable questions feel free to ask.

 

[spidey07]

PrinceofWands

Amen to that brother. I'll have to throw in my two cents. I absolutely love my cable, get anywhere from 300-700 KB/sec down. DSL just simply can't touch that. Others have problems. But I've seen lots of problems with DSL too (LECS simply despise ISPs)

I did have some problems initially but since the install problems, been running like a champ. @home needs to take some lessons from dell and cisco. These companies did not grow to be the leaders without top notch support. Customers are willing to pay a small premium for best of class support.

cheers

 

[rm]

have dsl pacbell and love it . average 100 kbs. but ranges from 50 - 180 depending on sites . mostly 150 kbs.
they both have positives and negitives ! gues what ever service gives best performance/possitives in your erea !! when gets down to it in the long run is your cable gonna get bogged down by all your neihbors ??

 

[hungrypete]

hey cable guys, what is your average ping? I can ALWAYS find several CS servers in the 40-60 ping range, but never much better than 40. How's cable service compare? Does your ping\bandwidth really suffer during high-traffic times of day?

 

[PrinceofWands]

Well, pings are hard to talk about. You should get around 7-15 ms to your gateway, that's what I've seen averaged although I tend to be about 8 right now. It does fluctuate but shouldn't be over 15 to the gateway unless there is a problem. The problem is that the pings are only relevant on the @Home network. If you want to talk about pings to outside servers then there is no average at all, it varies widely and @Home will not discuss it with you.

 

[GT578]

Just like zipperhead said...its all about location. I have Bellsouth DSL....I get 1.2Mbps download/238kbps upload....when testing at dslreports.com. Speed varies slightly throughout the day. I wouldn't say one is better than the other...just pick whatever is fastest in your area...

 

[Kingofcomputer]

If your location can't get DSL at 1.5Mbps for $40, forget about DSL.
You could try Cable, if you're lucky, nobody else is using Cable in your apt complex, you could get 10-20Mbps.

 

[Quickfingerz]

DSL 1.5mbps/384kbps is better than cable.

 

[Pnklytnyng]

jeez. . .idonno about you guys, but my cable never goes out, and i have @home in NJ. . . .my ul speed is generally around 120k/s (not kbps, k/s) . . .and that's in real life. ..pretty good considering the max is supposed to be 128k/s . . .downloading. . .usually around 5-800k/s. . .with a prog called download accelerator. . .there are probably a whole bunch of other clones out there, but i guess this one is pretty good. . .

DownloadAccelerator

it gets like 4-7 connections to a site at a time, and then downloads the file. . .when all 4-7 parts are on the comp, it merges them together on your HD. . .real nice. . .

 

[kw3i]

if you can afford sdsl get it.

 

[Fingers]

In my experience with hampton roads virginia. cable is better around here. verizon just plain sucks, so you are probably going to have to ask people who live in your area for the best answer.

 

[Raptors]

PrincesOfWands

In My Area, They now are digging DSL Wiring and be ready around in Spring Quarter even the at Same Time Comcast@Home putting wiring really faster than Dsl Wiring underground.

Did asked them when Will this Comcast be ready and said in March in
My Area. Ok But Did research it on DSLReports and said @Home does a terribly problem on E-mail down in some way Otherwise RoadRunner Cable ISP as I hear they are happy and satisfy their service. I a pretty stuck on Comcast no luck on Roadrunner ? Will it to be advise me in a way possible a better Router , MOdem not on usb Modem .

 

[PrinceofWands]

Well @Home is the worst email in the USA, no question about it. Every ISP is better than @Home with email. I don't know a lot about RoadRunner, other than their satisfaction ratings are much much higher than @Home's. With the Time Warner/AOL merger providing so much more customer base I expect RoadRunner to begin a huge growth period.

Unfortunately there is very little if anything that can be done at the customers side to improve performance. The problems are with the network hardware and company policies. You can have any cable modem you want, but if the company can't keep their servers up then it won't do you any good.

 

[MrDudeMan]

yes, @home is the worst. that is our only option around here though. and DSL doesnt reach me i live though....i still woop up in Q3A and CS! id say its all in your location just like everyone else has said so far... just my .02

 

[DRGrim]

Wait, can someone clarify this for me?
For a while I thought @home was the generic term for cable modems.
While reading this post, it seems that @home and RR are competitors.

I'm on RR and I'm getting 3-6ms to the gateway, although I hardly get over 200KB/s. Is this normal?

Thanks.

 

[PrinceofWands]

Cable modems is the generic term. @Home is a company which leases it's network and backbone to individual cable companies who provide the service to customers. Roadrunner was independant, although it's now been assimilated by the Time Warner/AOL giant.

On @Home I've seen pings as low as 5 or 6 ms to the gateway and downloads as fast as 830+KB/sec, but that kind of speed is very rare. No idea about normal for roadrunner.

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

Got 20-50ms average pings to gateway using MS-DOS "ping" command with Rogers@Home. Downloads are a consistent 100-200KB/s. Never seen it drop below 100KB/s, but my area has just been upgraded when i got on it. Other areas near mine have bad traffic, with low's of 15KB/s.

 

[Scarpozzi]

DSL is better than cable because your using PPP while cable is being shared by you and your bandwidth hogging neighbors... I would recommend DSL anyday over cable, but if your connection is that slow, I would definitely call your provider and tell them that you want some kind of explanation as to why the connection is that slow. I would check what your max speed is on a speedtest site. You can't go by what Napster tells you......heh... You might be downloading from someone with a 40k/sec cap on their uploads, thus slowing your download speed. Look into the price difference. I currently have ADSL at my home and have pulled 1.11Meg. That translates to 10megs per minute. Not too bad. Uploding is about 15-25% of that. I am very close to the CO though. I guess if you can't find a solution, MOVE IN WITH YOUR GIRLFRIEND!

 

[SlickVic]

Cable...no doubt...blows DSL out of the water...I have @Home in DE, and they are great...I get well over T-1 speeds, sometimes T-2 , very few outages...I really never see much of a slowdown.

I just ran a speed test on dslreports to a CA backbone (Megapath)...results below:


Test running..........
** Speed 2913(down)/826(up) kbps **
(At least 58 times faster than a 56k modem)
Finish.

$39.99/month...I rest my case.