cable vs. dsl?

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KhanadaRhodes

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which is bettah?
i have cable at the moment, but i'll be moving out of the house soon, and i'll need to get my own isp and stuff. i can't stand dial up, and all i've ever had was 56k dial up and cable, so i don't know dsl, nor do i know anyone here who has it.
anyone here ever had dsl or currently does? they're both the same price so cost isn't the thing...i want to know which one is faster, more reliable, etc. lol

heeeelp!
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the lights are down, but you don't sleep so tight. the word's around that we play for keeps tonight...
ME!
 
DSL can be faster, because you're not sharing a connection with your neighbors, as you are with a cable modem. However DSL suffers from a few major drawbacks.

First, it's hard to get. You have to be within a few thousand feet of the local telephone exchange.

Second, the service can suck. The installation people are always saying they will be over "Real soon now", and it can go down for days at a time, after it is installed due to crappy providers.

If you can overcome these hurdles, DSL can be much better than Cable, but you really need to do some checking around first before you take the plunge. See how other customers in your area are being treated and how their experience has been.

Broadband provdiers in the U.S have had problems with spending too much to build the infastructure without actually learning how to deal with the flood of customers they have welcomed.

Many people are giving up on broadband alltogether because of the shite service they have to endure. Check out this article for more on broadband defectors
 
ooh...see i was wondering cuz when i get my own apartment
wink.gif
and stuff...the company here that offers dsl is who i used to use back in the day when dial-up was the best thing since sliced bread...

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the lights are down, but you don't sleep so tight. the word's around that we play for keeps tonight...
ME!
 
ooh...see i was wondering cuz when i get my own apartment
wink.gif
and stuff...the company here that offers dsl is who i used to use back in the day when dial-up was the best thing since sliced bread...

We.....you'll have to check it out with some of their customers, or else w...you might find yourself without internet acccess.
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What is the name of the company in question? Myabe I can ask around.
 
Originally posted by DoctorGonzo:
What is the name of the company in question? Maybe I can ask around.

umm *scratches head* it's through bellsouth, but that's all i know.

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i want a chance to keep you awake at night, when the sunlight burns through your love...
ME!
 
I think both are equally good, both have their strong points and you should be happy either way.

I've had a cable modem for a little over 3 years when it first came to our area. I love it, and actually find loading time faster than my dad-in-law's dsl hookup but not that much faster. The page loading time differences are not that much really.

Most of my neighbors have cable as well, but I never noticed a whole lot of lag except at peak times like 8 am and between 6 and 7pm. For the most part, the lag doesn't really bother me, it beats dial up any day. And lag time *maybe* last for 15 min to a half hour at the very most.

The only real bummer is when the cable goes out. But that hasn't happened in ages for me luckily. Knock on wood.
 
I've got PacBell DSL here at home (and my brother set up a wireless network, so we can surf the net with a laptop on the couch - I love that
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), and I've had no complaints with it so far. Nice and fast (avg top download spd is 150k/sec) and stable.
 
DSL is indeed a shared line....the DSL folks have been feeding us that line forever about the "Shared" line of Cable. But you have to remember, the further you get from the DSL "switching house," your speed slows (because it has to bypass other users' houses). In addition, the cable folks have the ability to increase the bandwidth to certain areas if they see speed degregation. That's not to say that you won't see some slower speeds during peak times with cable, but you will also start to see that with DSL as they add more subscribers.

Often, DSL and Cable are similar in price - not speed. DSL here at the lowest speed level - up to 256K download speeds(you have to have a year-long contract and "dial-in" everytime you come online) is only $5 less than the cable service that has top speeds of up to 2000k (no contract and always-on). DSL next level of service (up to 1000k) costs $50 a month.

Anyway, I may be a little biased - but I like the cable modem service. Plus, they have better customer service (acording to J.D. Power & Associates). DSL services via the phone companies have been notorius for bad service...kinda funny to see the cable company having better customer service that someone.
 
yeah, our cable goes out sometimes, it really depends on the time of year. in august especially it'll go out a lot, just because of all the storms we'll get. but except for those instances, the cable only goes out when the power goes out, which of course makes it a moot point! hehe

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i want a chance to keep you awake at night, when the sunlight burns through your love...
ME!
 
cable is not bad as zoney said, i personally prefer it but i also work for the cable company. from my experience, however, cable can have significant problems in apartment building. this is due to several reasons: most appartments have older wiring which really should be upgraded for cable to work properly, as more and more customers in the building either get digital cable or the internet on cable, the cable co is likely to begin this. also the whole # of users on the local network can be an issue in this case.
for the most part that fault of cable is a fallacy generated very successfully by dsl companies.
find out what speed the modems that the company gives out are-for the most part cable co's give out 10meg/second modems that run at 3megs/second(this is because of the average capability of the customer computer, on the other hand there is signicant room for improvement without switching out modems). dsl companies tend to either have 1 meg or 1.5 meg modems. but overall the two services are a lot more similar than they would have you believe.

