DSL or Cable

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Caminetto

Senior member
Jul 29, 2001
821
49
91
Yes in your situation dsl sounds like a better deal, but make sure you can actually get those speeds in your neighborhood, as dsl speed drops as you move further from the co. And many a user has found that the ads don't match the performance.
IMHO, one's decision should be based on who is providing the cable service. You would be hard pressed to find a better deal than we have here in central Ohio via Time Warner and Roadrunner. We are getting 3000 down and 512 up for $45 a month. Cable is hardly ever out, and TW is great about not letting a node get overloaded so speeds are constant.
 
Mar 18, 2004
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Originally posted by: tk109
Comcast doubled my cable speed for free. It's now 3000 down and 256 up. And it is ALWAYS maxed out. It never budges from full speed. I had DSL for like 2 years and I like cable better.

Yup thats my comcast too.. its great.. cable pwns DSL...

nuff said
 
Mar 18, 2004
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Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor
Originally posted by: BDSM
Hello there. My personal experience is that cable is usually less stable than dsl. But it seems to vary a great deal from location to location.

Since you don't have to pay for your cable connection and you want to try dsl just order that and try it out. You can have both. And if you like dsl better just keep both of them (maybe you have more than 1 puter) since you don't have to pay for the cable anyways.

Anyway... I live in sweden. Cable @ 8/1 is available here now for us $ 55 a month. It is available pretty much everywhere.

We also have adsl 8/1 for us $ 38 and adsl2 10/1 for us $ 50.. and adsl2+ @ 24/1 for us $ 55 a month.
There is also vdsl for us $ 50. Though one has to live near the phone station to get that. < 3000 feet= 13/13 mbit and < 1000 feet = 26 mbit/sec. ´
Vdsl availablitiy is limited though.

And there is ofcourse lan 10/10 for about us $ 40 a month. 100/100 mbit is also available but it is very expensive (us $ 120 a month).

What kind of house could US $200,000 get me over there?

Depends on what state you want to live in..
 

rb56

Senior member
Oct 27, 2000
873
0
0
Thanks for all the replies, at this point I think I will order the DSL and compare it with cable for a month. Then decide which one is the better deal.

rb56
 

UnTech

Member
Mar 25, 2002
169
0
0
DSL or CABLE? I don't care which one is slower or faster I just want one of them.......I had Cable for years until I moved out to the country last summer. Now I am stuck with crappy dial-up.
 

BDSM

Senior member
Jun 6, 2001
584
0
0


Hey there Hero.

200k gets you anything from huge house with lots of land.. to a one room apartament depending on where you wanna live.

Oh btw. There is one isp that charges $ 44 for 10/10 mbit lan AND ip telephony included. (no.. not through your pc.. you can use your regular phones) and inside sweden calls are free except to cellphones.

We have very healthy competition here in that area now. I hear that it is even better in south korea and japan though.
 

WhiteKnight77

Senior member
Mar 10, 2003
472
0
0
I would say go with the DSL. I have Earthlink ADSL with 1.5/128 (that is what they advertise, but I actually get better than that and have had upload speeds of 212+ during tests). I live close to the outer limit that you can from a central office (17,000' or roughly 3 miles) and have a stable connection. The only time it has ever been down is when the phone company changed a setting and it took a week to figure it out and with the help of tech support, changed a setting in the DSL modem got it back up.
 

stickybytes

Golden Member
Sep 3, 2003
1,043
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I have Verizon Dsl service 1500/128. I have never experienced a outage. Their service is very reliable and i haven't had any complaints.
 

JBT

Lifer
Nov 28, 2001
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1
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Originally posted by: stickybytes
I have Verizon Dsl service 1500/128. I have never experienced a outage. Their service is very reliable and i haven't had any complaints.

dito.
 

ShinX

Senior member
Dec 1, 2003
300
0
0
Suck my 4000 down 256 up . i get 30-50 , 46 avg ping with no loss or lag during frag sessions. Oh and i use Adelphia cable btw
 

TwoBills

Senior member
Apr 11, 2004
734
0
76
Just one thing to think about. If you have a security system in your house, the phone jack for your computer(s) has to be home run to the network interface, otherwise the s.s. isn't going to transmit properly. Even if it is a home run, the s.s. commuications has to be rewired to allow for dsl. Probably at a cost of $150 or so. With cable, there's no problem.
 

formulav8

Diamond Member
Sep 18, 2000
7,004
522
126
Cable is twice as fast as the dsl is hear. The upload is faster too.

DSL: 1500/256

Cable: 3000/384

So, in my case. Definitely Cable. The pings are great also.


Jason
 

Dutchmaster420

Golden Member
Jan 22, 2004
1,116
0
0
my cable is 10 down/1 up for 29.99 a month!!! while dsl here is like 3 down-768 up for same price

no competition
 

JBT

Lifer
Nov 28, 2001
12,094
1
81
I don't think people are answering the question quite right they are talking about in their areas and their speeds... So I what YOU should do is NOT being answered by the poll...
 

