OT: Cable modem or DSL

rbro · Post by **rbro** » Mon May 15, 2006 12:28 am

I'm a long time DSL subscriber with speakeasy.net and generally I've been happy with them, but I've spoken with a few people who swear by their cable modems and it has certainloy piqued my interest. I'm paying $69.95/month for 1.5/384 and I see Comcast has an offer that starts at $29.95/month for the first 3 months and then goes up to $59.85. They claim "up to 4x the speed of 1.5mps DSL" and we all know what "up to" means, but whaddyall think? I don't want to start a DSL vs. Cable war here but I am thinking of making the switch. 2 things. Are cable modem speeds really dependent on who else/how many other people in the neighborhood are online at any given time? And also we do not have comcast cable, we have DirecTV and are pretty happy with it, so I don't know if that makes a difference.........I'd appreciate any guidance, particularly from folks who have switched from DSL to Cable or vice versa.

subterFUSE · Post by **subterFUSE** » Mon May 15, 2006 12:40 am

Cable has become MUCH MUCH faster than DSL lately..... at least in my area, Florida.

My fastest DSL speed when I had it was about 512k download. The phone company offered up to 1.5M, but my house was to far from the home office to get that speed. (With DSL, you have to be within 2 miles of the home office to get service)

Just recently my cable company announced up to 8M download speeds. Needless to say, that's a HUGE difference.

There is no comparison here. Cable is the way to go. I don't know about your area, but I would assume cable is faster where you are, too.

Another point is.... The phone companies here have been trying to enter the cable TV and internet business. They are doing this because cable has been eating away at their business, with cable internet and now VoIP is hurting the phone companies' primary offering.

MrYellow · Post by **MrYellow** » Mon May 15, 2006 3:07 am

Cable you share your bandwidth with everyone in your area.
It's like the old coax networks where u get 10MBit between the whole office.

Whereas ADSL u get your own bandwidth, which is more like a switched
network where everyone gets 10MBit (or 100, or 1000).

So.... If your area has 50 warez kids downloading 5 gig a day.... It'll be
slow on cable. However if you were on DSL then it wouldn't matter how
much the guy next-door downloads you'd still have the bandwidth you paid
for.

-Ben

j0shu@ · Post by **j0shu@** » Mon May 15, 2006 3:14 am

link time!

http://compnetworking.about.com/od/dslv ... ompare.htm

rbro · Post by **rbro** » Mon May 15, 2006 3:37 pm

I ran a speed test over at cnet and got 1118.4kbps from my DSL. Will I really get 1.5mbps from cable? Even if I did, will that be a noticeable speed bump?

subterFUSE · Post by **subterFUSE** » Mon May 15, 2006 3:43 pm

It depends on what speeds your cable company offers...

My cable company offers basic service at 6Mbit, premium service at 8Mbit. Now... remembering that cable speed also depends on traffic volume during peak times, let's say that during a busy period you get half the speed they promise. (I have no idea whether this example is a conservative estimate or if it's realistic) So.... in this theoretical instance, you would still be getting 3Mbit speed... which is more than twice what you are getting from the DSL.

subterFUSE · Post by **subterFUSE** » Mon May 15, 2006 3:50 pm

I just tested my connection:

Test complete. Your connection took 0.841 second(s) to download a 500KB test file.

Your current bandwidth is: 4.87 Mbps (4870 kbps, 595 KBps).

pulsoc · Post by **pulsoc** » Mon May 15, 2006 4:15 pm

I found, for personal use, a dsl was more than sufficient. And that was the bottom of the barrel $30 Verizon deal. That included occasional large downloads and web surfing. If you use a lot of bandwidth, like hosting a server or something, I'm not sure. But I found it sufficient. Even if you should happen to use a peer to peer application, generally the time is comparable (there is a cable modem in the place I live now).

kennerb · Post by **kennerb** » Mon May 15, 2006 4:44 pm

I've had both in my area. Once they put the college on it's own hub cable became the hands down choice. Much faster.

Sales Dude McBoob · Post by **Sales Dude McBoob** » Mon May 15, 2006 5:39 pm

I have Verizon DSL. My ex-girlfriend has Time Warner cable, just for computer- no TV. We live in New York City. Personally, her cable hook-up didn't seem any faster than DSL to me. It behaved much like my DSL line. Sometimes it works pretty well, twenty minutes later it seems as slow as dial-up.

I am not a fan of Verizon. The modem they sent me times out pretty regularly and requires that I power the modem + router off and restart the computer and repower the boxes to get online again. Calling Verizon for tech support is about as fun as a root canal. I've been paying $50 a month for years and it just seems like I'm getting robbed.

rbro · Post by **rbro** » Mon May 15, 2006 6:10 pm

I suppose there's nothing to prevent me from signing up with Comcast cable internet and try them out without getting rid of my DSL. Then I can compare the 2 for a month or so and decide........

BigAl · Post by **BigAl** » Mon May 15, 2006 7:54 pm

I pay $26.95 for DSL from SBC and I receive the fastest speed offered. It uploads and downloads fast enough for me and I don't see why anyone would need anything faster. Besides, cable is like $49.95. and that's almost double what I pay. I think the price is what's important because the service is about the same with all of them.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Mon May 15, 2006 11:53 pm

seems like you ought to be able to get cable slightly cheaper than that - ours comes out to $60.54 per month, including about $13 for ultra-basic TV.

all in all, i've preferred cable to dsl. i like the way it functions in terms of the actual computer workings - just as a permanent ethernet connection, vs. a "dial-up" connection with username and password

fyi

dslreports.com speed test result on 2006-05-15 19:55:26 EST:
5404 / 351
Your download speed : 5404 kbps or 675.5 KB/sec.
That is 10.2% better than an average user on comcast.net

Your upload speed : 351 kbps or 43.9 KB/sec.
That is 12% worse than an average user on comcast.net

PS: Welcome to dslreports.com! Run more tests! see forums

Digi V · Post by **Digi V** » Tue May 16, 2006 12:22 am

all this depends on factors.

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.

2. how far away are you from the dsl terminal? if you're too far then i'd skip dsl.

3. how many people around you would share that cable connection? even though cable usually offers faster upload and sometimes download speeds you gotta figure out how many people are actually gonna be using that connection.

cable modems are usually more expensive, the companies rent out modems most of the time. buying one from the store will cost you about 80 dollars.

dsl companies have them with rebates.

subterFUSE · Post by **subterFUSE** » Tue May 16, 2006 1:43 am

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.