OT: Cable modem or DSL

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Tue May 16, 2006 1:54 am

I have Comcast, despite the bad press, they were the fastest and cheapest in my area (North of Chicago). I've had very few issues with the service, it rarely goes down, always seems speedy. No complaints here, and no one is more surprised than me.

Digi V · Post by **Digi V** » Tue May 16, 2006 3:14 am

subterFUSE wrote:
1. what are you using it for? gaming? downloading? cable usually offers faster up speeds which is good for gaming and uploading files, data on to websites, etc. but if you're using it for mainly downloads like music or media files then you should pay attention to down times which both cable and dsl offer about the same speed.

You got it backwards, man. Cable has much faster DOWNLOAD speeds than DSL.... but often the cable upload speeds are much lower than the DL speeds. This means cable is better if you are frequently downloading music files, or other data. When you see speeds reported, they are talking about download speeds. So a DSL company may claim 1.5 Mbit service... this means 1.5 Mbit downloads. Cable companies are now offering more like 6 to 8 Mbit downloads. This more than clobbers any DSL competitor.

Gamers and web servers tend to run better with faster upload speeds.... and with more consistent bandwidth. As stated before, cable bandwidth varies by location, and local traffic volume. DSL is a more direct link to the phone company, which is less affected by local traffic. In this respect, DSL can operate better for gamers or for servers.... since the upload speeds are typically held constant throughout the day.

I remember when I moved to Florida, I dealt with this DSL vs. Cable debate first hand. Before I moved to Florida, I had a cable modem... but I was the ONLY person with cable internet in my area. The cable company actually had to run lines just for my street, and I was the only person with cable for a long time. My service was AWESOME.

When I moved to Florida I got cable because I had such good experience with it before. But in Florida, everyone in my neighborhood had cable internet. So at 7 PM every night, the connection slowed to a crawl. I switched to DSL for a year or two, until the cable company eventually increased their speed offering to 3 Mbit. My DSL was only 512 kbit... because my house was too far from the home office.

Now the cable company is up to 8 Mbit. DSL is still the same.

going by what is offered here in florida CABLE usually has the faster upload speeds and therefor better for gamers who host games.

what cable company are you with now?

the two biggest providers here offer almost the same download speeds. bellsouth ofers 6 but only like 512 up.

where most cable companies like adelphia offer 700 something up and 6 down.

joe90 · Post by **joe90** » Tue May 16, 2006 1:15 pm

until a couple of months ago i worked as a network engineer for one of the largest cable providers in europe, so have a little knowledge that might help...

cable service bandwidth in some places (Holland for example) is reaching 30mb(down) /8mb up. this is with no changes to the subscribers equipment and some upgrades to hardware that connects the HFC network (i.e the wireing in the streets) upstream to the local internet hubs in each city/location.

If your in an area that still offering what i would refer to as 'low speed' cable access ( 1.5, 2, 4 mb sevices) hold on and wait as the industry is gearing up to offer a lot more services ( digital tv everywhere / tru-streaming video on demand etc), so they will have to change the modulation and coding for devices on there network to keep the technology up to date with the industry marketing requirements, which means they'll be offering these services to normal internet users before too long..

DSLs getting to the maximum possible speeds over 1or 2 pairs of wire - cable modems using docsis/eurodocsis standards seems to keep pushing the speeds up and up...

joe

subterFUSE · Post by **subterFUSE** » Tue May 16, 2006 2:34 pm

going by what is offered here in florida CABLE usually has the faster upload speeds and therefor better for gamers who host games.

I used to be an avid player of Quake 3 Arena.... and so I dealt with online gaming issues a lot.

For gaming, the most important factor is ping time. The lower your ping times, the better. In an action game like Quake, if you want to play at the top of your potential.... you need ping times that are consistently below 100ms. Preferrably in the 30ms range.

While cable offers faster download speeds, and upload speeds... the ping times vary greatly by time of day. I found that when I moved to Florida, I could only play Quake in the morning, or late at night. Around dinnertime, the ping times went so high that the game wouldn't even run. That's why I switched to DSL. The downloads may have been slower, but the ping times were always lower and stayed about the same through the day and night.

But now I don't play computer games anymore, so I only care about download speeds for buying music from digital sites. So now I'm back on cable.

rbro · Post by **rbro** » Tue May 16, 2006 6:38 pm

OK, well I just got off the phone with comcast. Before calling I did another speed test from my DSL connection. 1133.3kbps. The comcast rep says I will get 6mbps through them, although they can only guarantee the speed to the modem. He says that's roughly 8 times the speed I am getting. I currently pay $64.67 per month for 1.5/384 DSL through speakeasy.net. Comcast will charge me $22.99 per month for the first 6 months ($19.99 plus $3 for the modem per month), then it will be $60 per month. They waived the setup/installation fee. Someone will be at my door between 9-11am tomorrow morning. Sounds too good to be true, but I will keep both DSL and cable for a month and compare speeds and if all is good, I'll cancel DSL. I'll keep y'all posted on my experiences. Yow!

rbro · Post by **rbro** » Thu May 18, 2006 4:31 am

OK, got the cable modem installed today and after some futzing around with my wireless router (an ancient original Apple Airport "graphite" base station), I ended up getting a new Airport extreme and my bandwidth test has been showing consistently around 3400kbps, so that's aroujnd 4 times faster than my dsl. So far so good. I'm not sure, but I don't think any of the speed bump can be attributed to the new airport base station. Anyway, the cable will be a few bucks cheaper per month than dsl, so I'll keep both for about a month just to make sure there are no glitches and no customer service/support nightmares and then I'll ditch the DSL!!!

rbro · Post by **rbro** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 9:52 pm

Almost a month into this now and very happy with comcast. Just ran a speed test and I'm getting 2595.4 kbps d/l. That's at least twice as fast as I was getting with DSL and cheaper too. Monday I will cancel my DSL service. So the bottom line for me anyway is cable is mo' bettah......

LarryAW · Post by **LarryAW** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:23 am

I have Cox Cable in the San Diego area and I get between 3,000 kbps and 5,000 kbps d/l. I pay around $29.95 monthly. I don't remember the last time I actually had a problem. It has been years. I would rather pay for Cox Cable than have DSL for free.

Geraldo · Post by **Geraldo** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 5:15 am

I have Comcast and tonight my speed is avg. 8Mbps. Comcast just rolled out their speed boost technology which is supposed to allocate surplus bandwidth to users on an "as needed" basis. So if you click on a large download you can get up to twice your normal speed if you need it. Sort of like speed stepping for broadband. I love my Comcast service and would recomend it to anyone.

eyeknow · Post by **eyeknow** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 5:34 am

I guess I'm just the ol' fogey that remembers dialup......which leads me to these thoughts.

dsl is basically alwasy good........not much clock watching going on there.

Cable CAN be better......but it can be worse too.

Cable companies suck (I just had to throw that in)

If you have gotten good service, that's a really good thing......many people dont