Cable vs DSL

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Thoreau

Originally posted by: Tazanator
DSL- private line from telcom to you

Cable -everyone shares the bandwith ... so if you got a good game going and the neighbor starts Edonkey bye bye ping times.

This misconception is definitely common, but no less inaccurate, or at least skewed.

With DSL you get that 'private line' from your home to the DSL provider. At that point, the line then goes into a pool of every other line, and eventually is bottlenecked by the provider itself.

Cable's 'shared bandwidth' just places that same bottleneck at a different location, closer to you.

True. And from a technology perspective cable has much higher bandwidth at the "last mile" - that last line to the home.

And with good provisioning it is not a concern.

Again, it all comes down to how they built their network and how they manage engineering and provisioning.

 

[Thoreau]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Thoreau

Originally posted by: Tazanator
DSL- private line from telcom to you

Cable -everyone shares the bandwith ... so if you got a good game going and the neighbor starts Edonkey bye bye ping times.

This misconception is definitely common, but no less inaccurate, or at least skewed.

With DSL you get that 'private line' from your home to the DSL provider. At that point, the line then goes into a pool of every other line, and eventually is bottlenecked by the provider itself.

Cable's 'shared bandwidth' just places that same bottleneck at a different location, closer to you.

True. And from a technology perspective cable has much higher bandwidth at the "last mile" - that last line to the home.

And with good provisioning it is not a concern.

Again, it all comes down to how they built their network and how they manage engineering and provisioning.

Definite emphasis on provisioning. It's been a while since I dealt with level 3 NOC support for Cox (back when I had business service) but back then there was a 40-50mbit line running to the local head-end. From there, it would spider out to customers, anywhere from 20-30 per head-end. Even with those numbers, overselling isn't too rampant, and it's only gotten better since Cox has implemented multiple service tiers. Specifically, the cheaper tier, only about $25/month which is something like 1meg down, 256k up (the "AOL Killer") shows that many customers aren't out to suck down bandwidth like us geeks are. The head-end already has X amount of bandwidth available to it, and x number of customer sites to service. If the customers are being capped lower by way of cheaper service plans, that just leaves more headroom in overall local capacity for those of us who want to actually suck down what we're paying for =)


Of course, in the end I'm biased towards cable since DSL availability is so craptastic (even in north-central Phoenix!) around here that I simply haven't been able to try it.

The pricing plans offered by Qwest (and bundled with MSN) are nowhere near as competitive on a price/speed ratio as Cox cable has been for the last 5 years. Right now, for example, a "3-5mbit" (downstream... 896kbit up) line from Qwest runs for $49.99 in the local market. a 9mbit down/1mbit up line from Cox goes for $54.99. No-brainer.

 

[tuteja1986]

well in australia , our primary boardband source "ADSL" is going through an upgrade to "ADSL 2+ DSLAM" which runs at 24Mbits. But the speed depends on how good your copper line is to your area ;( and how far you live from the exchange. But many people on ADSL 2+ at the moment only get speeds uptill 6Mbit average and people that live near the exchange line get 20Mbits +. My friends is on "Internode" exchange and he lives 500meter from the exchange and he can downlaod at 2MB per sec which is awesome for the price he pays "90AUD" = "68USD" per month.

 

[ncage]

Where i live DSL is a HELL of a lot cheaper than cable. 14.99 compared to $40-45 a month. You don't get the bandwith of cable thoguh.....150KB/s compared to 400-500KB/S. Ping times are a lot better on dsl here. In most cases, i don't really miss the bandwitn unless im downloading huge files which isn't very often. I go with dsl mainly for the price.

ncage

 

[konakona]

Originally posted by: igr11
I'm not sure what you mean by "plenty bandwidth we could never get to fully saturate anyway". Of course you can. Just start downloading 3 files (e.g. game demos) at once or download a file while streatming online video. You can quickly saturate your bandwidth. If you're still not convinced, wait until HD video comes to the web. Quicktime HD (H.264) movie clips already tax my 8MBps cable connection.

Cable bandwidth: ~ 9 Megabits/sec = ~1.2 MB/sec (8 bits = 1 byte)
DSL bandwidth: ~ 3 Megabits/sec = ~ 0.4 MB/sec

So with Cable, downloading files and streaming video is a more pleasant experience. DSL is more limited in the bandwidth area. Not to mention that DSL's upload speed is crippligly slow (e.g. uploading photos to own website, sending e-mails with sizable file attachments).

Latency is comparable with both (my current latency is <1ms with Cable).

So, essentially DSL has lower bandwith, static IP (important if you will connect to some secure network over the web), and lower cost. Cable has dynamic IP, greater bandwidth (somewhat affected by network load - 7-10MBps) and higher cost. Choose what is important to you.

