cable or dsl?

[Gusty987]

You have to understand that with DSL you have your very own pipe directly to the internet, while with cable you are sharing a single connection (node) with your entire neighborhood. As more people get online with cable in your neighborhood, and do more bandwidth-intensive activities like file-sharing, gaming, streaming, etc, your cable connection will degrade, both in bandwidth and in latency. Go with DSL.

 

[3LEMENT0]

Check for price/speed do some research on dslreports.com ... I went for SBC Yahoo! DSL coz of the starting price ($26) and the price I pay for today ($29). I also love the additional stuff I get from Yahoo, I use most of their FREE premium service. I store backup data to the online "binder", use different emails for different purposes, basically I find their free stuff to be pretty usefull. I can play online games with no lag too...... Good luck.

 

[Gunnar]

I think seriously depends on where you live. I live in New York City, in an apartment building. By and large people around here use DSL, simply because there would be so many people sharing a cable connection.

You could use the logic that everyone is on DSL so I can use cable, but they both go at about the same rate, until you hit peak usage, where no one on cable gets much bandwidth.

If you live in suburbia, or a place that isn't heavily populated (with tech savvy people anyway), I think cable is definitely the way to go. Its useless for me, since the only time I'm home is during peak hours.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Jeff7181]

I tell people to chose cable over DSL if they have a choice. There are certain circumstances in which DSL might be better in one area... but for the most part cable will be faster. I've never seen a situation in which the condition of the physical line has effected the speed of cable except in apartment complexes where there's numerous splitters being used. Since DSL runs on phone lines, I've seen more than a few cases where the line quality in the area, specifically old neighborhoods or homes way out in the sticks, dramatically reduces the quality. In fact I had a friend who had the phone company out to find out where the weak link was... and they determined it was the lines coming to his house which were burried under ground. They told him they'd replace them for a fee... so he told them "no thanks, I'll just give Comcast a try" and they tried to offer him a discount since he wasn't getting the full speed and he not so respectfully declined and switched to Comcast, who had just laid new lines in his area a year prior. When I was at his house and tested it on dslreports.com he was getting 3400 kbps down and 245 kbps up... as opposed to 625 down and 64 up with DSL that was advertised as 1500/256.

 

[TwoBills]

Something to think about. If you have a monitored security system, and you get dsl, a security tech. is going to have to reroute your house lines at a cost or $100 - 150. Stick with cable

 

[1sikbITCH]

I've had Earthlink DSL for 4 years. It's currently rated at 1500/128, and I see 1300/120.

I've played UT the whole time. Cable customers were always complaining because at 8PM when we had a match, they had 300ms pings and couldn't play By midnight after their neighborhood went to sleep, they had their 30ms pings again.

If your cable company oversells it's bandwidth, or just plain sucks, DSL can be a great alternative. But if your cable rocks, it'll be faster than 1500 down, which is the most that dsl offers (normally).

Incidentally, Comcast internet has arrived in my area at 3000/256 for just a little more than I'm paying now (since I don't use their cable tv service), and I'm fixing to take the plunge and try it. Where I live I am hoping a lot of people don't have it yet, and I can get a good year out of it before the big slowdown hits.

 

[Kunzinator]

Originally posted by: Connoisseur
errr sorry 3mbit DOWN and 256kbyte UP

Same as I have with my cable, Mediacom, which is double what their speed was last year, and it was still great for online gaming, and unless you are pretty damn close to the dsl station, it would seem that you probably would garanteed to be better off with cable.

 

[Pretty Cool]

If my area had Verizon as an option, I would drop that POS SBC/Yahoo crap like a bad habit. The only thing that is important to me is usenet and SBC's servers are put together using nothing more than 2 cans and a string. Not only are they garbage, they are run by the most incompetent clowns you will ever have the misfortune of meeting.

 

[JBT]

The people on here are funny they all have heard such and such from their friend but never have really experienced it...

Cable and DSL both heavily depend on the provider... I have dealt with Charter and Adelphia for cable co's and Verizon for DSL.

So far I would have to say cable is a bit less reliable though ussually has highier download speeds and costs more. At high traffic times depending on your area you will have to watch out for line congestion which leads to slow pings and slow connection speed. Now this isn't always true. My parents have never been affected by this where they live but where I live I have. Also with cable watch out for hidden download caps which they will not tell you about and will not warn when u are reaching near them to ban you permanently.

For me in the last year with Verizon DSL I have NEVER EVER had a connection problem. I mean look at it this way how many times have you said or heard some else say the cable is out? probably alot of times... which also means the internet is down if you have cable. Okay now how many times have u said or heard said the telephone is out? I personally have never heard such a thing other than in cheesy horror movies... Anyways for DSL it does matter how far away you are from the CO (central Office) or RT (remote terminal) ussually under 12000 ft you are pretty good for speeds and even highier it is really up to the company to decide what speeds you get out that far. I am relatively close to my CO and I get speeds of 1500/384 which is pretty good and later this summer Verizon willl be updating allowing for 3000/768 which is some big time upload speed... I also ussually have pings times of 30-40ms which isn't bad at all. It is also ussually cheaper and does not have any download/upload caps. The company's could really give a crap because you really arn't affecting anyone else.


Generally CAble Co's are stricter on thier ToS ( Terms of Service) IE. if you run a server they will boot you... DSL company's may have the no gaming server in the ToS but they certainly won't boot you if they even care at all... Some campanies offer better support than others and will actually try to help you while other just have a bunch of idiots on the other end of the phone.

I personally think you are asking the wrong question. DSL and Cable have thier strengths and weaknesses both are good technologies and always improving. The only thing that holds them back or pushes them forward is the company's that are running them.

So the real question should be "should I go with cable Co X or DSL co Y.

