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General discussion

DSL or Cable?

Feb 21, 2004 12:49AM PST

After 6 years of dial-up, my town is finally getting DSL and Cable services. My question is which is better? I only know people who have DSL. They say it is great compared to dial-up but how is it to cable? Thanks in advance.

Discussion is locked

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Re:Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 2:16PM PST

You also need to be aware of who your provider is...
With Cable, most of them only have one or two people in an entire division with any knowledge of how data works. And those two folks are seriously over worked.. but that depends on your cable provider...in rural areas, you're more likely to run into this than in more urban areas...I know that Adelphia has this problem quite a bit...if you need to make some custom configurations and you're running multiple machines, then cable is not the way to go. If you're running servers and need a VPN configuration, and cable doesn't offer a "business class" solution, then cable is not the way to go...if you need to rely on the ISP for technical support...then cable is not the way to go...
DSL is usually offered by one of the local Bells...and in today's day and age, data is all that the do...plus they usually have whole departments geared for business use of their pipeline...
It all depends on what's important to you.
Ed
web/gadget guru

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Re:Re:Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 10:04PM PST

I have to agree on this part about service and their knowledge of the product. I have DSL and have had it for about 7 years and I love it. 2 of my sisters have cable (dsl was not available where they lived) and in my comparison it seems much slower than my dsl. When one of my sisters had Charter come to install her cable and get it running the technician and her had to call me because he was lost and didn't know what he was doing. After an hour on the phone with him we finally got her cable going. (Wonder if I should have sent Charter a consulting bill LOL)

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Re:Re:Re:DSL or Cable?
Dec 5, 2004 9:46AM PST

hmm, this sounds liek th ecomplete opposite to the situation in my province (Ontario, Canada). Rogers, the cable company, knows a whole lot about data, since Digital Cable is all data and we've had it available about 5 years now, about 1 year before it was available at my grandparents Ft. lauderdale, Fla. condo. Cable internet has been available about 8 years here (About 3 years before DSL was avaialbe anywhere in North America, so I would dispute that you have had it for 7 years, it simply wasnt a reality then). Bell Canada seems to have tons of billing issues and bad customer service, but then again Rogers customer service isnt the best either. In my experience it depends on your area and level of service, the avarage speed of cable compared to the average speed of DSL here is noticbly faster, but cable is not as stable speed wise. How difficult is it for a cable technician to install a "digital" (neither DSL or Cable Internet is truly digital both just modulate/demodulate your data onto an analog signal like a telephone modem) cable line? Its the same physical process as an ordinary cable line, and then you just connect it to the cable modem, plug it in to the computer via ethernet and power everything up and instant broadband. No logging in like on DSL.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 2:21PM PST

I have had pleasure the of utilized both, first cable then DSL and now I am back on cable.
Why you may ask? Well cable was and is much easier to set up initially and there is no interference on it with such things as alarm systems.
Also the cable techies seem to be more knowledgable when problems arise (and they will no matter which system you use).
Another thing is that, now cable is faster and will be getting faster yet again.
Jodster

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 2:39PM PST

My best advice, (all be it, the slowest answer to your question) is to hedge your bet for another month or so. Find out what other people near you (preferably your neighbors) are getting from their service. The common element in all of these e-mails is LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION. I'm very close to the central office (wich by the way, is no where you pay the bill, or even alway an office for that mater, it can (and usually) takes the form of a large green box on the street corner). Using any of the free connection speed testing services on the internet I average about 2.5 Mbps (communication) and about 321.6 bps (storage) wich gives me a download time for a 1Mb file of about 3.2 sec. (Witch on the graph is about 75% faster than a T-1). I'm on the ULTRA High Speed service with Bell Sympatico in Canada. Its 59.00 a month and always seems to be on a promotion of one sort or the other. (Because I have my home phone, cell phones, and satelite from bell, I save an extra$20.00 a month, and everything comes on one bill, which is also very hand). Having a back up plan is important though, and like most ADSL services, I can use their dial up service (first 10 hours are free, as well as anytme the ADSL is down, so far (Since I switched in december) that has never happened). And because it's THE phone company in Canada, I can use those 10 hours on my lap top while on the road, using local dial up number everywhere I go. ALSO A PLUS.
I'm EXTREAMLY satisfied with my switch from cable to ADSL (just about everyone in my neighborhood was on cable, and it was starting to show with slower and slower connection speeds.)
Basicly, let your neighbors make the first mistake, the try to learn from it.
Good Luck!

