What are the differences between using a Cable Modem and DSL using the following criteria:
[list=a]
[li]Speed[/li][li]Reliability[/li][li]Ease of use[/li][li]Ease of Installation[/li][li]Price (Monthly)[/li][li]Price of installation[/li][li]Anything else significant[/li][/list]
Which one would you choose?
I have had both and would go with cable because of the speed, it’s really great.
Everything else being about equal, the only other difference I could see is that the cable comapny can’t even spell the word service. I think they groove on the fact that their consumers have a very low expectation of service.
I would consider it a great hardship to go back to phone line access, but I might have to if I move out to the country.
hmmm… i have cable myself, and i am satisfied. but that doesn’t answer your questions.
i think speed and reliability are the only signifigant things in your list. all the other things are seemingly equal.
It’s important not to confuse the DSL service Satan asked about with regular phone line access, i.e. with a 56k modem.
(before I give my impressions of the two technologies, I admit a bias in favor of DSL. However, as a former home systems technology analyst/writer who studied the subject extensively, I feel qualified to comment.)
Advantages to cable modem:
[ul]
[li]It’s faster than DSL, at least when you’re one of the few people in your neighborhood who subscribes. However, the more people in your neighborhood sign up, your share of the bandwidth will diminish and your access will slow down.[/li][li]Availability is limited only by whether the cable company in your area has upgraded its systems and decided to offer the service - there are no intrinsic limitations (see below).[/li][li]Costs are comparable for both types of connection, at least in my area. I’m told that in some areas DSL is more expensive.[/li][/ul]
Disadvantages to cable modem:
[ul]
[li]As noted above, the bandwidth is shared. This not only means that your access speed will drop with every additional subscriber, it also raises security issues.[/li][li]As elbows pointed out, the cable company has an absolutely dismal record of customer service. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want a life essential like net access in the hands of the Keystone Kable guys.[/li][li]I don’t have firsthand experience with this point, but I’ve heard from cable modem users that one of the two major types has a regrettably frequent tendency to go on the fritz.[/li][li]no choice of ISP (I’m not completely sure I’m right about this – call it 90% sure – and I’ll back down if someone proves me wrong, but AFAIK you have to use the cableco as your ISP).[/li][/ul]
Advantages to DSL:
[ul]
[li]dedicated bandwidth. That line is yours alone, and your connection’s speed will never be diluted by additional users.[/li][li]The phone company has decades more experience at reliably delivering an essential service. (caveat: several private companies are now offering DSL in addition to the phone company, so if you use one of them YMMV).[/li][li]you may use any of a variety of ISPs (the phone company’s ISP tends to be cheapest tho).[/li][li]Installation MAY be easier, depending on the vintage of the phone wiring in your house.[/li][/ul]
Disadvantages to DSL:
[ul]
[li]You must be within a certain number of feet from the central switching station to receive DSL (this isn’t exactly a disadvantage - you either can or can’t get it.) The provider will be able to tell you roughly yes or no based on your address; if you’re seriously interested in signing up they’ll have a technician check the lines to make sure you’ll be able to use it.[/li][li]Not quite as fast (see above); however, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to tell the difference except when you’re downloading files. For general Web surfing, your top speed is more likely to be dictated by the site you’re accessing.[/li][/ul]
To speak to some of your specific points:
monthly costs are comparable, at least in my area. I don’t know what the installation costs for cable modems are, but SW Bell is now offering free installation in my area. I paid $212, which included the modem, interface card, on-site installation by a technician, and troubleshooting. I believe you can save money by providing your own Ethernet card. (one plus for DSL: the installation includes the cost of having an extra phone jack installed along with the RJ-45 jack for the DSL modem, which has allowed me to have a phone in my office at last.)
Both are extremely easy to use - they’re always on if your computer is on, no dialing up or waiting. I have on occasion had to renew my IP address or subnet mask, and once in a while I have to cycle the power on the external DSL modem, but other than that I haven’t had any service problems with my DSL. I can’t say the same for my friends who have cable modems.
All in all, I believe that DSL is the better deal for me. For you? It all depends.
