Hey I am trying to decide between which connection to upgrade to and I have heard alot of different things pitched by the companies. I just wanted to know which one everyone thinks is better DSL or Cable modems. Thanks
It’s faster technicaly…
but…
(There’s always a but…)
The speed of cable depends on how many users are online on your particular branch of the network. The more users, the slower it goes. So, if you are in an area that doesn’t have a lot of users close to you, then it’s way faster. If there are a lot, then you could end up having a fancy 56k modem. It’s a crap shoot sometimes. DSL is slower than cable, but the number of users online doesn’t affect it’s speed. It’s also easier to set up and get configured usualy. I compared my DSL hookup to a friend’s cable hookup, and we found that during “non-peak” hours (10 am to about 8:30 pm) he was quite a bit faster, but after that, he slowed down quite a bit until I was faster around 10pm, and remained that way until about 4am or so. It’s up to you to decide which is right for you.
catmandu42 said it. It all depends…
In my own experience, DSL was a nightmare. I lived just close enough to get it, but it required boosters on the line. This not only made the service unreliable, it limited me to ISDN-like speed. That’s roughly 128k. As it turns out, it was also $10 more than cable in my area. The downtime turned out to be about 50% by the way, which at any price is unnacceptable.
Cable on the other-hand was like a dream for me. ALOT faster, cheaper, and no problem at all on the install. Have never had a problem w/the service, and even when it’s slow during peak times, it’s still faster than the advertised speed of the DSL in my area.
But like anything, your mileage may very. The only other piece of advice I can give is this. Don’t get tied down to a long-term contract. I had problems w/this when I tried to cancel my DSL service. They (Flashcom) tried to stick me for a $200 early termination fee. It wasn’t until much complaining that I got them to give up on it. My cable service let’s me pay monthly, no contract. It’s something to think about.
and DSL at work. The cable is always faster, even during peak time. I’m only paying $29.99 a month for the first year for a cable modem. Our DSL at work is almost $20 a month more. I like the quality of video streams from the cable better too, and it downloads sound and video bytes much faster. Don’t get me wrong, the DSL is incredibly fast. Fantastically so. But I’ve found the cable to be faster.
As previously noted, it depends a lot on how many users you have. Here in Los Angeles, from what I’ve heard, cable is still a bit faster than DSL in most areas. In SF, on the other hand, I’ve heard that the number of users have slowed cable networks such as @Home to a crawl.
If you can, try asking coworkers and neighbors what’s best in your area.
I should also mention that if you’re willing to pay enough, you can get DSL up to (and probably beyond) 1.5 Mbps if you’re close enough to the switching stations. 'Course it’ll cost you your first born…
They are both comparable to me…maybe the cable was a little faster, but either/or. The real thing is making sure you get a good ISP. If you go the DSL route, check out http://www.dsl-reports.com .
Well, I’ll just tell you the specs of my cable hookup for comparison to someone’s DSL - I get about 600 kilobytes/second download rates throughout the whole the day (I’ve never noticed it slowing down), and I pay $30 a month. That’s about 4mbps, and I noticed someone saying if you pay a hell of a lot you can extract 1.5 mbps from DSL. Do the math.
Depends on where you are. What is the DSL speed and how are your neibor’s cable modem’s speed off peak and peek? When do you plan to use it? what is the price diff?
I personally thing cable is easier to set up as dsl often uses PPPoE which is something you must run on your computer to logon (and there is a logon but it’s very fast). AlsoI use a linksys router that does that for me and keeps the connection live.
As for speeds - I get almost always a little more then 60 kB/s (= 480 kb/s) download speeds on a 640 kb/s dsl line (a percentage goes to maintaining the connection).
My neighbors w/ cable modem average 150-250 kB/s (= 1200 - 2000 kb/s) during off peak usage. During peak it can fall to 10kB/s-80kB/s (80 kb/s - 640 kb/s).
Also another thing I noticed is when I DL more then one file the total kB/s will always will be around that 60 kb/s mark. With cable the speed of file one could drop as you DL file 2 but the total is not constant.
If you’re upgrading from 56K, they are both infinitely fast as far as you’re concerned. I used to have cable, had a horrific customer service experience and switched to DSL. I think cable was a bit better, but it is more than offset by the ability to get intelligent, helpful people on the phone for my DSL provider. They’re very comparable, and both are so much better than 56K, IMHO, it’s quibbling to worry about which one is better.
I have a 1.5MPS DSL line that costs me $40 CDN per month. I get that speed on a good server too. I am extremely happy with DSL and would not consider switching unless something drastic were to happen.
A friend of mine in Vancouver had (past tense being operative here) and couldn’t stand it. Up and down more times than a pecker in a whorehouse he said. 
That being said, several people love there cable. I absolutely love my DSL.
As everyone said, it depends. With my cable, it only seems to slow down between 11am and 3pm, which are times that I’m not usually online anyway, so it’s perfect around here.
Ugh.
Make that my friend had cable in Vancouver.
bernse, you don’t count. From what I hear, DSL is just ridiculously fast (and cheap) in Canada. Even in that funny Canadian money of yours.