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 2:52PM PST

I have cable and I love it. But I also don't have anyone else on my node, so my connection is extremely fast. I have been this way for almost 5 years now. I have friends with DSL and they have no problems.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 2:57PM PST

I have had DSL for several months now and have not ever had down time. Depending on the computer you have (slower computer always means slower internet, no matter how fast your connections), DSL should be way fast compared to Dial-up.

As far as Cable goes, I have very little experiance. I know my friends often are down but at times they get blazing fast speeds (one friend's record is almost 250 kiloBYTES down!!) Also it depends on the connection speed you pay for. I get 512kbps advertised (always about that also, very reliable) but I know they offer up to 1.5 mbps. Cable is usually about that but they have been offering up to 3Mbps which is close to T1!

You get what you pay for. If you aren't too tech savvy (do you know what an RJ-45 is? How about 10/base T? If you do, you should be fine with either.) DSL is probably better because it is more reliable. I would feel fine about cable.

The DXTRMiN8R

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 4:26PM PST

Hi I am in Australia using cable in Victoria My supplier is Optus and I have had constant supply for more than 4 years no down time ever and 24hour connection cost are $A70.00 a month and 12gig download no upload costs.Cable is 300 to 500 k per second.on a Pentium 4 100 gigabite home PC not having to stare at the screen waiting for info its sensational.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 4:42PM PST

It depends on your system set-up.
Both DSl and cable modem are very fast. However, they can get slowed-down to less than their supposed speed.
I cannot open some .jpg files on my cable modem. One of my sons has great speed on his DSL,but, has problems with some ISP's. I guess if you get a great connection with an ISP, either DSL or Cable modem will download at great speed.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 6:34PM PST

DSL and Cable can both provide high-speed services. However, with, say a 2MB connection (for argument's sake), DSL will always provide you with a 2MB speed connection, regardless of the number of people in your local area exchange using it at the time. With Cable, your local area exchange is allocated, say, a 200MB bandwidth...therefore, if less than 100 people are online and using the cable internet service, you get a 2MB connection (each of the 100 users share 200MB = 2MB each). If more than 100 people use the service simultaneously, then each individual user's connection speed is reduced below 2MB each, since there is only 200MB of bandwidth to share amongst a greater number of users. However, if fewer than 100 people are online at the same time, the speed you get still does not increase above 2MB. Each local area exchange covers only a small area, but nevertheless, for consistent speeds, it's therefore better to get DSL, if available in your area, since it will always provide you with a stable connection speed.
Also, DSL is carried along conventional telephone landlines, and cable along the cable company's own lines, which normally also carry cable/digital tv data.

Hope this answers your question.

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Re: DSL or Cable? - SECURITY
Mar 28, 2004 7:24PM PST

First, allow me to comend you, chumkin, on the clear, concise and layman-oriented explanation. Great job!

Second... has the issue of SECURITY in DSL and cable connections already been addressed in the thread?

To put it simple: AFAIK, DSL is safer...

Let's assume that the both the telco's DSL server and the CABLE local area exchange server are heavy and duefully protected.

DSL: between the server and your puter there's a virtually riskless track -- your single, one and only telephone line.

CABLE: between the server and your puter there's a network line (the "cable" Happy) shared by (to use chumkin's number) 100 neighbours and over...

Leave paranoia away. Your puter invaded and international drug business, terrorism planning or child porn distribution being held from it without your knowledge -- although do happen -- may look too much Holywoodian for us, mid-class commuting suburban citizens.

The point is: while hanging in the "cable" your puter is subject to invasion from anyone with access to the network loop in your local area exchange, viz., any and all of your your neighbours. Do you know all of them?

Maybe the criminal paranoia above is too much... but the 14-year-old puter nerd leaving next door isn't Holywoodian at all! Sad

It's highly recomended that CABLE users spend personal time to implement/mantain and processor time to run heavy shields up full time...

And when security is a high importance issue for your connection, if you have the choice, go DSL.

Ab

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 7:03PM PST

Your choice may be a little more for personal taste than raw power. Cable is a bit faster, yes, but as many have mentioned, beware of the secret capping imposed by some companies. Also beware of the nodes per user. DSL has none of those problems, but has different problems. It may interfere with alarm systems (they don't like DSL's bandwidth "noise") and phone philters on a jack that is wired to the same line, bringing your DSL down to a grinding halt, like 20 seconds to connect, 20-40 kbps down, constant disconnects. This, however can be solved by using a dedicated line to the DSL (no other jacks on that line to the box). As for reliability, DSL is very good. Cable is as well. Now the price. Depending on the service, you might have to pay more for cable. DSL, depending on your company, may be cheap or not, depending on the download speed limit. Like for $30 BellSouth gives you 256kbps down, but for $50 you get 1.5Mbps down. It depends on what you want.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 7:42PM PST

I find cable more reliable and generally faster than DSL. Here in Belgium, Test Aankoop (Belgian Consumer Reports Magazine) also finds that cable is better than DSL.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 10:14PM PST

DSL of course is better then dial up. But without a doubt cable is by far cleaner and faster. However, some cable providers use compression techniques and distorts imagines. Ask you cable supplier if they are using compression.

DSL is proven and reliable but will slow down during peek hours. After it still runs on the phone line.

Okay. Good luck is your choice. I use DSL because cable is not offered. If it was I would switch.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 10:30PM PST

I can't respond for all areas in the country, but i can say that in the South East (i.e. the Bell South DSL service area) there is no comparison between DSL or Cable. Cable is by far more reliable, has better customer service, and is usually twice as fast as DSL for the same amount of money. I have customers who have had both and those that have switched to cable can't believe they ever wasted their time on DSL. I have never had someone switch back from cable to DSL.
I hope this helps in your decision.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 10:31PM PST

I had Cable for two years and loved it. I fell for the DSL trick that said it was faster then Cable and switched. I discovered that actual download speeds were barely 62 megabytes/second. DSL max is only 80. Notice I used megabytes instead of megabits. There is 8 bits to a byte. I switched back to cable, three years ago, and always get download speeds over 150 megabytes and most of the time get over 250 with hardly any dropped packets. I use comcast cable. I don't necessarily care for the company but I put up with them. As for ISP's, some are better than others but never use AOL. You'll never get them off your hard drive and they are the worst for driveby downloads.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 28, 2004 10:45PM PST

I have Roadrunner cable and a buddy has SBC dsl. In short, I smoke him. 3x faster and better customer support, but his dsl is $10 a month cheaper. My cable is down 1-2 hours a week for maintenance, his is down when the sweeper, blender or any electric motor interferes.( line filter recommended ) always up otherwise. Roadrunner allocates plenty of bandwidth for my area ( lots of users in my area ), I get 2880kbps down (actual) and 700kbps up (averaged).
I can download off their Usenet groups a 50meg music video in roughly 2 minutes, i'd never switch or go back to any phone line systems.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 29, 2004 12:13AM PST

Hi Carrie,
Re DSL or cable, I think your situation may dictate your answer.

My oldest son lives alone in an apartmant and got RoadRunner and loves it.

I live in a large old duplex with one married child in the other unit and two children in my section. I put in SBC Yahoo DSL with hardwired and a wireless network for up to seven computers at one time. My son and future son-in-law are on laptops, my wife and I are on seperate desktops and my daughter in the other unit is on a seperate desktop. All of the phone jacks ar hardwired for plug in use as necessary and there are four or five wireless connections, all furnished by SBC for about $100-150 for the equipment and $29.00 per month service charge. The service is probably not as fast as Roadrunner, but it serves our purposes very well for very little.

DWH Milwaukee

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 29, 2004 1:12AM PST

There are some real hard choices one needs to make when making this choice. One of the things you should be aware of is that Cable is shared with others in your immediate vicinity. With cable you are not buying a dedicated speed, but sharing it with others. The more people you have in your area who use cable the more likely you may experience slow downs with cable.

The other problem with cable is that providers like Comcast will not supply it undless you are also a Comcast TV subscriber. What that means is if Cable providers like Comcast continue to raise their rates for TV Cable and you are also a Cable Modem customer you cannot unsubscribe from TV and switch to Dish or Direct TV for a lower cost because you would lose your cable modem access also.

