PSX5Central
Non Gaming Discussions => Off-Topic => Topic started by: GigaShadow on May 20, 2003, 06:59:15 AM
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I now have the option to get DSL and I currently have a cable modem. The service I get from my cable company is practically non existant. So my question is which is better DSL or cable and why?
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Depends on the speed I\'d guess?
Personally I\'ve had both and have no complaints with either. I\'d just get what\'s fastest - or more stable, if that\'s a concern of yours.
Should the speed be the same I think I\'d prefer DSL because it\'s bandwith isn\'t limited by other users as cable can be (though I suspect that the cable solution would be faster overall?).
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I think having consistant latency is the prime concern. I don\'t think there is too much of a difference between the speeds, but when others in my neighborhood get on their cable modems I can tell my bandwidth takes a hit. Not only will this change save me money... because I have to pay for their stupid cable service which I don\'t use (I have DirecTV) - so $40 a month savings isn\'t bad.
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cable > DSL
if you notice drops in speed on your cable, you have a shitty ISP
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get DSL, sure cable might be better but ADSL speed is not governed by how many people are online, if the isp says 1mb, then thats yer bandwidth no matter how many are online (btw some might consider this a disadvantage).
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I have had cable for about a month now and am very happy with it. But I do notice a small decrease in download speeds during peak times of the day, which I guess is the one positive with DSL...you don\'t share the line with your neighbors.
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I have had both, and my current DSL service is far superior to the Cable service I was formerly using. Cable is usually theoretically faster than DSL, but there are problems with it in the real world. My main issue was latency, as you mentioned. The connection would completely hang for about 6 seconds every 5 minutes. That would probably be unnoticable to the average sheeple browsing websites, but for online gaming it is useless. Also, the cable modem would occasionally drop it\'s connection to the ISP for hours or even days at a time.
The DSL service I\'m on now might have a lower upper limit, but it is utterly rock solid and reliable. This ISP has great customer service also. Check out http://www.broadbandreports.com to choose a provider, and read other\'s experiences. My ISP is speakeasy.net.
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when you DSL guys ever see over 1MB/sec download, call me. oh yeah, you won\'t
you guys downloading video\'s from gaming sites or demo\'s from download.com have no idea how download speeds are affected by ISP\'s. download some 4GB images and get back to me.
UNLESS you live right next to the local repeater, DSL service = teh suck
i just read a article in the paper how DSL companies around the country are lowering thier prices to be able to compete with cable
i had DSL for two months cause this was before cable was around,and i quickly cancelled it.
i won\'t be satisfied untill wireless WAN technology rolls out. i feel silly somtimes carrying my laptop around just so i can play vice city when i\'m bored
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DSL quality varies as widely as Cable quality. Cable users don\'t often attain these wonderous 1 mb/sec download speeds either. I\'ve had both, and I remember what it was like. The bottleneck is quite often the load on the server you\'re accessing, and the number of hops to that server, not the speed of your own connection.
The difference is in the quality of your ISP. When you go cable, you usually have one choice, which is quite often shit. When you go DSL, you have a large number of ISPs to choose from. You don\'t have to pay these cut rate prices and get inferior service. You can choose to pay a little more and get a high quality service.
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but you don\'t have several DSL ISP\'s to choose from
you absolutely HAVE to pick one that has a repeater hub geographically near your house. the signal attenuates amazingly the farther away you live
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I don\'t know how it works for those who live in the distant suburbs or among the cornfields, but in central LA, I had a choice of 20 or more DSL ISPs when I selected mine. Some parts of the city are served by SBC (Pacific Bell) and other parts are served by Verizon. Your location in these regions funnels you down to ISPs that are aligned with whichever of the two big carriers, but then you still have a choice of many many ISPs, products, and price points. That\'s not the case with Cable, where specific regions of the city are served by one cable company alone.
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Originally posted by mm
cable > DSL
if you notice drops in speed on your cable, you have a shitty ISP
He\'s right. Although if you\'re ISP is crap there\'s not a lot you can do about it. A lot of times your ISP will put a download/upload limit on your line to try and accomodate more users instead of adding more bandwidth.