Igor

Igor, here is my previous post
repeating myself :

the only cable I have tried in the states was comcrap and it sucks donkey ballz. i wholeheartedely agree about sharing the bandwidth thing, things are almost as good as DSL at around 5-7am, and turns into a mess after 10:00 when everyone crawls out of their beds and at around 4:00 when kids come home from school. it is sooooo routine that i really have to stay up if i wanted to play any games at all.

i just did some googling and it reveals latency is always an issue with cable. would i be better served with DSL? i dont need 20MB/s download (actually, i used to have it once at home) since my downloads are capped at 50kb/s anyway. what i want is a reliable and consistent connetion that doesnt give me packet drops every day and fluctuates like crazy.

no one in our household watches streaming media or downloads regularly. not like it would change anytime soon, i havnt touched anything that might be related to MPAA for years now (and accordingly streamed from US servers with good enough access speed to actually matter) and not planning on doing so in any foreseeable future. i am the only person who ever downloads anything on a regular basis and my downloads are source limited even on gatech's T1 network. I never claimed it is theoratically impssible to fill up the bandwidth, just that no one at our place needs bandwidth more so than the much needed latency. since my game servers are not located in the US, i need every bit of help i can possibly get in terms of latency, and there were more than handful google results suggesting DSL (in general) has better latency, thus was my inquiry. DSL having slower uploads is something new tho, is that true? they do advertise the same speed, my comcast being 256kb/s at the moment. again, i could care less as long as it doesnt cripple my gameplay any worse than it is now. my main gripe over cable is how it gets agonizingly slow during peak times and comcast is unwilling to do anything about it after numerous calls.

 

[SonicIce]

omg 1MB/s? that would own. my DSL seems to be capped at 80KB/s download. forgot how much I pay but i'll get back to you guys. its SBC.

 

[konakona]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
omg 1MB/s? that would own. my DSL seems to be capped at 80KB/s download. forgot how much I pay but i'll get back to you guys. its SBC.

to think i enjoyed 8MB/s~15MB/s downloads over the winter break
my hdd had hard time keeping up copying files from temp folder i had to give it some rest

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: tuteja1986
well in australia , our primary boardband source "ADSL" is going through an upgrade to "ADSL 2+ DSLAM" which runs at 24Mbits. But the speed depends on how good your copper line is to your area ;( and how far you live from the exchange. But many people on ADSL 2+ at the moment only get speeds uptill 6Mbit average and people that live near the exchange line get 20Mbits +. My friends is on "Internode" exchange and he lives 500meter from the exchange and he can downlaod at 2MB per sec which is awesome for the price he pays "90AUD" = "68USD" per month.

Just floors me to see other Countries cranking with ADSL 2+ while we still wallow with crippled orginal ADSL scaled back to 256K for the almighty dollar.

BellSouth Offers "DSL Lite"

The U.S. is so sad.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: tuteja1986
well in australia , our primary boardband source "ADSL" is going through an upgrade to "ADSL 2+ DSLAM" which runs at 24Mbits. But the speed depends on how good your copper line is to your area ;( and how far you live from the exchange. But many people on ADSL 2+ at the moment only get speeds uptill 6Mbit average and people that live near the exchange line get 20Mbits +. My friends is on "Internode" exchange and he lives 500meter from the exchange and he can downlaod at 2MB per sec which is awesome for the price he pays "90AUD" = "68USD" per month.

Just floors me to see other Countries cranking with ADSL 2+ while we still wallow with crippled orginal ADSL scaled back to 256K for the almighty dollar.

BellSouth Offers "DSL Lite"

The U.S. is so sad.

Before you go and spout your consipiracy theories maybe you should read up on telecom in the US and its history. We had the first phone systems, we are the largest geographical area and hence have the oldest infrastructure.

Other countries are small in physical size and relatively new infrastructures = they can roll out faster.

 

[JackMDS]

LOL, I wonder why "No Question" thread turns into 33 posts, and 590 viewed.:shocked:

:sun:

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: tuteja1986
well in australia , our primary boardband source "ADSL" is going through an upgrade to "ADSL 2+ DSLAM" which runs at 24Mbits. But the speed depends on how good your copper line is to your area ;( and how far you live from the exchange. But many people on ADSL 2+ at the moment only get speeds uptill 6Mbit average and people that live near the exchange line get 20Mbits +. My friends is on "Internode" exchange and he lives 500meter from the exchange and he can downlaod at 2MB per sec which is awesome for the price he pays "90AUD" = "68USD" per month.

Just floors me to see other Countries cranking with ADSL 2+ while we still wallow with crippled orginal ADSL scaled back to 256K for the almighty dollar.

BellSouth Offers "DSL Lite"

The U.S. is so sad.

Before you go and spout your consipiracy theories maybe you should read up on telecom in the US and its history. We had the first phone systems, we are the largest geographical area and hence have the oldest infrastructure.

Other countries are small in physical size and relatively new infrastructures = they can roll out faster.

Clap clap clap, another Corporate apologist, congratulations :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: