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General discussion

High Speed Cable VS DSL

Apr 21, 2007 1:14AM PDT

I'm moving down the hall in my building and I may be switching to DSL. I have Road Runner now with a wireless router and 2 wireless laptops, and I'm totally happy with it.

at&t has a DSL "Elite" $34.99/Month. It's supposed to be up to 6.0 megasomethings which I gather is 4 X faster than Cable. Also I'm about 100 feet from a building that sais at&t on it and has no windows, so I'm thinking that must be a terminal building.

The bottom line is that the at&t package is cheaper and ostensible faster. Has anyone had any experience here.


Thanks,


Ian

Discussion is locked

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DSL vs Cable
Apr 28, 2007 7:04AM PDT

I have tried both services in different areas of South Florida and I must say that DSL did not compare to my cable modem. I had constant outtages with DSL and it is not an "always on" connection like it is advertised. You have to dial into your DSL connection whereas with cable it truly is "always on", simply click your browser icon and you are on. The consistancy of speed has been much better with my cable service than any of the DSL service I have used. When it comes to support - just remember , when you are using DSL you are dealing with the phone company and if you have ever had that pleasure..nuff said

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reply to: DSL vs Cable
Apr 28, 2007 10:28AM PDT

Whether your DSL has an always on connection or not depends on where you live more than anything else. In some areas it's PPoE (where you have to "dial in") and in others the connection is DHCP (always on).

I also would not suggest DSL to anyone who lives in Florida... our phone lines are too crazy, lol.

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DSL vs Cable
May 2, 2007 3:40AM PDT

I'm glad this thread exists. I'd like to see some feedback on this very issue from any fellow Xbox 360 Live users.

I've had Comcast's 6Mbs internet for about a year now. I hate Comcast with a fiery passion, but almost all of my anger has nothing to do with their internet. It's really exceptional. Very fast, hardly glitches, obviously I don't experience any problems surfing, but it also downloads/streams live content well, and downloads large Game Demos and Videos over Xbox Live very fast. I hardly ever get disconnected/booted from an online game due to a poor internet connection speed. It's been very fast and reliable.

But problems with Comcast I have, nonetheless, and I'm strongly considering breaking ties with them alltogether. Most of my venom has to do with the unbelievable lack of reliability for their DVR service (I cannot tell you how many hardware problems I've (and several of my friends) I've had with these things, and how difficult and unsatisfactory their services and solutions have been). But also, I HAD an excellent price on a Digital TV/Internet bundle that expires in one week. While the price was nice, it was easier to tolerate the frustrations with the DVR. Now, the "12 month bundle" price is over, and they're going to charge me $43 a month for the 6 Mbps internet connection I've enjoyed the last 12 months.


I see Windstream DSL is offering 6 Mbps and 3 Mbps options for $35 and $30 a month, respectively. The 3 Mbps connection, specifically, would be significantly less than the Comcast option. I'm also eyeing up Verizon, but it doesn't look like they have very fast DSL options (768 kbps?) and FiOS doesn't appear to be in my neighborhood yet.


Has anybody had any Xbox Live experience with 3 Mbps or 6 Mbps DSL connections? Can you comment on reliability of the connection and lag experienced during online gaming?

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Online Gaming... Another reason to have high speed
May 2, 2007 2:43PM PDT

I game online on a nightly basis, mostly Madden '07 for now... I have no problems with my high speed internet that I get with my DSL connection. I don't even have the Elite, which gives speeds from 3.0 to 6.0 mbs. I have the Pro, which gives me from 1.5 to a 3.0 mbs, I am lucky that I am close to a routing terminal (rt), and I am consistently hitting at 3.0 mbs or right about that range. No problems with online gaming with dsl... Hope this helps!

The Telephone Man!

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roadrunner/brighthouse
May 3, 2007 12:00PM PDT

to apachepilot...after looking over all these posts and seeing several different answers ..let me be clear ..i download a 50 meg file every 50 seconds ...my friend has one speed faster ..he downloads the same file at around 35 secs ..so , is that faster than the 8mbps you say roadrunner is only capable of ?? they have 3 speeds depending on your pkg ... .5 or 1.0 or 1.5 ...go figure.

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Wikipedia has spoken.
May 3, 2007 7:07PM PDT

This is straight from Wikipedia:
"A megabit per second (abbreviated as Mbps, Mbit/s, or mbps) is a unit of data transfer rates equal to 1,000,000 bits per second (this equals 1,000 kilobits per second). Because there are 8 bits in a byte, a transfer speed of 8 megabits per second (8 Mbps) is equivalent to 1,000,000 bytes per second (approximately 976 KiB/s).
The bandwidth of consumer broadband internet services is often rated in Mbps."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_internet

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Cable companies are not angels either.
Sep 29, 2007 6:40AM PDT

I have Verizon DSL in small town , Pennsylvania. It is always on. I usually switch off, to conserve energy, as I am a "Green" person.
I had bad experience with the cable folk at Time Warner, and withh AT&t and with MCI. All these folk don't care for customer service once they have hooked you in. Even Verizon billed me from the day I enrolled on the internet, though I could get access to the DSL service only 3 weeks later.

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It's All Better
Sep 3, 2007 2:34AM PDT

Compared to the 56K/second dial-up connection I currently have, even the slowest high-speed connection would be an improvement. Seems like everyone's fighting over nothing important!

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just got fios
Sep 26, 2007 6:33AM PDT

20 mbps download 5 mbps upload , fastest ive seen yet . they do have a faster one for 180$ month , its now 50 mbps !! download a 4.3 gig dvd in less than 30 mins !! sweet ! screw RR and comcast ! fios all the way !11!lolz!1