Cable Vs DSL

[Outlaw]

I know...the issue has been beat to death. However while just having delved into Napster recently I noticed that cable ping times are about 3X better than DSL on any given time or day. While I am not an expert at all on networking it would appear that it is obvious which is better. (While they have recieved alot of negative press if not for recent events I would not have even tried the program or site out)

 

[LXi]

Just want to add something. My DSL uploads at around 12-15k, and it IS what most other Napster DSL users' upload speeds are. The cable users, I find them generally have an upload speed anywhere from 10k-30k, with most of them in the 20s. I dont know, I guess cables are just superior in both upload and download.

 

[GroundOO]

As I have begun to notice recently, transfer speed is much more crucial than latency in big downloads. If games are your thang, latency is obviously a bigger factor. Judging only by my experinces, I've gotten alot better sustained transfer speed from DSL on things like Napster. (Notice that is downloading From). I myself only have a 56k but this has held true even at my friends house on cable.

Chris

 

[Rza]

get both hehe
d/l on cable
u/l on dsl

 

[RossMAN]

Here's a great CNET.com article, a must read. Remember AT&T @Home is offering free installation ($150 savings) and $19.95 per month for 6 months (resumes at $39.95 per month afterwards) for new cable subscribers, this offer expires September 15, 2000 (next Friday).

http://www.cnet.com/internet/0-3762-7-2643119.html?tag=st.cn.1.tlpg.3762-7-2643119

 

[BigToque]

I've lived on both sides of the fence, and would strongly suggest Cable.

My 960/120 kbps ADSL connection (120/15 KBps) was absolutly horrible. I lived like a block from the central office (the closer the better), and I would have pings of 180+ to everything. thats worse then 56k. I dont think I had a download going faster then 40-50 KB/sec MAX. I had to use some sh!tty PPPoE software to connect to the net (WinPoET), I got a new IP address all the time, and I could not set up internet connectioin sharing at all.

With cable, I get speeds up to 600 KB/sec (usually about 150-250), and my uploads are capped at 60KB/sec. I have a static IP address, It was incredibly easy to install (didnt have to wait 2 weeks+ to get the thing setup, and setting up the internet connection sharing was really easy to setup as well.

I went with ADSL first because I actually believed the stories about cable being slow as hell during peak hours, and that shared bandwidth will slow your connection. Pfft... I was strongly disappointed with my ADSL, and didnt even pay for the month of servive we recieved.

I've been with cable for about 7 months now, and I absolutly love it.

 

[HotDealFinder.com]

<-- ADSL, 1.5Mbit down, 256k up. All my cable buddies wish they had it.

 

[BigToque]

HotDealFinder

I dont want it... I got something better.

 

[Dramor]

My Cable service is 3Mbs(down)1.3Mbs(up) and i love it.

Oh and a 8/9ms ping to gateway

 

[BigToque]

Dramor

I get pings of 0 and 1 to my gateway.

 

[BigToque]

Here's some proof in case you dont believe me

C:\>ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Pinging xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 24.108.126.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=255
Reply from 24.108.126.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=255
Reply from 24.108.126.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=255
Reply from 24.108.126.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=255

Ping statistics for xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

 

[Outlaw]

We have 2 Cable accounts @ the shop and one @ the home residence.
Location is certainly a key factor. The home account is less reliable and often there are outages. The 2 business connections are flawless however they are farther away and seem to be somewhat diminished in performance.

 

[MattStone]

I guess it really depends, there is no definitive answer. I have DSL (768/128)...my uncle has Cable, and he envys me to no end. He usually gets speeds of DL speeds of 35-70kbs, where I get about 85 (at peak usage times) to about 150. I of course only upload at 15 max, but that's alright.

