Posted: 2/11/2003 7:29:18 AM EDT
| I need help deciding between DSL or Cable both are aval.in my area.So is one better than the other?if so why?all help is app. thank you. |
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This isn't an answer, but, how often does your cable go out? How often does your phone go out? If one is 'offline' alot, I would go with the other. Sometimes people don't think about this. You will really enjoy either though! Congrats. Oh, I have DSL, cable wasn't avaliable when I got mine. Not gonna change it though. ByteTheBullet (-: |
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Go here: [url=http://www.broadbandreports.com]BroadbandReports.com[/url] Find out who will service you in your area for cable and DSL, then check out their reviews in your area on broadbandreports. Post some questions and you usually get good answers. Check the FAQs, good info there. Both cable & DSL have their own pros & cons. Cable has better throughput for the money, but DSL [u]usually[/u] has the better latency. Either/or, you'll be happy. Bullet makes a good point about what service is up more but the DSL network in your area could go down just as easily as cable and still not lose cable or phone service since they are part of a different system. When I had DSL, there were times I had no phone but DSL and vice versa. Have fun! Oh, and get a BIG hard disk too, you'll need it for all the p0rn. |
| Yes it depends on where you live and how much money your local cable company has invested in the technology. DSL is the better overall technology, the cable companies fell into "HI Speed". Cable is capable of higher speeds, but DSL is more consistent, the more people on the cable system the slower it will be, but it seems the people who are lucky enough to have good cable networks seem to have the best speeds all around. There are different levels of DSL as well so you will have to check it out in your area. Up here we have three levels of DSL depending on how much money you want to pay. |
| If you are into gaming, go with the one what has the lower latency to it's gateway. I had cable in one of the busiest areas in California and average latency was 200ms+ with peak times exceeding 450ms. I switched to DSL and got 1.2Mbit downstreams and 20ms latency. I rather have 140KB downloads with 20ms pings versus 200KB downloads with 200ms. But alas, I now live in an area that has none of the above and would die to have DSL or Cable. Cable is great when it's not oversubscribed. |
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mFaRmEr, it depends on the providers. You'll need to find someone near you that has one or the other to talk to. Also, it depends on what you're planning to use it for. If it's just for playing around with web pages, cable should work fine. If it's for real work (e.g. like telnet, something that really depends on a fast connection), dial-up to a good provider will probably be faster than cable or DSL. Here at work, we've tried cable, DSL, and POTS connections. We dropped DSL and the cable, because the latency was just too high. The nearly 3/4 of a second delay between when you hit a key and see the results come back was simply too long. Our good dial-up has less than 40 milliseconds of latency. It is very fast. The problem is that, as you can imagine, the capacity is low. The cable was the exact opposite. With certain web pages, the capacity was very high, but the speed was always terribly slow. A 3/4 of a second delay will drive you crazy.z |
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Well, here in Memphis, my DSL is faster than my sister's cable, but I do realize that is not typically the case. How much faster? Not enough for the average user to worry about. It is also more expensive, though. My DSL has been incredibly reliable ever since I straightened out the people at Bell South (I have MSN DSL, but it ultimately gets routed through Bell South). They care very little about customer service. I could get into a long story about specifics of what was wrong, but basically they had a problem in their system and kept telling me I had a problem at my house. I knew this from the beginning, but finding a competant person to talk to takes a while. Cable used to bog down when a bunch of users in the same area have it, whereas DSL will never slow down because of high usage. I think most of the companies have worked out the kinks of cable slowing down though. I was against Cable for so long because of the kinks in the system when it first came out, but as long as it stays $20 cheaper a month, I am going to switch over once I am done with my 1 year contract with MSN. |
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I have heard many times that the speed of cable modems is affected by the number of people using it in a neighborhood, but in my experience it's just not true. I install cable modems as part of my job, I speed test them regularly, and I notice very little difference in connection speeds based on the number of customers in an area. Damaged feeder lines or poorly designed cable plant can make a difference as can the equipment in the headend, but the coax and fiber optic cable used to feed a neighborhood is ussually not even close to capacity. Where I work typical download speeds are around 1700 Kbps. Uploads average around 230 Kbps. I have seen 1800 Kbps download speeds in very high use areas and 300 Kbps download in low use areas. It's not the number of customers that affect speed so much as the condition and the design of the cable system they are using. There are sometimes problems with cable service and they are often concentrated in certain areas. If any of your neighbors have cable internet ask them how well it's worked for them. If you're having trouble with the speed of your cable service, try going to www.dslreports.com. Between their speed test and their tweak test you should be able to figure out if it's your computer or your cable provider. And just to cover my ass a little here, I'm a cable guy and not a computer guru. If I were a computer expert I'd be making a lot more than I do now. Some of you are probably far more knowledgable about this than I am, but I have speed tested literally hundreds of modems and those are my observations. |