Arcanedeath

Platinum Member
Jan 29, 2000
2,822
1
76
Its really no contest ADSL is faster and cheaper so you my as well go w/ that assuming the DSL carrier in your area is reliable.
 

PlatinumGold

Lifer
Aug 11, 2000
23,168
0
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Originally posted by: ShinX
Suck my 4000 down 256 up . i get 30-50 , 46 avg ping with no loss or lag during frag sessions. Oh and i use Adelphia cable btw

you are bragging??

i'd take his 1.5 down / 896 up over your paltry 256 up ANY DAY.
 

Dulanic

Diamond Member
Oct 27, 2000
9,965
589
136
I cant believe more people are voting cable, I think the reason is they didnt READ. If your DSL is faster then cable go DSL! Overall DSL is more reliable IMO, but it isnt much different. Go by speed and price... in your case DSL. In alot of places Cable is faster and that is why I think we are seeing more votes for Cable. However DSL CAN be very fast, I use SBC and get 6000/608 for $45 a month, MUCH better then comcast cable here.
 

ShawnD1

Lifer
May 24, 2003
15,987
2
81
I pick DSL because it's always fast. On cable, if some jackass leaves Emule running 24/7 (like I do), everybody in the network is stuck with a connection as slow as 56k.
 

talyn00

Golden Member
Oct 18, 2003
1,666
0
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Which is actually faster? DSL or cable? I'm not talking about the download/upload rates that your ISP restricts you to, but what is the max rates you can get from each (assuming no caps imposed by ISP)?
Second question, which technology will last longest?

I'm just a poor loser with dialup.....
 

peonyu

Platinum Member
Mar 12, 2003
2,038
23
81
I have 3 meg dsl down and 1 mb up through bellsouth and its only went down once in the last year, and that was during a hurricane.
Speedwise its great, i get 20 ping in all the games i play, download at 400 kb/s and upload at 100 kb/s.

Pretty much though, it seems to be hit or miss with cable/dsl depending on location and the provider. If your in a crowded city and use cable then you have a greater chance of losing speed since cable is shared, and if you live far from the DSLAM then your dsl speed will suffer. Considering that, the only way to decide is for you to try it out yourself and see how your speeds are imo.
 

snidy1

Golden Member
Mar 17, 2003
1,285
0
0
I've had both and curently have cable, and it is way faster than DSL. I average 3500 kps down and upload speed is fast enough for what I do.
 

Ardan

Senior member
Mar 9, 2003
621
0
0
I have some advice and tips for you, rb56.

The best thing I can say is to go on dslreports.com and search their forums and read up on Qwest/MSN, and then search for reviews of it in your area. At 1.5Mb/896k for Qwest, surely people have reviewed that before.

In games, having a massive upload only helps if you have a download going or many other people doing many different things. When I had 1Mb/128k ADSL a while ago, I pinged 20-40ms everywhere, including the latest games. When I went to 2mb/256k charter (which is now 3Mb/256k), my ping was--you guessed it---still 20-40ms. The difference is that I can download a big file and the ping is okay, and I'm not impacted by the others on my home network anymore.

I'm about to finish up a degree on Networking and I can tell you that he could still lag in some servers on xbox live with a 800+kbps upstream rate because it all depends on your route and its quality. For instance, when my CS server's ISP was hit hard with a hardware failure, it routed all local (Minnesota, WI, ND, SD, Iowa) players to Seattle and back. We all had fine upstream rates, but the lag was terrible because a change in their routing tables forced us to take the "scenic route."

My other suggestion is to do pre-qual test on dslreports.com to see how far away from the Central Office you are. I've known people that were far far away from ours and still get 1.5-1.6Mbps of the 2Mbps they offer now as standard for DSL. Of course, this all depends upon the quality of the lines because I have also heard differently from other areas. In my area, it has been booming and the telephone company has aggressively laid down new fiber and has been building up the equipment quality to accommodate the users. I don't think the # of people in your area is going to affect you at all, especially with DSL. We have thousands and thousands of people in this area on Charter's cablemodem service and on DSL and nobody gets slow speeds, and Qwest for you has been trying to improve their service everywhere.

To recap, basically check out dslreports.com. You will get MUCH better results there on what to choose than here, as you can clearly see from the responses about how fast everyone else's DSL or cable is . Secondly, you should go to DSLreports' speed archive and enter in your ZIP code to see if anyone in your area has done speed tests, once you find the ISP you want to switch to.

Good luck!:beer:
 

Turkey22

Senior member
Nov 28, 2001
840
0
0
Easy choice for me as cable in my area is severely limited by too many users. I also have a friend who has dsl that was borderline in or out of the area of service and his max downloads are twice what mine are. Not to mention dsl would be cheaper except I have a special deal on my cable. It cant hurt to have them test your lines to see what kind of service you would get, but for me its always been whats more cost effective and you have essentially free cable. You just have to ask if the performance increase is worth the premium in price.
 
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