Like the subject said, I’m planning on upgrading to a high speed internet access and I’m looking for advice. Where I live I have three options: Direct PC, a satellite service; Road Runner, which uses television cables; and Lightning Link, offered by a local telephone service.
Does anyone have advice on what I should be looking for? My number one concern is reliability, followed by speed. Higher price is something I’ll accept if it means better service. Are there any websights that explain the services in very non-technical layman’s terms and/or rate the competing services?
As a personal plug, I’ve never had any big issues with RoadRunner. It’s a very stable service from my experience, and if there is a service problem, the customer support people have always been quick to act and courteous.
Thanks for the help. I’ll be checking out the DSL site. But (displaying my ignorance) isn’t DSL just one type of access? A site comparing apples to apples isn’t going to tell me if I’d be better off buying an orange.
Don’t know what to tell you about your other options, as I’ve never heard of satellite Internet access, but I’ve heard nothing but horrible, nasty, Pit-worthy things about Roadrunner. Civil Defense is the first person I’ve ever seen with something civil ::groan:: to say about 'em.
AFAIK for satellite access you still need a conventional telephone modem for your upstream signal which makes uploads slow and means, unlike a cable modem, you still have to dial up to get online. I think the hardware is also more expensive than ADSL or cable.
Sorry, Milo, but Starband is 2-way satellite without needing a phone line. Nice and fast… the only drawback is multiplayer gaming, because of the built-in lag.
Cable and DSL can be pretty much the same. Sat has the lag issue as mentioned and/or needs a phone line too.
It is going to depend on how good your local provider is.
About everyone I work with has high speed internet. My boss has satellite. The rest of us are split between cable and dsl. I am on cable now, and it has been great. Actually, about all the horror stories were getting the damn things installed and working to start with. After that, it has been pretty much smooth sailing on both sides of the fence.
I wouldn’t be upset if I had to move to DSL someday, there just isn’t much difference.
One of the guys pays a bit more for real DSL as opposed to what most people get (ADSL). So, he has something like 786kbps both ways. I am limited to 128k outbound. The extra outbound speed would be nice on occasion.
Really? Cool. Satellite connections could be a great boon for broadband in the UK.
At the moment our choice is mainly between cable and ASDL. You can only get ASDL if your phone line passes what’s known as a whoosh test, and many don’t.
Cable is still relatively new here, and not all areas are covered.
The upshot of this is that there are a lot of people who would love broadband access who are simply unable to get it. The fact that satellite would cover the whole of the UK, including rural areas, has the potential to make the “broadband revolution” a whole lot more inclusive.
Two-way satellite modems still have a lag, yes. The lag comes from the fact that the satellite is 20-someodd thousand miles above the equator, and the signal has to make that trip twice. That adds up to a fair amount of delay (over half a second) just due to the speed of light (or radio, as the case may be).
As far as which service is best, that tends to vary a LOT with the local area. I’ve had AT&T Broadband (RoadRunner) both in southeast Florida and western Massachusetts and I’ve been quite happy with it in both cases. I hardly ever had any down-time, setup was painless, and I even got it working with Linux and OpenBSD without any hassles. In western Massachusetts, Verizon rolled out its DSL service and it sucked so badly that you could have a four-year degree in suckology plus ten years sucking experience, and you could never suck this much. I hear they got most of the problems taken care of, but it’s still just as much as cable modem service, and not as fast.
summing it up is Sat will be one of your last options- due to lag and cost. (Also you might be able to get fixed wireless) .
cable and dsl are you main choices. Find out the cost and speed of dsl. The ask you neighbors aBOUT their cable modem download speed at various times of the day (copmair the times you will use it) - cable varies alot.
Also when the dsl co’s state download speed of 640 the max you will see is about 61-62 kb/s this is due to bits and bytes being used. 640 kbits/second will give you apx 61-62 kbytes /sec after overhead. you cablemodem friends will most likely give units in kbytes/sec.