When shopping for ADSL first see if you can subscribe to Covad ADSL direct if it is available in your area. The 2nd choice would be Verizon Advanced ADSL instead of their typical offering thru MSN at a discount rate. The MSN offering is 340k down (which they do not tell you) and they do not tell you the upload speed.

None of the typical ISP offerings have very good customer service where Covad is rated as the best and Covad also is a provider for Earthlink, Yahoo and other typical providers.

You can also check to see if SBC is in your area and you can subscribe to them direct. Covad for example has a Telesurfer plan for $49.99 a month with 1.5M down and 128K up. Compare that to the Verizon MSN plan which is $34.95 a month after the 1st 3 months but it is only 340k and the customer service is terrible.

You also need to chose whether to use a static or dynamic IP as the static IP will cost you more per month and you do not need it unless you are running a web server at home. So opt for the Dynamic IP but be sure your ISP provider also provides you X amount of free dial up per month in case DSL crashes.

The DSL modem most ISP providers give you free may also be refurbished and it does not provide you with a firewall so you will need to install a software firewall on your system(s) or better yet purchase a multi-function ADSL rounter like the Netgear DG834 which is a modem, 4 port switch, NAT and a firewall all in one. It is the only DSL front end that I have found which provides all of this in one box and it only cost about the same as the ADSL router the ISP wants to sell you that they got at a highly discounted price.

By using this firewall you do not need firewall software on each of your system because with NAT (a single IP on the Internet side) and a firewall in your ADSL router software like Zone Alarm is not needed on your systems.

So your choices come down to do you want to be locked into a Cable supplier for both TV and Hi-Speed Internet access? Or do want to be able to cancel Cable and move to The Dish or Direct TV if the cable supplier keeps raising their rates as they have been doing. If not then opt for Verizon, SBC or Covad direct instead of any of the typical MSN, Yahoo, AOL or other ISPs for your ADSL. The additional cost difference is small compared to the service and speeds you get.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 29, 2004 3:22AM PST

I`ve used both. Cable using Road Runner is more than twice the speed of my former DSL connection with Bell South. Speed varied a lot with DSL, and cost more because we had to put in a 2nd. telephone line. When phone lines are busiest (on Holidays etc.) it`s painfully slow or wouldn`t be able to connect sometimes. Cable runs fast, faster and fastest. No contest unless the cost is much higher in your area. Cable costs are about $10 higher here in Central FL, but got rid of 2nd. telephone line that was costing $20; so came out $10 ahead.

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Re:Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 29, 2004 4:23AM PST

I agree with duckdoc30. I too have had both (RoadRunner cable and DSL from SBC). Every day when the kids get off the school bus the connection speed would plummet due to the high number of subscribers in my area.
I had some technical problems with DSL and a static IP address for working from home.
Cable is more money, ($49 here in southern OH) and it's easy to hate the cable company and their pricing manipulation but the service is more consistent. It is also the only reason we haven't gone to a satellite.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 29, 2004 3:58AM PST

The only thing you have to know is if the family next door or across the street have the cable modem to because your speed will decreese when there on the web. Where as dsl you don't have those kind of problems.

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Re:DSL or Cable? or "Broadband Wireless" ?
Mar 29, 2004 4:37AM PST

I hope I'm not duplicating something already covered. Didn't read all messages. Dialup too slow Grin

I'm considering "Wireless Broadband" through a local (Colorado Springs) ISP - PCISys.net

I don't use cable TV and don't have a satelite. I'd like to keep my costs down but speed my connection.

I'm on Win 98 2nd ed. with a 56K modem now.

This appears to be a $99 setup for a 4" x 8" antenna mounted high on my townhome's chimney to achieve line of sight with a tower. It's then $40.95 a month, including the $3 rental of equipment (or $350 for it).

If someone's familiar with this type service - do you know of drawbacks? Is there a better alternative?

Thx! J

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 29, 2004 4:52AM PST

I've been using ADSL 750down/375up bits/second through my ISP TheRiver and phone company Qwest very happily for 3 years at $80/month. The speed and reliability have been above 98-99%. I switched to Cox Cable DSL 3.3 megabits/second last week for half the price. Works super! The cable fibre-optic is on the pole out front; the one-inch diameter cable to my office is about 100 feet long. There is a 6-way splitter on the front of the building; then 50 feet to my modem. I don't have any signal loss. I use a router with a hardware-firewall. I've noticed that the MS-OS-NT computers' bandwith speed is about twice that of the Mac OS-10.3 computers.