Both are good solutions. The quality of each will vary widely by provider and region, though. I love my DSL setup, but I think that I probably have had the most positive experience with it of anybody I know. I got DSL by default, though, since cable modems are not available in my area.
Find out from both the DSL and the cable provider what the minimum guaranteed bandwidth is. On my DSL line, for instance, I’m guaranteed 384kbps. In the neighboring town, the guarntee is only 10kbps (slower than a 14.4 modem!). The cable company probably won’t make you a guarantee, since the bandwidth is shared, but they may give you a number if you shout at them enough. My feeling is that cable is faster when usage in your area is fairly light. Then, as more and more people sign up, the bandwidth decreases proportionally. DSL will either rock or suck, depending on the quality of your line, how far you are from the switch, and so on, then continue to rock or suck forever.
It seems to me that providers around here for both DSL and cable are doing free equipment and free setup. When I signed up, I paid a $200 setup fee (the pain of being an early adopter) including the hardware, but I have heard radio commercials for the same provider advertising free setup lately.
As to monthly cost, check with your local providers. A couple things, though: DSL comes in a few grades, usually, depending on how much bandwidth you want to pay for. If you really want to, you can pay a LOT of money for DSL. Your pipe will smoke, but it’ll be expensive. I pay $50/month for 384kbps (min) - 1.5Mbps (max) download. Cable is probably similar, but if you don’t already have TV cable, they’ll probably make you sign up for that, too.
I have not heard many stories on either setup regarding reliability issues. I think my provider is getting a bit overloaded, as sometimes they have slow mail and news servers, but this is a minor annoyance at most. My bandwidth has remaned high.
Ease of installation should be similar or the same. In my case, the tech came to my house and wired the jack and hooked up the DSL modem. He would have done everything else, too, but I’m a techie, so I installed the network card and did the network configuration on the computer myself. Essentially, they’re both the same. A wire comes out of the wall, and goes into a box. A network cable come out of the box and goes into your network card. Done.
Both systems should be fairly easy to use. Once it’s set up, just open your browser and mail client, and you’re on. No dialling, no hoping for a good connection, no other issues. If the computer is on, you’re online.
The only other thing I would suggest is that you spring for a firewall. I know that Linksys and DLink both have boxes designed to be residential cable/DSL router/firewalls. I use the Linksys one, and like it a lot. It can be had from any number of online retailers for about $160. I think the DLink one is a little cheaper, but doesn’t have the same features.
All of the above are variable depending on your prospective DSL and cable provider. Investigate both, then go with the one that sounds better. If it sucks, switch.
Here’s a parallel thread you might want to read:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=25659
DSL and cable may not be your only choices. I don’t have any personal experience with them, but there are satellite systems available. You still need a standard ISP for upstream transmissions, but for the downstream end, the data is beamed to your house via satellite. Hughes Electronics has what they call DirecPC. They claim up to 400kbps. Hughes charges extra for every hour of use beyond a set amount (25-200 hrs./month, depending on the plan). Some of the other companies that offer similar services may have unlimited access for a set monthly charge.
SOme good answers above.
One more thing to inquire about when asking you rprovider about cable modem: is there a bandwidth limitation? A few, far from all, cable companies restrict your maximum bandwidth; among those that do, 600 kbps is a common number. That’s faster than many DSL lines but not as fast as my DSL line.
Geez, I see this topic and think, hey I actually have something valuable to contribute. Then I see Chef and Jo3sh beat me to the punch and wrote kick-ass replies as well as everyone one else.
So I guess the only things I can add are:
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In my area DSL is the best bet, but I live in the Bay Area where everyone has cable modems and only the lucky few can get DSL. My SO has a cable modem and it is slower then her AOL connection and I am truly not exagerating. The only time it is speedy is from 11 PM - about 8 AM. The rest of the day sucks. The speed on my DSL line is at least 384k but it is capped at 1.5 Mb which I have gotten before. Her cable modem also goes out ALL THE TIME. About 70% of the time it works. My DSL line has gone out on me once only that I have noticed.
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I don’t know what you will be using your line for, but I have never heard of a cable provider with static IPs. With my DSL company it is an option.
