Broadband: DSL or Cable?
Which Is Better: $29 or $50 / mo ?
by bookmonger - 1/11/05 4:25 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72There are so many variables aside from bandwidth speed. Where I live both are available. Cable is only offered by the local monopoly at $49.95 per month. DSL is available from a couple venders, but the cheapest coincidentally is that of the local telephone company at $28.95 per month.
Economic considerations aside, I personally have a strong disinclination toward the local cable company. They abuse their gov't granted monopoly in my opinion. I would, and did for some time, use a dialup until DSL became available.
I am extremely content with DSL service. In the event I move, I will investigate the available options at the new location. The step-up in speed from DSL to cable is nowhere near as dramatic as from dialup to DSL. Availability of high-speed Internet will be a factor in relocation consideration.
What do you want to do...
by AliciaSimpson - 1/11/05 4:33 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72Cable has very high downstream bandwidth but the upstream bandwidth is generally 128 kbps and can go to 256 kbps. If you are primarily surfing and downloading then cable may be best.
ADSL offers up to 1500 kbps downstream and 768 kbps upstream. SDSL generally offers 768 kbps up and down. If you are telecommuting or doing a lot of uploading, as in website maintance or development, you will do better with DSL.
Of course, if you can get XDSL this matches Cable for downstream and offers 768 kbps or better upstream. This is definately the best of both worlds.
DSL vs CABLE
by cbaumgar - 1/11/05 6:13 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72DSL isn't available in my area, so the other options were to stick with dial up... unacceptable... satellite... pretty costly... or go with cable modem. We chose cable modem offered by Adelphia. Service is reliable and has so far, been uninterrupted. Installation was relatively simple and when I did call the help desk for a minor problem, the tech was patient and well-informed, walking me through steps leading to correction of the problem... which it turns out, I generated. Friends who have talked about DSL have all had problems and irregular service. Hope this helps.
DSL's Freebies
by MannionTm - 1/11/05 6:36 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72I've had SNET dialup since 1995 and their DSL which then became SBC Yahoo! DSL since 2000 and have been very happy with it. Granted it may not be as fast as cable, but I generally get around 1.4 mbps down / 384 Kbps up speeds. It even runs during power outages - the last one my computer stayed on when the power went out due to my APC backup supply. I was surprised that the DSL stayed on as well before I shut everything down gracefully. If I had a 12V car battery next to the computer I could have conceivably kept going, maybe ... The TelCo CO has battery backup and generators, so it makes sense.
The other thing is that SBC Yahoo! gives you a lot with your package. The extra ability to dialup has come in handy a few times when I was working on computers at other's houses that didn't have internet access at all. Also SNET gives 10Mb of accessible web space for a home page or file posting (like for eBay photos). Yahoo! gives upwards of 500 Mb of free Briefcase space (that's a lot of MP3s!) now to new DSL subscribers (I'm going to complain - I want that as well) plus a GeoCities account. Not a bad deal for $27 a month (with the SBC complete phone package) for a reliable reasonably fast broadband connection.
cable isp
by vrrobinson - 1/11/05 6:54 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72I live in a smaller community in southwest Oklahoma. I when I made the decision to go with cable, I has just gone through about 2 months of looking at modems, switches, services, and preformance. When I made the choice for cable it came down to speed and availability. SBC just didn't provide DSL to all of the community where I live. SBC also didn't provide the speeds that cable offered. I was making the move from dial up to broadband. I was thrilled to death when I tried my broadband connection for the first time. It was shocking how fast I was moving between sites. I have ran into only a few problems with my cable isp. I have had cable for a few years now and have only had 2 problems with their service, both times were due to servers going down. Out side of that it has always pretty much screemed. I have now moved to another address and took my cable connection with me. The cost is still a little higher, about $10 dollars a month. I am lucky in one regard. The company I work for has me working virtual officed from my home and pays for my broadband connect.
Is security a factor?
by Pixel80r - 1/11/05 6:56 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72Something many people do not know about Cable is that you share the bandwidth with others. DSL is a dedicated service (dedicated subscriber line) and isin't shared with others like cable is. In the case of Cable, your information is sent over the lines in packets with everyone else sharing that line. Your computer is identified by it's IP and MAC address and uses this information to identify it's packets. As packets move over the lines, your computer is scanning them and looking for packets that it can "read" using the ip and mac addressing and disreguarding any packets that do not match. Now the problem...anyone sharing that cable path can run a packet sniffer in promiscuous mode and collect "all" the packets that pass through and reconstruct them into readable formats such email messages, web requests etc... This enables anyone with the knowhow to intercept and read your email, track your web browsing, Instant messanging, and more...
Keep in mind that this is a very generalized description.
Cable Vs. DSL
by aznrocka - 1/11/05 7:06 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72I have cable by comcast. It's great when the service isn't down. Sometimes its just a reset of the modem that fizes the problem, other times its something with comcast. I have tried DSL and if you'rejust using it to surf the net and stuff then DSL is the way to go since it's cheaper (well in my area it is). In Montgomery County, MD I'm paying $43 a month for cable internet and my cousin is paying $30 a month for DSL. If you plan on downloading large size files then maybe you should consider cable internet since it is faster. Though I think other areas DSL has risen to 1.5 mbps. Here DSL is still 764kbps. In a nut shell, cable cost more but is faster. My suggestion is shop around and compare.
