DSL vs. Cable

My brother is thinking about upgrading to high-speed internet (he
currently has modem access). I believe DSL is superior, but I
want to get the opinions of the fellow SnarkPitters on this
topic. You may be the only people who are more tech-savvy than
me, and I trust your opinion.

In case it's region-dependent, he lives in the United States as well.

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

Cable is faster than DSL. No opinion about it.

However, if he has access to fiber optics, that'd be the way to go, since it's the fastest available.

Averages:

DSL (1.5 Mb/s - 5 Mb/s)
Cable (6 Mb/s - Uncapped)
FiOS (15 Mb/s - 30 Mb/s) No uncapped option as far as I know.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I have Optimum Online as a Cable provider at home and the service and
performance has been excellent. I always ping 10-20 on the fastest
servers for CS.

I download really fast as well. Almost never get interrupted service.

I haven't had DSL before, but I'm definitely very happy with Cable.

Cable is faster than DSL. No opinion about it.

Yup.

Downlaod speeds:

DSL 1mb/sec (if your lucky)

Cable 3mb/sec (for a majority of the time)

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Posting And You

What advantages does ADSL have over cable?

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Reckless disregard for childrens well being, women and nothing but utter contempt for other cultures.

Erm...it's cheaper?

I have DSL, that is 512kb/s..But now, where i live, Dubai, upgraded the 512 DSL to a 1MB/s , with the same price :biggrin:

and 1MB/s users got 1.5 or something similar, with the same prices :biggrin:

The problem is 1MB/s, is about $170 per month =\

And DSL 512kb, is about $70 per month, which is so expensive, that made them upgrade to what i mentioned earlier :smile:

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.::Dark|Masta::. - One name. One legend.

The fastest my ISP can do is 512 :sad: However, there is an ISP here that says theyre bringing in ADSL2, which supposedly gives a 24Mb max transfer.

Compare plans where he lives. Consider his usage and determine the best option.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Gaara said:
What advantages does ADSL have over cable?

DSL's major advantage over cable is you do not share bandwidth with anyone. Whatever you have is all yours. No peak times, nothing.

DSL's disadvantages are, its lack of availability, and you need to be within a certain distance from the nearest hub. (something like 27,000 feet or less)

DSL is preferable assuming you have the option of both.

Prices are usually comparable to each other. In most cases DSL is cheaper cause you only need an active phone line. (which most every house hold has)

With cable, you need an active cable line. (which many houses do not have) and you will need to add in the cost of the cable to the bills total.

I prefer DSL.

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There is no history until something happens, then there is.

I find ADSL better, and it can offer speeds up to 24Mbps when they decide to offer such packages.

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I need a new sig

You guys fail to realise the difference between throughput and
bandwidth. Here, DSL is faster than Cable. Sure cable is
theorically faster, but we dont care about the theory. We care
about the practicle applications.

As far as I understand it, ADSL means your bandwidth is devided so that
you get more download than upload. And when you get DSL, it is
usually ADSL.

Fiber would be nice, but when the rest of the internet works on
broadband and modem, its not always worth it. Fiber's also
expensive and hard to work with to boot.

Thanks guys, for all the input.

But the poll result so far is a dead heat. Ten votes casted, split evenly between cable and DSL. Any tie breaker wants to contribute?

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

Breaking the tie wouldn't help much. This question is akin to asking the ATI/GeForce preference.

In the end, its more a preference and what kind of service you receive in your area. I had faster cable than DSL, but it was down 1/2 the time. Faster doesn't work if its offline that much. Some like cable better only cause they had better service than I.

I recommend DSL simply because out of 3 years it was off perhaps 1 day total. That day wasn't all at once either.

Good luck with your choice.

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There is no history until something happens, then there is.

Other: http://www22.verizon.com/fiosforhome/channels/fios/HighSpeedInternetForHome.asp]fios

Assuming your are eligible:

30up/5down = $200
15up/2down = $50
5up/2down = $40

The values are in megabits. The 30 plan would download a gig in 4 minutes to give you an idea of how fast it is, 15 plan would be 8 minutes. (assuming you were downloading from a good server.

Sorry I went and put other and didn't break the tie :smile:

Unfortunately, FiOS is current unavailable to where we live.

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

The only problem with that is, as soon as you leave the Verison network, you're back down to average internet speeds.

You have to look at it this way:

Your computer

|

(Lets say Ethernet @ 100Mbps)

|

Your router

|

(Lets say Verison @ 30Mbps)

|

Your ISP

|

(WAN cabling @ 56Kbps to 145Mbps, lets say 145Mbps)

|

Some backbone router

|

(WAN cabling @ 56Kbps to 145Mbps, lets say 56Kbps)

|

Some other backbone router

|

(WAN cabling @ 56Kbps to 145Mbps, lets say 1.45Mbps)

|

Yet another backbone router

|

(WAN cabling @ 56Kbps to 145Mbps, lets say 145Mbps)

|

Server's ISP

|

(lets say DSL @ 1Mbps)

|

Server's router

|

(lets say 802.11g @ 54Mbps)

|

Server's computer

Then your bandwidth between your computer and the server drops to
56Kbps. Once again, if we stick to simple stuff. So it
doesnt necesarily mean you can download faster, at 30Mbps. It
just means your bandwidth to the ISP is a 30Mbps link. The rest
of the internet works between 56Kbps and 145Mbps. And dont forget
that speed is shared by thousands of users. Just like a 4 lane
highway might be faster than a coutry road, but the traffic is much
larger.