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In my area you can use your DSL line as a server if you wish. It’s no skin of the DSL provder’s nose since the line is yours alone so your server will not affect anyone else. I have yet to hear of a cable provider that lets users have servers.
-Instalation is almost exactly the same. Both use a modem to translate the signal from the CO into Ether-ese and the modem hooks to your computer through ethernet. The only variable is which is easier to install in your house, a new phone jack or a new TV cable? Odds are it is probably the same amount of work.
-And the only other thing I can think of is that my DSL line uses TCP/IP as it’s protocol, while my GF’s cable modem uses NetBEUI. In my experience tech support, no matter who it is from, takes a long time to get and the techs don’t always have the answers, so I like to do my own troubleshooting. And I am personally a lot more familiar with TCP/IP than I am with NetBEUI. And if you are using Linux, which I do, then I know a DSL line will work, but I do not know anything about NetBEUI and Linux. So you might want to ask them what protocol they use.
Well good luck, and no matter what you get, your internet experience will ROCK now.
-N
With cable, you don’t get to select the speed you would like. Whatever bandwidth is available is just given to you by the cable company. However, with DSL, you can choose your speed. Of course, the higher the speed you choose, the more your monthly fee will be.
So, in response to the OP – it depends on the speed of DSL you choose.
Wow! You sure? That’s a significant security threat …
This is simply untrue, bandwidth is shared at the dslam. DSL’s “dedicated” bandwidth is mostly marketing hype, in fact your guarantee of speed exists only between your computer and the ISP and they won’t even guarantee the full bandwidth, jsut a fraction. Its just like the phone company telling you that your dial-up line will do 9600 bps.
Considering the technologies are so comparable, what should make your decision is who offers the services in your area. There’s no way in hell I’m giving Ameritech $39 a month for their often badmouthed DSL service which still won’t give simultanious voice and data. I chose a local cable company that competes with AT&T’s @home service and am very happy with it.
Telocity has a external dsl modem & its about time. That way you can use it on any computer anywhere in the USA to get to your acct.
384K is DOWN, not up. Up is much much slower.
Also, consider newsgroup feed & what newserver youll get.
Also make sure the cable in your area is bidirectional. I’ve had unidirectional cable for almost 2 years now, and it’ll be about another 2 or three years before it’s bidirectional. This means I have to upload with a 14.4 modem which is built in to the cable modem. Why 14.4? Hell if I know. I guess they figure if they’re going to inconvenience you, they might as well do it as much as they can. At least it’s not 9600 baud…
This also seems to affect the download speed (Perhaps because it’s slower acknowledging the packets. I’m not sure.); I’ve never had a file transfer over 90-100 kb/s. I’ve heard people with bidirectional cable claim far higher.
JonF sez:
Well, like I said, I don’t know anything about NetBEUI, but yes, I am positive. Their cable modem went down, once again, and I was going to try and troubleshoot it, but when I saw that it wasn’t TCP/IP, I called the company and got their help.
HorseloverFat sez:
OK, I do not know what a “dslam” is, perpahps you meant DSL LAN? If you meant DSL LAN then I do not understand what you are arguing about.
The line I get from my DSL provider is only them and myself. No one else uses it. Now, a cable modem line is shared with other cable modem users. So when more people are on DSL it does not affect my speed from my home to the CO (central office} however, when a lot of cable users are on the same line, the line gets congested. Now your argument is that a DSL can be slow because at the CO I connect to the LAN. Well so does a cable modem. So in reality a cable modem can be slower than a DSL line because the line itself can get congested between you and the CO and you can get a bogged down LAN that will slow you down even further. DSL users however only need to worry about the LAN slowing them down.
However if you meant to say “dslam”, then I would like to retract my comments and ask you what that is so that I can understand your post better. You know, the fight against ignorance and all…
Now about the guarenteed speed issue. Well I totally agree with you that it is marketing hype, but it there for a reason. I conducted a little test with my GF tonight. She has a cable modem and I have DSL. We both pinged a remote computer, it was in Vermont to be exact. I then compared our pings to see why they were different. Her average ping was about 2 seconds behind mine. I then checked the route on our computers to see where the slow down was. The factor that made her ping take so long was the connection from her house to the CO. Outside of the cable modem’s CO, her packet went flying across other networks, but the major slow down was from her house to the CO.