 

[Imannewbie]

My Upload Almost always more then 70Kbps

and My Download Almost always more then 140 kbps

 

[StarCropper]

There are bottlenecks in both DSL and cable connections. I have had cable for 2 years now, and the performance has varied. When I first got cable my connection was excellent; I could connect to a number of quake servers and maintain a ping of less than 50 ms. A few months ago my connection would consistently get really bad between 8 pm and 12 midnight (the pings to my gateway would jump from 30 ms to over 100 ms). Luckily, @home was doing modem upgrades in June. Little did I know that installing the new modem would also result in my placement on a different node. On the new node I consistently get pings less than 10 ms to my gateway, and I now have excellent pings (50 ms or less) to 3 or 4 popular quake sites. I have no idea how long this great connection will last; I guess it all depends on whether or not the congestion levels in my node remain relatively low.

sc

 

[GT1999]

If I were to have a choice, it would be SDSL all the way. All of the surrounding cities in this area have either cable or DSL, but our town (even though it tends to be bigger than some of these others) still doesn't have any broadband, other than ISDN, if you even want to catagorize it as broadband access.

DSL is better for many reasons, but the main plus that I see is that you aren't sharing the same node as you are with cable, so when you're playing online games around 9pm at night, you won't have to worry as much about lag, other than the server you're on.

 

[cjchaps]

I have the mindspring max service. My service is supposed to be 1.5meg down, and 384 up. My average max download is around 150k a sec, and I can upload at around 45k consistently. I have heard many horror stories about DSL setups, and I think it centers around the installers and phone companies being incompetent. I DSL guy did come over, install a nic and the DSL modem in my house, but the moment he left, I basically took everything apart and reinstalled everything myself. I currently have ICS running between, with 3 client computers and a server. I guess the argument between cable and DSL all depends on where you live. I got my install and modem free, and service is 49.95 a month.

 

[pdo]

Do what I did. I keep switching back and forth between DSL and cable. At first I have cable and was into gaming and found that DSL have better latency than cable. I switch to USWEST DSL 670/260. Then now I just got into FTP. Had the same IP for 6 months then USWEST found I'm running an FTP server and changed my IP address and block all my upload packets on port 21. So I'm switching back to @HOME with their free installs and 6 months at $19.95.

 

[bigjon]

It depends a lot on where you live too. Here in Greenville, SC I get @Home cable at &quot;up to 10Mbps download&quot; (more like 2-3Mbps if we're lucky) and a crappy 128Kbps (15KBps) upload, which sucks for servers (which we're not supposed to have anyway). When I first moved here in '97, the upload was unlimited (up to 1.5Mbps)! That was a much better deal, but now so many people are on cable around here I really don't notice a huge slowdown in the evenings though.

 

[WiKKed]

I have a DSL 784/784 which I get about 80K all the time in both directions. Its a very nice connection but I have seen people on cable modems downloading over 600K/sec steady.. which is definitely a huge improvement. The only thing with the cable modems is I've never known them to have good upload times which kinda sux. Also does anyone know if there are routers were you can attach 2 DSL's or a DSL and a cable modem and have it automatically load balance your bandwidth? Does CISCO make anything like this? Thanks.

 

[OneEng]

Stefan,
LOL!

Back on subject, I have cable. When I first got it, my ping was fantastic (20-50) on many sites. Now I routinely have it as high as 100 to my gateway! I am not sure what caused this mess, but would love a way out of it.

My downloads are still very fast. I can usually get around 100KBytes/sec or more from a decent site. I just wish my latency was better. Anyone have a cure?

 

[Dean]

I'll put my dsl up against anyone with cable

i'll out ping them, out download them and out upload them. It has nothing to do with dsl vs. cable...its what your isp is willing to give you in bandwidth. I used to be on cable(5 megabit connection) where i would get good download speed while on the network, but it sucked outside of it. My dsl is a 7 megabit connection and it simply kicks booty...makes my old cable connection feel like a 56k

 

[Dramor]

Ya but what are you paying for that 7mb dsl line.

 

[joshdoe]

Just a little OT comment/question.
Why are rates for connection/download speeds always given in megabits/second? I think that this would confuse a lot of people, thinking that they'll be able to download a 100 megabyte game in 100 seconds with a 1 megabit/second connection. Hard disk space, RAM, CD-ROM's, it's all referred to in megabytes, why not networking speeds as well?

 

[DaveJ]

Joshdoe: I think it goes all the way back to when modems were first introduced... they were advertised with transfer rates in bits per second (150bps, 300bps, etc.) That terminology has stuck with us till now...

I don't really have a problem with it... just divide each figure by 8 to get a true Bytes/sec number...

Dave