As somebody who until recently worked for a cable modem company I can say categorically – it depends. There are a huge number of variables.
Unfortunately, what works well for your neighbor may not work for you, so you can’t take a definitive poll. There are plenty of horror stories on both sides of the fence, but right now DSL installations are usually more problematic.
Any company that is either building up a market, or accidently over-invested in an area will have better service – for awhile. Once your service gets slow, there’s only a weak chance it will improve dramatically in the short-term.
Without getting into the sort of details I spent years writing about, becoming a knowledgeable user of your own equipment is one of the best ways to improve performance. Beyond that, within certain bounds you tend to get what you pay for. If performance is vital, buy a more expensive connection (and a more expensive computer).
Can you explain to me exactly why a more expensive computer would have the slightest bearing on how fast an internet connection is?
bernse asks:
Can you explain to me exactly why a more expensive computer would have the slightest bearing on how fast an internet connection is?
gazpacho responds:
It doesn’t really. For any compputer you would go and buy these days.
gazpacho the goes on to reply to the OP:
Around here DSL is just a pain in the butt to get installed cable is not and it works real well fast and good up time. The idea that DSL is not shared is plain wrong. It just becomes shared at the phone company building not at the curb where you cable hooks up.
I’ll through in a “it depends”, but add in why it depends.
Out in the neighborhoods, cable companies have these entities called “nodes”. The node has a fixed bandwidth out the back of it, and services all the houses connected to it.
In their equipment room, DSL providers have a thing that I believe is called a DSLAM. They have a fixed bandwidth out the back of it, and their customer’s DSL lines plug into the front of it.
The node and the DSLAM have the exact same bandwidth that comes out the back, which is shared by all the users of that piece of hardware. So, if the cable company only has as many customers/node as the DSL provider has customers/DSLAM, there is no advantage to having the DSL line. In the DSL’s favor, it’s much easier to install a new DSLAM to address capacity issues than it is to install a new node, but hey.
So the key is to get an ISP that doesn’t oversell it’s capacity. Tie goes to Cable Modem, because it’s usually cheaper (if you’re a cable subscriber), and has a higher maximum bandwidth. (My cable modem speed never drops below 100 MB/s, and tops around 300MB/s. I’d have to pay three times as much to get 80MB/s on DSL where I live.)
LordVor
>Can you explain to me exactly why a more expensive computer would have the slightest bearing on how fast an internet connection is?
The assumption is that a more expensive computer is also a faster computer. Here we’re speaking of CPU, RAM, bus, video card, and disk speed.
The reasons a faster computer is better is that part of the delay displaying or downloading Internet information is your computer. You many not be able to control how fast the modem is, but you can control your computer. As a simple example: if a Web page is being written to RAM and hard disk as part of the caching process, then RAM and hard disk write speed will affect how quickly you can browse.
The difference can be enormous. I just finished optimizing the software on my mother’s Mac, and tripled her browsing speed. (The problem there was somebody had installed OS 9 with speech recognition and other unneeded features turned on.)
I’m surprised no one has mentioned ping times.
When looking into internet service there are two numbers that affect your experience. Bandwidth and Ping.
Bandwidth has been covered already. It’s the maximum amount of data that can be transmitted in a given time period (think of a road…the more lanes it has is equivalent to more bandwidth).
Ping times is how long it takes a signal to roundtrip from your computer to the receiving computer (think of that road again but now with stops lights on it). Everytime your signal hits a node on the internet that introduces latency into your surfing. Everytime a reuest passes a node it’s called a ‘hop’. If you run TRACERT on your pc you can see each hop your request takes as it travels the internet.
Of course, much of the ping time variable is out of your control. Nevertheless different providers have varying track records in this department.
Ping rates are generally not important to regular internet users (surfing and e-mail). If it’s really bad it may show up as a delay between clicking on a link and actually getting the page (although sometimes, like here at the SDMB, the hideous delays are caused by an overloaded server or network pipe).
Where ping rates become important are in streaming applications (video and audio) and especially online games. In fact, online gaming has a term for this called LPB’s (Low Ping Bastards) since those people generally have a distinct advantage when playing online.
In general DSL has better ping rates than cable. Some DSL companies even specialize in keeping ping rates down (catering to a niche market). You can never get that kind of service from cable.
I’ve had both a cable modem and now I have DSL. I only changed because I moved and cable wasn’t available in my area. Cable was definitely faster (around 1 Mb/s on tests) on the download scene but my DSL experience has been perfectly fine (a few hiccups here and there)and still pretty speedy (780 Kb/s up and down…actual tested rates have even been a bit better). DSL does provide a better gaming experience for me though so I’m torn between the two.
As mentioned above checkout DSL Reports. It’s a great resource although it can be a bit overwhelming (information overload).
(NOTE: In the wee hours of the morning [around 2 a.m.] I have managed to get download speeds in excess of 350 Kb/s on a cable modem from a fast web site…DSL never exceeds 90 Kb/s regardless of time of day.)