I recommend going to Broad Band Reports once known as DSL Reports. Here you can research the individual companies and decide for your self from peoples reviews who have actually used the companies that are in your area and may even live in you area and see how they like their ISP. They have alot of information. Forums, speed test, broadband tweaking guides and news. Just please don't go by what a bunch of misinformed people here at Anandtech are saying. The cable vs DSL debate at this forum is about the only thing I think most people here are really idiots about and have no clue what they are talking about.

Sorry to the few of you that have a clue but there are some that surely don't. So go to Broadband Reports and take a look at a few reviews of the ISP's in your area.

 

[Anubis]

JBT, i have ran a webserver off mu road runner line for years and have had no issues, the connection is split between 6 comps,

ive even dled 100 gigs in 3 days and they have said nothing

 

[Algere]

You have to be a chronic DL/UL'er to have them shut your service off.

I Remembered in the news sometime back, Comcast shutting service to a select few because of their excessive internet usage.

 

[vegetation]

Get whichever gives you higher upload rates, especially if you do file sharing. My RR essentially becomes useless when doing 32kbyte/s transfers. The download speed is nice but upload speed is important these days.

 

[txxxx]

Try both. Cable can be good for general overal usage although will suffer if there's too many people on the upstreams, which becomes obvious after tracing to servers from both connections.

 

[1sikbITCH]

I agree with the upload speed being more important. I had 1500/384 for years and both my wife and I could play UT online, while connected to IRC, and voice programs with no problems whatsoever.

Then we moved and Covad had cut upload speeds to 128. Now she can't open a webpage without lagging my game, much less send email or connect to a server. It's horrible. I'm switching to Comcast more for the 256k upload than for the 3MB down.

 

[jhurst]

Originally posted by: neutralizer
cable. if earthlink is available in your area, choose that. i hear they get better speeds, better newsgroups, and cheaper.

Earthlink is the worst company to deal with ever. Their cust. service dep't blows ass. I would use dial-up service before I handed one penny to those fools.

P.S. have charter cable 3mb/384.......get 2994down/340up. VERY satisfied....alot quicker than DSL.

 

[Gusty987]

Cable companies also have "invisible caps". If one month you do a lot of stuff with your connection and transfer 50 GB or more, you will get a warning letter in the mail from the cable co. and if you do it again, you will service will be ended and you will be blacklisted.

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: Anubis
JBT, i have ran a webserver off mu road runner line for years and have had no issues, the connection is split between 6 comps,

ive even dled 100 gigs in 3 days and they have said nothing

Thats why I said generally. It depends on the company. Comcast and Cox would likely boot you for that.

 

[RobCur]

Originally posted by: Gusty987
Cable companies also have "invisible caps". If one month you do a lot of stuff with your connection and transfer 50 GB or more, you will get a warning letter in the mail from the cable co. and if you do it again, you will service will be ended and you will be blacklisted.

namely comcast?

 

[Jeff7181]

The reason they don't want you transferring 50 GB in a day is because that's a dead giveaway that you're doing something illegal. While they personally may not care, they could possibly be held accountable if you're pirating software, music, or movies. Plus, most ISP's don't allow you to host a server on their connection, so if you try to argue that you're just hosting an FTP server with 100% legal content, that's still in violation of the contract.

Oh... by the way, it's impossible to transer 50 GB in a day on a 3 mbit connection

 

[1sikbITCH]

Originally posted by: jhurst
Earthlink is the worst company to deal with ever. Their cust. service dep't blows ass. I would use dial-up service before I handed one penny to those fools.

Actually, my Customer Support experiences with Earthlink over the past 4 years have been nothing but extremely positive except for one occasion, when I had to convince them to call Covad and get my line reprovisioned. Took me 2 calls before a Tier 2 guy finally believed me and agreed with me. Of course, that fixed it.

Other than that, as long as you know what you are talking about when you call them, you can lead them thru the process pretty easily and get everything sorted straight away.

Of course, I switched from Verizon, who hung up on me a couple times, left me on hold for hours at a time, and didn't care whether I had connectivity or not. Anything is an upgrade over that.

 

[Caminetto]

As a frequent user of DSLReports/RoadRunner forum I can tell you there are numerous complaints with TW Oceanic, so you might just be better off with dsl. However I find that RoadRunner in central Ohio is almost unbeatable, in that TW is not only committed to customer satisfaction but giving users 3000 down and 512 up for $44.95 a month. Further they never let a node get overloaded and pings are excellent. Remember too that much of dsl's speed depends of how close you are to the central office.

 

[Gusty987]

Oh... by the way, it's impossible to transer 50 GB in a day on a 3 mbit connection

Which is why you should look closer at what I wrote and see that I said 50GB/month, not day.

 

[JackBurton]

DSL is a pain in the ass if you don't live right next door to the CO. :| With cable, if they can lay a line to your house, you get the full bandwidth (normally). I had DSL and I switched to cable. That being said, I'd NEVER go back to DSL if cable was available in my area. It is just a pain in the ass.

 

[Dulanic]

Originally posted by: JackBurton
DSL is a pain in the ass if you don't live right next door to the CO. :| With cable, if they can lay a line to your house, you get the full bandwidth (normally). I had DSL and I switched to cable. That being said, I'd NEVER go back to DSL if cable was available in my area. It is just a pain in the ass.

Youd never go back to DSL? What if they had 6000/608 vs Cables 3000/256 for the same price? Youd have to be crazy. Also COs arent as important now as SBC and others are adding a ton of RTs. Im over 4 miles from my local CO, and I get 6000/608. Im like 2000 ft from a RT tho.

I would never lock myself into a contract if there is no way out however. Alot of companies do allow a 14 day period however.