If you do decide to use DSL though, don\'t choose SBC. I wouldn\'t do business with them.
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Well the cable company I have now is a "local" company and as I said before they REQUIRE you to have their cable tv as well if you want their internet service. I don\'t need it since I have DirecTV. The DSL service is with BellSouth and when I followed Core\'s link (thanks Core) they seem to have a good track record with their fast access DSL. Granted I think cable "can" get me higher speeds when everything is running right - it is a very rare occurance when it does run smoothly. If you look at my network thread you will see what I mean. Also there are times when my latency is terrible when playing online games. The highest speed I have ever gotten while downloading something is around 60kb a sec and that was a rare occurance. Usually I average around 35k a second or less.
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Yeah, i guess im a little biased, but i agree with mm. My cable experience far out does that of my dsl experience. With my cable modem the speed always generally continues to increase during a download and sometimes my dsl would just flat out below 100k so I think ill stay with my cable. I have had 2 services and at&t broadband bites the big one but my other one is great.
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That\'s what I had.. AT&T Broadband. What a pile of steaming feces.
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Originally posted by Coredweller
That\'s what I had.. AT&T Broadband. What a pile of steaming feces.
Yeah really. They couldnt get a guy out for the longest, they were really slow, they tried to make me use their at&t at home server (shit) and problems just kept popping up. Really crapy.
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I currently have Comcast Cable TV & internet. They suck plain & simple, I haven\'t had reliable internet for the past 4 days. Steer clear. If there were more DSL options with 1.5mbps download I\'d leave Comcast ASAP.
It does depend on the ISP and in my case DSL would be the better option, http://www.broadbandreports.com
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Originally posted by mm
when you DSL guys ever see over 1MB/sec download, call me. oh yeah, you won\'t
Thank You. I have DSL now and the max I\'ve seen it hit in a download is 80kb/sec. It is really good if you primarily just web browse and do regular internet activity, but if you want to download big files it can be pretty lame... But nothing, and I mean nothing as horrid as 56k.
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i think THX said it best
It does depend on the ISP
but genereally speaking, cable is better
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Originally posted by mm
but genereally speaking, cable is better
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Really, "better" depends on your needs. If you need to download 2 gigs of porn every night, then yeah, cable might be better for you. If you need rock solid and stable performance then DSL might be better for you.
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my cable is "rock solid and stable" AND lets me download 2GB of pr0n everynight, oops...i...didn\'t mean the second part :)
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yeah my cable hasn\'t gone down yet since i\'ve had it, which has only been a month. I nearly always download in the 150k - 300k range, falling to the lower end of my scale during peak times. I can never go back to 56k again, broadband spoils me so....
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I used to have cable. Always downloaded at 150k to 300k. They changed the plan so i left it. Now it\'s 500k but with a stupid cap.
Only limit is the server u connect to.
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I have cable and I love it! it goes down about once every 2-3 months for about 2-3 minutes.....and those weather emergency tests knock it down while it is running (that is Time-Warners fault) but it is up in less than 10 seconds after it is over......I am usually over the 1MB limit consistently. it takes about an hour and 10 minutes for 600MB and that is from fileplanet.
:hat:ScottyJ:hat:
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Yea it\'s true, I absolutely love cable when I\'m downloading multiple things in the afternoon at 335kb/sec for my biggest download. However when it\'s late at night and I\'m on my clan server having a huge sniper battle in MOH and I suddenly get cut off I curse my ISP to hell. :rpissed:
For me DSL would be best.. I don\'t download entire movies, games, etc... I wish @home was still in business around here, only had 1 dropout after 2 yrs of use, that\'s the way it should be.
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I sit on adls at 2.5 Mbps down and 0.7 Mbps up. The cable I can get here is from a shit company called Telia ;) and they only offer max 1 Mbps for their cable modem users. A company is now offering vdsl @ 10Mbps in Stockholm, Sweden. That is pretty sweet :D
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You smalll Euro countries have all the fun when it comes to real BB, inexpensive and easy backbone to setup. One of the advantages of being a small country.