Even with that, you still notice a incredible speed increase with the 15mbit line.

Having experienced both verizon DSL (1.5 Mb), and comcast cable (3Mb), I'd say that for most applications you really won't notice a difference. In my case the cable option was cheaper because I don't want a land line telephone. Cable service seems marginaly faster, but it isn't that big of a subjective change.

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Some people are like slinkys...

They aren?t really good for anything, but you can't help but laugh when one tumbles down the stairs.

However, with an existing land line and no cable service/wall jack, my brother just might go with DSL.

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

I'm not going to read all the stuff that you guys have posted, but I caught glimpses. I was speaking of my area.

Cable is the most expensive option here. Fiber Optics is cheaper, because it runs through digital phone lines (which have been installed in my area for about five years).

No extra installation required, just a new modem to interpret everything.

Of course, you can always get T3 type stuff if you're a business which uses some multiplier techniques.

But, strictly speaking in the US. Cable is the better option. If you can get Fiber Optics, by all means, do it. Of course, if it's simply not available, you can't get it, can you?

When it's activated here I'll get it ... it's cheaper. At least Verizon will do one good thing, right?

Tracer, Comcast is twice that speed now. When it was AT&T it was much faster, since it was all uncapped. Was pretty nice.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

In most countries outside the USA, Cable is only marginally faster than ADSL, and even then that is only in theory.

In reality on cable you are at the mercy of traffic congestion, the more people online, the slower your connection is. ADSL doesnt have this problem.

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"Lovers of the law and good sausage should never watch either of them being made."

• Otto von Bismarck

And DSL 512kb, is about $70 per month, which is so expensive, that made them upgrade to what i mentioned earlier :smile:

Holy Moly! Thats much cheaper than the ADSL\Cable [size=13]in our country, and that gives you about 40/kbs :O[/size]

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I would love to change the world, But they would'nt give me the source code.

My DSL is $15 a month for a 786 kbps line, $30 for a 3 mbit line.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quote:</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>And DSL 512kb, is about $70 per month, which is so expensive, that made them upgrade to what i mentioned earlier :smile: </DIV></DIV>
Holy Moly! Thats much more costly than the ADSL [size=13]in our country (with tpg), and that gives you about 1500kbs for $50 a month. Unfortunately I am too far out to get it and so I have to stick with dial up .[/size]

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Reckless disregard for childrens well being, women and nothing but utter contempt for other cultures.

And DSL 512kb, is about $70 per month, which is so expensive, that made them upgrade to what i mentioned earlier :smile:

Holy Moly! Thats much more costly than the ADSL [size=13]in
our country (with tpg), and that gives you about 1500kbs for $50 a
month. Unfortunately I am too far out to get it and so I have to stick
with dial up .[/size]

Err, if youre talking about 1500kbit/second, that sounds pretty darn expensive compared to Sweden.

Here we pay about $50 for 8Mbit/second, which is about 1Mbyte/second at maximum.

[sigh!] Why is every crappy in our country [\sigh!] Well, proberly cause' I live in Africa! :biggrin:

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I would love to change the world, But they would'nt give me the source code.

Sweden rocks.

Before, I used to hitch-hike off one of my neighbors conection; that is
until they release someone else was on there and encrypted it.

Now I'm on bluw-wireless. Seeing that I live in old-rural, hence
so because there's now house everywhere for miles, there is no
underground DSL and cable is never going to make it out here. My
only option was to get connected to Pannaband and start recieving a 128
kbps signal.

Should've had it installed in a week, wrong. Turned out that I
had signed up during the week that blue wireless took them over.
I ended up waiting 2-3 months for the people to finally come out and
set up my Internet. Couldn't go anywhere else, they were the only
ones I could actually get access to.

As it turns out, there are several hundred different wireless Internet
providers, they all exist differently based on the area. If you
were to look at the bluewireless coverage map, you easily tell what
general area of Texas I was in. Seriously, they're that small.

But all in all, 128kbps and due to whether conditions and constant
maintenance on their end, the Internet is not always up goes down
atleast once a month for a day. What can I say, at least I have
some sort of high speed Internet.

Why is it my posts always lapse this long, I really can't understand why? ^_^

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You know, I've actually got nothing to say

Sweden rocks.

Word up!

<br style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">
Did i mention that you actually can get 24Mbit/second downwards for $30 if you live close enough to the telestations?

I worked out that ADSL in our country
costs US$ 125 a month! And that gives you +- 56kbs. So expensive,
so slow, and capped at 3Gigs.

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I would love to change the world, But they would'nt give me the source code.