cable vs dsl
by knife - 1/11/05 7:34 AM In reply to: Cable Vs. DSL by aznrockawe'll this might help. take a hame and cheese sandwitch try puting it threw a straw thats DSL
now take same sandwitch put it threw a 6 inch pvc pipe
it will go right threw thats cable. good luck
DSL vs Cable
by watchdog - 1/11/05 7:39 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72Even though cable (broadband) is suppose to be better (and faster) it is dsl that is superior. With DSL we never had a problem with it's usage, always reliable.Cable (broadband) was a nightmare for us. We could not get the email to work right, the support was really poor, in fact at one point we were told that cable was not for email, but for gaming. The same company mind you had these two very different opinions.We have tried two different cable companies and the experiences were very much similar. Each had conflicting opinions about services, options, and executions.While dial up and DSL are a phone function service, They should not dabble in broad band area.Like wise Broadband needs to stick with Television and not mess with phones and like things.Broadband is to cable; like gas is to diesel. They do the same function , but VERY VERY differently.While some can be contributed to operator error, I believe it is unlikely all my fault. Especially since we were trouble free with dsl and quite the opposite with cable. I never crashed with dsl, but off more than on with cable. If I ever put my computer back on line it will be with DSL.Watchdog (Dennis)
DSL or Cable
by sloppypete - 1/11/05 8:13 AM In reply to: DSL vs Cable by watchdogI can tell you live in the States because my sister and Husband who is a marnie in North Carolina has advised me that cable was not working for them either. Here in Canada cable is the best thing because like my self and my friends - we had DSL and had nothing but trouble during peak times and in the wee hours of the morning. Cable is the best.
soon the answer is going to be ADSL2+
by chubukukubu - 1/11/05 8:06 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72they're already deploying it in europe : ADSL2+.
For 30 euro they have 20Mbits down / 1Mbits up, and the package also contains free telephone over the internet, and basic 30 TV chanels over the internet as well (that's right, using the DSL line).
I don't know why this is taking so long to take place in the US... Am I the only one screaming for this ?
DSL or Cable
by sloppypete - 1/11/05 8:08 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72I perfer cable because there are no hang ups - such as too many people on line. I had DSL and it would cut me off at any time of day. For instance I was working at 2AM and it cut me off from my server at work. From ten on I went to cable and never had a problem. You also have better speed uploading and downloading. Here in Canada Cable is better than DSL. All my friends switched to cable from DSL for the same reasons I did. Here you now can download up to 1 G in seconds where DSL doesn't do this.
Cable or DSL
by PhilipScissors - 1/11/05 8:22 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72I have DSL at office. It was the only commercial venue around when we went online. I have Charter broadband cable at home. I find Boadband more robust, especially on download at 3M, upload is still at 256.
Downloads from the internet at home seem to fly across vs at the office, where they come much slower. Both have been very reliable and except for downloads seem to operate about the same!
I have both at home
by glitch - 1/11/05 10:00 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72I have both at home, so I'm in a unique position to judge both. I have Adelphia cable for my cable, 3mbs down and 256kbs up (it used to be 128kbps but they increased it due to pressure from DSL). The cable is fast! It will outrun the DSL any day of the week, although it is shared, I know of at least 2 people in my neighborhood with cable, but they don't seem to slow me down much. However, Adelphia has had more outtages in the past month than my sDSL has ever had in the 2 years I've had it, which is about once or twice. My sDSL is not with my local telephone company, BellSouth, but with some 3rd party company in Miami. I used to have aDSL be with Telocity which got bought out by DirectTV and then they dropped aDSL alltogether, and even then, it was rock solid in reliability and decent speed. I never liked BellSouth, one thing I love about DSL is your ability to choose who you want. You have a lot more options. I'm relatively close to the CO and I've had no issues. My next door neighboors have bellsouth DSL and say it's ok for the most part but their DNS servers tend to go down, or they tend to be slow at times, but that's the ISP's fault, not the technology.
So for awesome speed and quick install (less than a day), go with Cable. Disadvantages are the shared speed, which doesn't really affect much, and you get no options but your cable company.
For good speed reliability, and general overall better connections (my games like it more than cable, less packet loss, lower ping times), as well as the ability to choose your provider, go with DSL. I don't ever recommend the local telco for DSL. Disadvantages is the install time.
A tech once explained to me the technologies on a technical level. Cable is fast, but it's clumsy, it sends the data fast and hard with little to no regard for packet loss and such, it just expects that TCP/IP will compensate by re-requesting the dropped packets. Which is ok, but not so clean. To the naked eye you wouldn't notice it. DSL is a cleaner technology, it's got mechanism's for line speed control and flow control and all sorts of things, to minimize the packet loss, if any packets are lost, tcp/ip will re-request them and all's well. But he said a 3mbs cable will usually not perform as well in sensitive applications like VOIP or Gaming versus using DSL. He said that even an older/slower 128k/128k ISDN is cleaner than Cable. But you know what, I've recommended Cable to many of my clients and they have little to no problems, except the occasional downtime.
I usually say "try cable first, since you can get it quickly, if it sucks or goes down too often, then order aDSL, a month later when DSL is installed, drop the cable modem. Adelphia doesn't require contracts."
I Have Cable
by Zandor - 1/11/05 10:17 AM In reply to: DSL or Cable? by Carrie72i used dsl and cable before but i use cable now i have never had any problems with it i have a 5mb/ps connection
and i love the speed as far as tech support go's i never have to call them as most problems i have had were on my end 'ie' computer or software problems and i fix them my self i like cable becuase i do not have to install any software to connect all i do is hook up the cable modem to my router or my nic and i'm on line 
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