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I have ADSl and that\'s fine for me, I download at 60kb constant 99% of the time. My ping in Counter Strike is only 20 so I couldn\'t give a shit what cable has, I\'m not greedy and I\'m not loaded.
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i guess i\'m lucky when compared to some of you ADSL users, i get an average of 145k/sec download speed which is pretty consistent, but my upload sucks balls, lousy 12k/sec. i would have bought cable, but it wasn\'t offered in my area at the time, so still using DSL, its good enough.
on a side note, at my parents hotel, we have the "advanced" DSL from SBC, wow, if i test my bandwidth at broadbandreports, i get an upload of 330k/sec, and a download of 5200k/sec, not all that bad ($100 a month service however, free modem and install).
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^
/me heads over to isp building to whoop some ass
100$ is what we pay over here for 256up\\64down :crying:.
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here is mine as of about 2 minutes ago:
1515kb/sec up and 345kb/sec down that is from dslreports.com
185KB/sec Transfer rate
that is on Roadrunner Cablemodem
:hat:scottyJ:hat:
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I have Ultra ADSL from Bell sympatico (canada)
I get 3mb/s down and 1.5 mb/s up all for $35 US($52 can)
As for this useless debate, DSL nor Cable is better, what determines which one performs up to standards is totally reliant on the PROVIDER not the method. Some area\'s cable is bad others it is good. Same goes for DSL
Anyhow I\'d like to see what cable providers are going to do when VDSL(DSLx10) becomes mainstream, cable will just not be able to keep up as VDSL is capable of achieving 30mb/s theoretically which real world has shown to be 10mb/s. They have it running in posh condo-minions, and in the new development area\'s.
now if you ask me over here in canada they have a VDSL network running in certain limited area\'s acheaving 15mb/s not bad considering when it become avalible widestream it\'s coast will replace that of ADSL(same price)
Screw cable!
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I believe they are testing Fiberoptic cable as we speak...
Not sure if that\'s the answer to VDSL or not...
I have been using cable since \'94/95. I was actually one of the first beta testers in my area (Long Island, NY) and when it finally became offically available (I think around \'97 or \'98, not sure) there were tons of problems. I can remember the kaos I had during \'99 and \'00. Constant down times and wishy washy rates. But over the past two years, it is really truly something else. Absolute rock solid, 24/7 servise. Because Cablevision is classified as a tri-state monopoly in terms of overall cable servise, DSL wasn\'t really offered until recently. Pending on the plan you have, the original fee per month was $29.99, but now they increased it to $49.99. So, certain DSL companies are testing waters with offering DSL nowdays....
If you have a choice on DSL or cable, go with cable without question. Unless they offer a higher class of DSL at a very affordable rate, then check into how far/close you are from them. Otherwise, cable is the safest bet 95% of the time.
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Originally posted by jm
I believe they are testing Fiberoptic cable as we speak...
Not sure if that\'s the answer to VDSL or not...
I have been using cable since \'94/95. I was actually one of the first beta testers in my area (Long Island, NY) and when it finally became offically available (I think around \'97 or \'98, not sure) there were tons of problems. I can remember the kaos I had during \'99 and \'00. Constant down times and wishy washy rates. But over the past two years, it is really truly something else. Absolute rock solid, 24/7 servise. Because Cablevision is classified as a tri-state monopoly in terms of overall cable servise, DSL wasn\'t really offered until recently. Pending on the plan you have, the original fee per month was $29.99, but now they increased it to $49.99. So, certain DSL companies are testing waters with offering DSL nowdays....
If you have a choice on DSL or cable, go with cable without question. Unless they offer a higher class of DSL at a very affordable rate, then check into how far/close you are from them. Otherwise, cable is the safest bet 95% of the time.
Yeah i remember when cable was coming out. The service was horrible. We even had cable modems on some old EnergyStar type computers with no more than about 1 gig of memory for businesses(uhg). It had the port where it was actually a cable jack, just like the one in the wall. Now I am more than pleased and my speeds are great. Maybe around an estimated 1.5 meg/s but of course i only really dl at about 130-400k/s. How much are the newer DSL lines (large bandwidth)?