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Cable Vs Dsl

G

giovanni

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 1, 2002
214
0
manhattan
I know this has been discussed many times before. I wanted to hear some up to date comments though.
I did get DSL service many years ago, mainly because of what was always said in terms of speed being affected significantly by the number of people online at the same time in one's building. Now that I see that (a) a friend of mine here in nyc with cable gets speeds on average 3 times faster than I do with DSL (he does live in a tiny building, may be 4 families, and may be he is the only one with cable) and (b) my whole building is being rewired, and time warner/lode runner are offering some decent deals, I would like to hear some fresh thoughts on this. I do leave in a big building and I wonder whether it is still true that inevitably I will not see such nice advertised access speed of cable as compared to DSL.

best,
gio
 
It depends on a lot of things...really the best way is to ask someone else in your building with cable when the time comes. I get around 600K/sec avg with cable.. used to get 1.2MBK/sec when lived out in the middle of nowhere. Just ask. :)
 
Personally, I recommend cable over DSL for most instances.

The only times I would say go for DSL is if you can get it for much cheaper, or you live VERY close to the central office that your connection will be coming through. You can see some very good bandwidth if you're close to your CO.
 
I have used Verizon DSL, Time Warner Road Runner, and RCN at various locations around Manhattan, and for Manhattan I would say that cable (both TW and RCN) is consistently at least two or three times faster than DSL. And if you sign up for Earthlink service, you can get it even cheaper than DSL. For example, I pay $42 a month for Earthlink cable modem service and got the first month free! (the carrier is actually Time Warner, it's just cobranded as Earthlink). Here's a link for ya:

https://register.earthlink.net/cgi-bin/wsisa.dll/broadband/cable/cable.html

This compares to $50 a month for Verizon DSL (don't be fooled by the $19.95 for the first couple months), $45 a month for the regular TW service, and $50 I think for the RCN service. Actually, looking at the link above I see that Earthlink now offers either the first month free or $19.95 a month for the first three months. I guess you would actually save more money by going for that deal than getting the first month free as I did.

Anway, between RCN and TW, I would say that TW is the more reliable carrier at any rate. With RCN I had to restart my cable modem relatively frequently, whereas I rarely have to with the Toshiba cable modem that TW provided. So definitely sign up for the Earthlink/TW service - it's no contest...
 
springscansing, wow !, that is even worse than what I get with DSL. I get always 700k+. Where are you located ? Verizon, for an additional $10 offers twice that speed. Download only, of course. Rower I have no idea where the CO is in my case, however, I can say that I get pretty much the speed that I was sold.
The fact is that cable seems to be a lot faster than that, even though it looks like there is no guarantee.
Imalave, those are quite amazing news, I guess you think that is the case more or less independently of how many people are online. And yes, I noticed that cable does save you on average at leat $5/month v.s. DSL.

The other consideration I forgot to mention and which also made me chose DSL over cable originally was security concerns. The general opinion then was that DSL is significantly more secure that cable.


best,
gio
 
Originally posted by giovanni
springscansing, wow !, that is even worse than what I get with DSL. I get always 700k+. Where are you located ? Verizon, for an additional $10 offers twice that speed. Download only, of course. Rower I have no idea where the CO is in my case, however, I can say that I get pretty much the speed that I was sold.
The fact is that cable seems to be a lot faster than that, even though it looks like there is no guarantee.
Imalave, those are quite amazing news, I guess you think that is the case more or less independently of how many people are online. And yes, I noticed that cable does save you on average at leat $5/month v.s. DSL.

The other consideration I forgot to mention and which also made me chose DSL over cable originally was security concerns. The general opinion then was that DSL is significantly more secure that cable.


best,
gio
Click to expand...

Yes, the fact that I had such consistently fast speeds from both TW and RCN convinced me that in Manhattan (TW at three different locations and RCN at two different locations, all downtown) cable is all but guaranteed to be faster, at least downtown (as far north as 26th and as far south as Houston, as far west as 6th Ave. and as far east as 1st Ave.). Go with cable, I'm pretty certain you won't be dissapointed.
 
Cable

I have Cable and all my friends have DSL. They watch the comershals that make fun of Cable. Only I made them get speed tested from DSLreports.com when they compaired my 2mb/360k to their 800k/150k... they just didnt understand. How could the comershals be false?

Also... if you use an ISP that uses PPPOE to pass out IP's... then doing things like Routing is a little more complecated. Its easy to do .. but you just have to know that you are using PPPOE.

Find out how close you are to the hub for DLS in your area and go to DSLreports.com and look at the reviews for the service in your area... it really depends on where you live. Roadrunner has the highest cotomer satifaction rating over all ISPs in my area. You can also look at other users speed tests to see what kind of speeds you might be getting.
 
We used to have ADSL but the dodgy ISP had major problems even though it's the biggest in Australia so we switched to cable...the ADSL tended to have unreliable speeds under the same conditions...of course it depends on what and where you're downloading from and stuff so I can't really give an average speed for my cable and its download speed is uncapped...so from specific microsoft and apple etc. servers, my download can be around 700kbps but it can be down to about 10 if...y'know...I'll stop here :)
 
I'm in Los Angeles and have both a DSL connection and a cable modem connection. Why? Because neither can be depended on to be available 24/7 and I can't go days without service. I use one when the other is out. Yes, it is twice the price, but in my case cheaper than lost productivity.

My cable service has gotten much more reliable the past year, but DSL has not. Because the DSL service involves multiple companies handling the router installation, the phone lines, and the Internet service, getting reliable service has been much more difficult when things go wrong, or when one of the companies goes out of business or is bought by another company.

For security, I use a firewall device that I can connect to either the cable modem or the DSL router.

As far as speed goes, I'm not near the central office so DSL is much slower than the cable line. Therefore, I use the cable line when both lines are working.

The DSL ads warn you that cable doesn't work at top speed because you are sharing bandwidth with your neighbors. I have seen very little noticable effect. (Maybe, as they sell more cable service in a neighborhood, they install more cables and switches to support more bandwidth anyway.)

If I could have only one? I'd pick cable.
 
I have SBC DSL and absolutely HATE IT. Signing a 1year contract was a huge mistake and I'm so happy that its almost over. Never again will I use DSL, its soooo slow and the support is aweful. Do yourself a big favor and go with cable.
 
I choose cable,
I'ts much faster than DSL in my area. Many of my friends have DSL and they are making the switch. reason price is cheaper. I have 3 mbps download and 256 upstream for $50/ month. DLS price 1.5 mbps down and 128 up for same price.
Also, I hardly ever see my cable go down. very reliable.

Pick cable
 
as many others have echoed... in my experience... Cable consistently outspeeds DSL.

The whole "multiple users sharing bandwidth" is a theoretical problem... which doesn't bear out practically.

arn
 
I have CableVision's Optimum Online and I love it, I did go over to my friend's house, he has DSL, i found it noticably slower than cable, I was actualy waitng for downloads, ha. I perfer cable but which ever one you can aford get. I think Cable is a better value though, also if you gte extra/permium channels the Cable modem costs less for some companies, you should call and ask.

-Steve
 
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