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Quoted: I have heard many times that the speed of cable modems is affected by the number of people using it in a neighborhood, but in my experience it's just not true. I install cable modems as part of my job, I speed test them regularly, and I notice very little difference in connection speeds based on the number of customers in an area. Damaged feeder lines or poorly designed cable plant can make a difference as can the equipment in the headend, but the coax and fiber optic cable used to feed a neighborhood is ussually not even close to capacity. Where I work typical download speeds are around 1700 Kbps. Uploads average around 230 Kbps. I have seen 1800 Kbps download speeds in very high use areas and 300 Kbps download in low use areas. It's not the number of customers that affect speed so much as the condition and the design of the cable system they are using. There are sometimes problems with cable service and they are often concentrated in certain areas. If any of your neighbors have cable internet ask them how well it's worked for them. If you're having trouble with the speed of your cable service, try going to www.dslreports.com. Between their speed test and their tweak test you should be able to figure out if it's your computer or your cable provider. And just to cover my ass a little here, I'm a cable guy and not a computer guru. If I were a computer expert I'd be making a lot more than I do now. Some of you are probably far more knowledgable about this than I am, but I have speed tested literally hundreds of modems and those are my observations. I am quite possibly way off in my assumption, AKFudd, but my guess is that you are testing cable modems during regular business hours. Try the same test on, say, a Saturday night in a neighborhood full of 13 year-olds. My guess is that speeds would be down considerably. |
| I have road runner, but the computer crashes from time to time with the old blue screen and something about not less than equal. Microsoft says it is the toshiba driver. I installed the latest. The folks at toshiba say to use an ethernet card, but they said a usb port would work. What is an ethernet card and can I use it on my Dell Inspiron 2600? Thanks, John |
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Fatman, My guess would be that the sites you visit during those hours are congested, probably by all those 13 year olds. I work four, ten hour days, one of which is Saturday. I don't get off work until 6:30 Saturday, but I have yet to notice any difference in speed tests at different times of day. I have noticed that some web sites, this one for instance, are sometimes quite slow, but it's ussually not the cable connection causing the slow speeds. Even a T3 connection will seem slow if it's only receiving a few Kbps. |
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I had cable service in San Diego when it first came out. It was great the first 6 months, then when everyone had it on my trunk line it sucked. For the price it was not worth it. Think of cable this way - You have one water supply pipe for 100 houses, it is made to supply water for 100 houses. When you are in the shower and 99 people flush their toilet at once your water pressure will drop. Same with cable modem. That is what happened to my cable service. If I could afford DSL service I would get it. I can't so I don't. |
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Mushoot, The Dell Inspiron 2600 is a laptop if I'm not mistaken and it might have an ethernet port already. If it does it will look like a phone jack, but it's twice as wide. If not what you will need is either a PCMCIA card or a USB/ethernet adaptor. Standard ethernet cards will not work on laptops. After installing it I would remove the old USB driver. Sometimes laptops have built in ethernet ports that do not work. If this is the case it might be turned off in the BIOS. |
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[b]Cable (television)[/b] * Speeds range 256K to 2 Mbps. * Since it’s a relatively mature technology, installing the service doesn’t typically require a long wait. * Coverage areas are mostly residential, so businesses often can’t get the service. * Cable is a shared connection, so speeds can slow down when lots of people in the same neighborhood are online. * The installation process is smooth and simple [b]DSL (Digital Subscriber Line – telephone cable).[/b] * Speeds up to 1.5 Mbps. * DSL provides a direct, one-on-one connection to the Internet, which means users don’t have to share bandwidth with their neighbors. * Be advised, the process of installing DSL takes longer and is potentially rockier than the process of installing cable modem access. * In order to be eligible for DSL, users must live near a phone company’s central office. * Service is often unavailable in rural areas. Another point is that cable forms a network with your neighbors who may or may not know not to turn file and print sharing onto your neighborhood LAN. And with any always on connection you have to beware of hackers. |
| In my area, I get just short of full T-1 speed with my DSL. My sync is 1,472,000 bps. My through put to most areas of the country is better than 1200 kbps. Cable in our area gives around 300 kbps. I would check with others in your area and see what they get. In some areas DSL is faster in others cable is faster. This is with Bellsouth in SW MS. |