Hey, thanks for all the great input!
I did talk to a few neighbors and they all seem to be pretty happy with either cable or DSL. (Which is one of the reason I thought I’d ask a broader audience.)
I need to look at the pricing in my area.
I’d agree with this. Ask local people about providers in your area. It varies quite a bit. My parents are a half hour away, and hate the cable provider that I love.
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- I am on the IL side and have Charter Pipeline. Testing several times at DSLreports I would always get ~284Kb down and 80Kb up, what the service says. Haven’t had any problems really, it does go out once or twice a month for an hour or two, usually in the early-morning hours: you can tell right away when its out because the modem LED’s aren’t all on as normal, just the power LED blinks. This doesn’t bother me too much because I maintain a 56K dialup ISP anyway. I don’t notice any decrease in speed during prime time and testing hasn’t shown it, perhaps the slowdowns are because of busier website servers, not the service itself. Downloading, I get around 20Kb/sec typical, sometimes as high as 40-50Kb/sec but usually only from websites: I rarely get over 30Kb/sec from a single person on P2P networks, but two or more people can drive that to 60Kb/sec+. I have not ever had DSL.
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- I am on the IL side and have Charter Pipeline. Testing several times at DSLreports I would always get ~284Kb down and 80Kb up, what the service says. Haven’t had any problems really, it does go out once or twice a month for an hour or two, usually in the early-morning hours: you can tell right away when its out because the modem LED’s aren’t all on as normal, just the power LED blinks. This doesn’t bother me too much because I maintain a 56K dialup ISP anyway. I don’t notice any decrease in speed during prime time and testing hasn’t shown it, perhaps the slowdowns are because of busier website servers, not the service itself. Downloading, I get around 20Kb/sec typical, sometimes as high as 40-50Kb/sec but usually only from websites: I rarely get over 30Kb/sec from a single person on P2P networks, but two or more people can drive that to 60Kb/sec+. I have not ever had DSL.
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This is largely a matter of opinion, so I’llmove this thread to IMHO.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
Here’s my 2¢:
I have had both DSl and cable and I prefer cable.
I lived around 8500 ft. from the CO when I had DSL and I got speeds of 1.5Mbps down and 128kbps up. I have cable now and I get speeds of around 2.4Mbps down and 256kbps up. It’s so much faster it’s crazy!
Plus, if you’re not using a router, with DSL you’ll probably need to run some type of logon program, since most DSL providers use the PPPoE protocol. In other words, most DSL users have to logon just like you do with a dial-up connection (although it’s much faster than logging in with dial-up). With a cable modem, you simply plug the cable in to your PC and go.
Plus, my cable modem experiences have been far more stable than with DSL ones. My cable has yet to go down at all in my new place (RoadRunner in Charlotte) and only went down once at my old place (Comcast in Alpharetta, GA) while my DSL went down at least once a week (BellSouth, Dunwoody, GA).
Of course, YMMV. And as gazpacho said, it’s all shared - just at different places.
Rex
Security shouldn’t be a factor in your evaluation. Neither are secure. That will be your responsibility.
Performance should be a factor, but the advice you have followed is correct. There isn’t anything with the technology itself that gives better performance from one to the other. It all has to do with the provider, and how they have engineered the network (and/or continue to do so). That is, ask your neighbors about performance (as you have). And since they report good performance with each, and you have stated performance isn’t a big issue for you, you are down to price.
If you haven’t had either before, and been using dial-up, I suspect you will be happy with either choice.
My city is in line to get cable like around 2004…so i guess DSL would be the way to do it. I saw a Comcast ad on tv yesterday, 6 months for $19.95 per month. hmmmm. I don’t know what it is after that. Also my lines would have to be cleaned, $199.00 more (they found this out after I requested a dsl connection).
I’ll just throw my .02 in.
It really just depends. My DSL is dirt cheap ($30CDN for a 1.5MB/768), pretty damn fast and absolutely rock solid. On a good website I’ll download files at around 150K or so per sec.
My friend has Cable. His absolutely sucks. He has never had download speeds of greater than 90k/sec and his off the hip response is that he has connection problems every 3 nights or so. He would get DSL but its not supported in his new neighborhood. Mind you, the cable company in this town is a joke, so its not too suprising.
So, I really don’t think there is firm answer. Talk to your freinds/neighbors, see what they use and if they’re happy with it.
Cleaned?
Yeah. Make sure you place a baggie around the receiver, lay it down on the table and step away from the phone.
Seriously, that could be referring to the removal of load coils or bridge tap on existing copper spans, which I can imagine dsl wouldn’t tolerate very well.
In the olden days, cleaning a dial tone line meant sending a surge of sealing current down the line to burn off oxidation that might be affecting performance. But this sure wouldn’t cost $199.00.
I hope