If she had a guarenteed speed from her home to the CO then either this slow down would not have happened or if it had happened then my GF could have yelled at them and probably gotten a months refund or something like that.
And finally you said that the DSL providers do not guarentee full bandwidth, only a fraction. Well, I did not know why they do this so I called the techs at my DSL company and they said that to guarentee a faster speed they need to use different hardware at your house and at the CO. Personally, I wouldn’t bother with upgrading to faster speeds, at least on my provider. They guarentee me 384k, but they cap it at 1.5 Mb. I have gotten 1.5 Mb in the past and I currently get speeds of about 600-800k, so upagrding would make me pay more money for something I already get.
-N
We have cable modem. In this area, DSL at a similar price is slower. I could get faster DSL, but it would cost a lot more. DSL has a whole range of speeds and a whole range of prices.
I’ve not noticed any slow-down with my cable modem… either the shared bandwidth isn’t that shared out yet, or the company is being good about putting in more resources as they get used.
We were going to get DSL at first, but after 3 or 4 months of them jerking us around on installation, we gave up. That has been the experience of a lot of people I’ve talked to in trying to get DSL in this area… the company is totally incompetant.
Our cabel modem has had various outtages, but they came and replaced some rusted out part outside and it has been better since then.
Both Cable and DSL services seem to still be localized… in the Los Angeles area, there’re several DSL offers being made, with few Cable offers.
What I understand about the two is this (this info comes from my brother, who’s been looking up both mediums for the past eight months and has concluded DSL to be a better idea for our house): Cable modems are still basically analog (I myself am not sure on this, but I haven’t had the inclination to look it up); DSL is, well, digital. The thing is, DSL will likely have better advancements/cheaper prices/better connection improvemtns in the future, since sending digital signals over existing lines would be smarter than putting in new lines for stronger analog signals. Therefore, if you get a cable modem now, it may not be available to you five years from now.
Also, there are two basic types of DSL: Business DSL and Home DSL (those aren’t the official names, but that’s what I’m gonna call 'em in this thread). Business DSL has the same upload and download speed… Home DSL doesn’t- the max DL speed is usually advertised as 1.5 MBPS, while the max UL speed is somewhere in the 300 KB range (advertised). And both types of DSL have faster types… up to 6.5 MBPS DL, I believe, but there may be faster DSL services available.
I’m hoping to get DSL soon… in my mind, it’s more reliable. As for speed… after 300 KB downloads, I don’t think you’d need to get much faster, anyway (especially since, right now, we never get faster than 28.8 connections, even with 56K modems, and DLs rarely exceed 3 KBPS…). With a Cable modem, you may be able to get faster downloads, but unless you’re trying to get the entire Library of Congress, this extra speed isn’t worth the added unreliability. But that’s just my opinion (I also think it’s funner to say “DSL” than “Cable Modem”… sorry, but it’s 3:19 AM… I’m going to bed soon… tired… mind… shutting… down…)
I guess what you really should do is thank your lucky stars that you have a choice.
I would be happy if they improved my phone line so I could connect at 28.8, and they haven’t even come down our road with pavement, let alone cable or a real quality phone line (GTE).
I have never connected faster than 26.4, and most of the time it’s 24,000 or slower.
But, I don’t live in the city, so I guess you pays your money and takes your choice.
From dslreports.com
DSLAM
Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer. The device placed in the CO that accepts all the DSL lines.
That is your bottleneck right there, lets quit spreading he marketing hype. As to comparisions with a cable provider who gives what you’ve said is under dial-up speed you can imagine there’s some real problems with that line/system. Why doesn’t your GF or you call the cable provider and complain? If I had that service I wouldn’t have made the first month payment.
If you think your GF’s line is typical of cable installations you’re pretty wrong, I consistantly get 100kBytes/sec downloads and have never had any downtime. I’m not jumping on ‘this technology is better boat,’ as they’re both very very comparable.