To DSL, or not to DSL...

[Glendor]

I'm currently paying $50/month on (3mb) Cable Broadband. I've never downloaded any faster than 621KB/Sec (corrected: I meant KB/Sec not kbps) from anywhere.

My telephone phone company just started offering 1mb DSL for $17/month.

Any ideas on how much of a speed difference will I see if I switch???? Drastic differences? Barely noticable diffs? ???

I have three PCs in a home LAN, and one Server (running MechWarrior4: Mercs dedicated Server). We do not download movies, music, etc... and only browse the internet, and I play Mech of course.

Should I save the money or will it be a wasted savings due to a huge performance downgrade?

Glendor...

 

[JackMDS]

1 Mb/sec. Would yield a download of 100KB/sec. (800kb/s).

I.e., a 1MB file would take about 10sec. to download.

:sun:

 

[reicherb]

In my experiences, DSL speeds are more like to be the speed advertised.

 

[jack1201]

That's true. I prefer cable modem than DSL. Unless the dsl doesn't have 1 year contract. I hate one year contract.

 

[GeekDrew]

You'll probably see some speed difference, but I doubt that it will be very much, particularly if you normally use your cable connection during peak hours. Cable is shared, so speed drops during peak hours... but DSL is not, and the connection (usually) remains somewhat stable.

I'd go with DSL for the price drop.

 

[Hacp]

Theoretical Max is around 125 KBPS.

 

[TurtleMan]

well depend if u download a lot, if you are browsing the internet, it should be fine.
Plus, the 1mb DSL is the lowest , since you are paying for $50 a month , then why
not pay $30 something per month and get a 3mb or faster DSL connection.
I paid $50 for my DSL line, 6mb down and it beat the crap outta of cable ..

 

[okb]

I've found DSL to be pretty close to the advertised speeds as well. Used to work for a Internet provider so I saw a few people's figures. 🙂 Unless you're at the very fringe of DSL coverage you should be able to get max speed. Here, the "standard" DSL offering is an up-to-3Mbps service, most people get close to 3Mb, it was rare when someone had to have a modified service and even more rare when they couldn't get it (those were fun calls to take). Personally, I much prefer DSL over Cable, the only advantage Cable has is it's raw speed, but that doesn't seem to be the case for you.

 

[Genx87]

Sounds like you are on a loaded node.
I would go with the dsl because it is a 3rd the cost for a little more bandwidth.

DSL tends to be closer to advertised than cable if the cable is in a loaded segment.

 

[Glendor]

If I'm reading this right, y'all are suggesting the 1mb DSL will be potentially faster than my 3mb cable. Using the cable has never allowed me to download anything faster than approximately 600KB/Sec.

I just did another test, and at 10 am CST, a 32MB download from ATI transfered at 600KB/Sec.

I may be switching to DSL after all.

Any final words would be appreciated.

Glendor...

 

[Genx87]

Whoa I thought you said 621Kbps not 621KB\sec

Huge difference there. If you are getting 660KB\sec then DSL wont be anywhere near that.

 

[Glendor]

I corrected the original post to indicate that I get slightly over 600KB/Sec not kbps.

I always considered the download speed on cable to be highly acceptable, maybe even great, so if the 1MB DSL is going to be only a fraction of what I'm getting with the 3MB Cable connection, then I'm not sure it would be a good idea to go with DSL.

What kind of 'real life' or 'real world' download speeds are you getting with your 1MB & 3MB DSL connections?

Not really looking for industry benchmarks here, but actual "I downloaded the latest nVidia drivers at xxx KB/Sec at off peak or peak times"

Can anybody share their results with me?

Glendor...

 

[spidey07]

If you move to DSL you will be painfully slower. If you want real world speeds just take the rating in Mbs per sec (Mbs) and divide by 10 to get Megabytes per sec (MBs) that's pretty darn close.

So 1 Mbs will yield 1000 Kbs or 100 KBs.
3 Mbs = 3000 Kbs = 300 KBs.