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i thought i knew you.
 
Kobeson brings up a good point about apartment buildings. It also goes for DSL. The current apartment building I live in is not DSL-ready (due to the phone wires). Often the apartment building management company is to blame (using the cheapest wires - telephone and cable - possible when constructing the building).
 
I have cable at home and DSL at work. Overall I think the cable is faster, but DSL is slightly cheaper here where I live. You can definately dowload files, pictures etc. much faster with the cable. I've never had problems with either one being down, which has been very nice. I just wish cable wasn't so dam expensive.
 
thanks everyone for responding.
biggrin.gif

at the moment, i've got cable, but i signed up for it back in 98 when dsl wasn't an option in my area. and since i'm moving this summer, i get to choose the isp...
unless they've separate numbers, i would assume our phone company which offers dsl is the same as the dial up service they have. i used to have that service before there was cable (it was bellsouth for anyone around my area...) and i always had great experiences talking to them...the like two times i ever had to call, since i never experienced problems getting online (this was also in like 1997 and of course more and more people sign online every day so it could be a different story now) ... anyway, unless i see something about the dsl company that sweeps me off my feet, i think i'm going with cable, moreso that i know what to expect, since i have it now. that and...it's cheaper to get a new cable jack put in as compared to a phone jack.
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i want a chance to keep you awake at night, when the sunlight burns through your love...
ME!
 
I haven't had near as bad an experience with DSL as zone seems to have had. It's always on (no dialing up), the speeds are quite nice, and we haven't had any service problems so I can't comment on the customer service aspect.

And the bandwidth might decrease the further away you are, but at least it's constant (ie doesn't decrease when more people in your area are on).

[This message has been edited by Diemen (edited 01-28-2002).]
 
Originally posted by KhanadaRhodes:
which is bettah?
i have cable at the moment, but i'll be moving out of the house soon, and i'll need to get my own isp and stuff. i can't stand dial up, and all i've ever had was 56k dial up and cable, so i don't know dsl, nor do i know anyone here who has it.
anyone here ever had dsl or currently does? they're both the same price so cost isn't the thing...i want to know which one is faster, more reliable, etc. lol

heeeelp!
biggrin.gif


Cable is faster and more reliabe. You can take that to the bank.
 
Originally posted by DoctorGonzo:
DSL can be faster, because you're not sharing a connection with your neighbors, as you are with a cable modem. However DSL suffers from a few major drawbacks.

First, it's hard to get. You have to be within a few thousand feet of the local telephone exchange.

Second, the service can suck. The installation people are always saying they will be over "Real soon now", and it can go down for days at a time, after it is installed due to crappy providers.

If you can overcome these hurdles, DSL can be much better than Cable, but you really need to do some checking around first before you take the plunge. See how other customers in your area are being treated and how their experience has been.

Broadband provdiers in the U.S have had problems with spending too much to build the infastructure without actually learning how to deal with the flood of customers they have welcomed.

Many people are giving up on broadband alltogether because of the shite service they have to endure. Check out this article for more on broadband defectors
That's not always true. I have cable (Cox@home) and it is quite a bit faster. Yes you are sharing bandwidth, but the bandwidth is so large it doesn't matter. I AVERAGE 400 Kilobytes per second which is 3.2 Megabits per second. I switched to DSL for one day when I realised DSL was measuring there bandwidth in bits not bytes (Aprox 8 bits = 1 byte). I was averaging 1.5 Megabits with DSL whic is only 187.5 KB/s, which is far less than the 400KB/s I get with CABLE.
 
Originally posted by DoctorGonzo:
DSL can be faster, because you're not sharing a connection with your neighbors, as you are with a cable modem. However DSL suffers from a few major drawbacks.

First, it's hard to get. You have to be within a few thousand feet of the local telephone exchange.

Second, the service can suck. The installation people are always saying they will be over "Real soon now", and it can go down for days at a time, after it is installed due to crappy providers.

If you can overcome these hurdles, DSL can be much better than Cable, but you really need to do some checking around first before you take the plunge. See how other customers in your area are being treated and how their experience has been.

Broadband provdiers in the U.S have had problems with spending too much to build the infastructure without actually learning how to deal with the flood of customers they have welcomed.

Many people are giving up on broadband alltogether because of the shite service they have to endure. Check out this article for more on broadband defectors

I've been lucky. I have had cable for 3 years my speed averages 400 Kilobytes per second and have had no real problems to mention.
 
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