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 29, 2004 11:14AM PST

Well it all depends my friend. If you are in an area where there are alots of residential properties with cable modem installed, for sure cable modem is not your choice. Here is a tip for you. if you know any one of your neighbors that do have a cable or DSL modem, you can test the bandwith of both by going to dslreports.com and test the bandwith of that connection. Compare both connection and see which one would give you more bandwith for your buck.so far my experience has shown that cable modem beats DSL hands-down. it was just last night that I downloaded a 25MB files from Microsoft Website in about 1 minute , that is right, 1 minute. so give it a try my friend.

Rob Samimi

Everest Computers Inc.
516-621-5568

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Re:Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 30, 2004 12:46PM PST

Well it all depends really on the company, what they offer and price. I have had dial-up, dsl, and now cable. DSL where I live costs roughly $20 a month from phone company to use their line, and then you need to pay the ISP (our phone company doesn't have their own ISP here locally yet) so thats another $15-$25 depending on 3 companies here locally. Also thats the rock-bottom price. For that low price you get online for 2 hours and then it automatically kicks you offline for 5 minutes every two hours and its capped at 640. Unless you want to pay more then you just have to grin and bear it. Also with DSL alot of factors come into play such as your phone line must be capable of handling DSL, not everyone's does. You must also be within so many feet of central server. You must obviously have to have phone service as well...which I know of some people who have got rid of their land phones and just use cell phones such as myself.
Cable here is $45 if you also subscribe to cable tv, otherwise its $55. It was just upgraded from 1.5mbps to 3.0mbps. Cable just really have to make sure you have a good signal on your line. So for me it's better off to have cable as its alot faster then DSL and the cost is roughly the same. Also I don't have a land phone as my cell phone is $35 a month. Just check your local companies and see what kind of offers they give you, what their bandwidth is, and go from their.
One more thing and this bugs me to no end. People always talk about how you should DSL because your not sharing your connection like you do with DSL. Well that is wrong...both are shared. Cable is shared within your neighborhood, DSL is shared at the central server. They both are shared, the difference is where they are shared at. Hope this helps

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Re:DSL or Cable?
Mar 31, 2004 2:38AM PST

One thing that you should know that is not widely publicized is that both DSL and Cable are distance sensitive. That means both have limits on how far they can send data before the signal must be boosted in strength in order to maintain the constant stream of data. DSL has a radius of about one mile. I do not know how far the Cable signal can be sent without it being boosted. I do know that I am on the extreme edge of my Cable signal. I have DSL and tried Cable during a recent ComCast promo in my town. The Cable really worked good, when it worked, with my 800mhz eMac. It really let my eMac perform the way it was designed for. However, due to the fact that I am the only customer in my area, Comcast was not going to put in a repeater station just to accomodate me. Two frustrating months later, I was forced to cancel Cable and go back to DSL. To get the full potential of DSL requires a lot of money! I have the cheapest setting for DSL I am happy with it, but I would prefer either lower costs for DSL or a stronger strength Cable signal. Hope this helps.

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Just a little correction here. . .
Mar 31, 2004 3:14PM PST

DSL cannot be "boosted". Repeatered is the correct term. DSL is an analog signal but due to its makeup it cannot be repeatered. It is distance limited to around 17,500 feet on 24 gauge cable.

For more plain English information, visit my site http://www.wayne.hardy.com/dsl_course.htm

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Wondered when you weigh in, Wayne.
Apr 1, 2004 6:08AM PST

They(even the people with DSL) don't seem to understand
that DSL speed is affected by distance to substation(repeater) and condition of your phone lines.
If you are lucky, like me, you get max speed. But unlike
cable, whatever that speed turns out to be, that is it.
It doesn't go up or down!!! Like all internet, be it dial-up, DSL, or cable, it IS affected by the servers
being used by whatever you want. IT IS NOT the DSL. I could be wrong, but I did do my homework, so I doubt it. chuck

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;-). . .
Apr 1, 2004 8:55AM PST

I got cable last September, Comcast. Speed test at broadband reports shows 2.2 Meg. SMOKING!!!

Even thought I taught DSL, and know exactly how it works, screw it! Cable rules.