Moving... Have some questions

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jbltecnicspro

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Aug 18, 2006
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Good morning everyone,

In about a couple of weeks, I'll be closing on a house. Thing is, I can continue with my current cable setup, which is 15Mb / 1Mb. Or, I can switch to DSL which has 12Mb / 1Mb. My wife is going to start working from home and using a VPN connection.

Question: Would the DSL be better for VPN? Or would I have to get a business account for this kind of thing? Does VPN performance depend on the packet priority (so in effect, both residential connections would be bad)? It's been a long time since I've had to care about this kind of thing, so forgive the ignorance.
 
It would be helpful for people to know what ISP's you're using.

I have no trouble with VPN's on Time Warner Cable.
 
It depends on a lot of factors, the age of the copper, the number of people on your node, the quality of the wiring in the house, etc. I've been on TWC connections that bogged down to less than 1mbps during peak hours, and on connections that reliably deliver 10mbps over what i'm paying for (because the node is undersold). I've had Verizon DSL that was rock solid for 7 years, and DSL that disconnected every 15 minutes (because the copper on the poles was 50+ years old).

One thing to remember is that getting a business class connection isn't going to improve the quality of the cables on the poles or in your home. It gives you a faster repair time - usually, but thats about it.
 
That and business-class connections tend to be free of stupid bandwidth caps.
 
Copper DSL is alot more susceptible to EMI. I had DSL connection get nuked consistently at the same time every evening and it turned out it was a nearby street light ballast that was going bad and every time it flickered on/off it would cause DSL to resync. Cable modem has been a lot more reliable at the physical layer and also upload bandwidth is usually faster with more speed tier options.
 
You will want to research the dsl speeds. The 12Mb is the maximum and it has a tendency to degrade rapidly based on distance. It also includes error correction as part of the calculation, so cable 12Mb > DSL 12Mb, not to mention typical high latency (80-100 ms) which might be important if you do online gaming
 
Honestly, I'd trust Cable to deliver promised bandwidth sooner than DSL.
 
jiminator said:
You will want to research the dsl speeds. The 12Mb is the maximum and it has a tendency to degrade rapidly based on distance. It also includes error correction as part of the calculation, so cable 12Mb > DSL 12Mb, not to mention typical high latency (80-100 ms) which might be important if you do online gaming
Click to expand...

Funny you mentioned this. I used to live in the sticks on a satellite connection. I did have dialup though. Purchased a hardware modem to sustain 233ms pings in Halo PC with up to 10 players. Beyond that, the 28kbps connection couldn't take it. Sorry for the tangent - your comment brought back memories. :)

Noted. With everyone here pretty much agreeing with each other, then I'll likely just stick with Cable. :) Thanks guys.
 
jiminator said:
You will want to research the dsl speeds. The 12Mb is the maximum and it has a tendency to degrade rapidly based on distance. It also includes error correction as part of the calculation, so cable 12Mb > DSL 12Mb, not to mention typical high latency (80-100 ms) which might be important if you do online gaming
Click to expand...

It's also important to find out what flavor of dsl it is. ADSL2+ can go farther, but is limited speed wise to about 18mbps. ADSL2+ 12mbps is limited to about 6000ft of 26ga wire, or about 7200ft of 22ga.

VDSL2 can have a very low ping time but is very distance limited. In the US we are seeing 45mbps via bonded pair at up to 2200ft of 26ga cable or 3100ft of 22ga. Single pair will get you 18mbps at 3000ft 26ga (4000ft 22ga) or 12mbps at 4800ft (5500ft 22ga) on a single pair.

With vdsl2 vectoring on the horizon we will be seeing 100mbit on bonded pair at 3000ft.

Both at&t and frontier are currently deploying vdsl2 via fttn. I know Verizon used to, but I don't know if they sold all that to frontier or not.

Some smaller isp's are also deploying vdsl2 for customers close to a central office, but I have never seen them set up a fttn system. I'm not sure they can rent just the f2 portion of the ilec's cable and tie in at an SAI.
 
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i've been sold 5mbps DSL before, when tech comes to install "oh, by the way, you can only get 1.5 here, sorry"

i don't have to pay for the 5 tier, but still, what a bother, thankfully fiber is installed at that location beginning of next month...
 
well, to be honest 1.5 is ungodly faster than dialup, so we complain, but then again it used to be a lot worse
 
I'm on a wisp and do VPN/VoIP. Speeds and latency vary but overall has been great. ISP is rolling out some upgrades, curious to see the improvements.

I think either DSL or cable you should be fine. I did VPN/clip when i lived in town, no issues with cable(media con).
 
jiminator said:
well, to be honest 1.5 is ungodly faster than dialup, so we complain, but then again it used to be a lot worse
Click to expand...

Yeah but that's the download speed. Upload is probably 256 or, if they're lucky, 384.
So with overhead, they're maybe getting 180-250K up.

The difference between that and dialup is still noticeable, but trying to push ANYTHING out is an exercise in pain.
 
I have Centurylink (last mile) Henderson (T1s and fiber) with bandwidth provided by ATT... always had issues at the last mile (packet loss and downtime, with notifications sometimes of hardware dieing at their COs).... IMHO I wouldn't suggest them. Tho you could have a completely different experience.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
ISP's are Mediacom for cable and a local ISP for DSL. Copper is leased from Centurylink.
Click to expand...

I had Centurylink DSL before ditching them for the ISP I have now. Different areas have different results, but my DSL was nothing but a pain in the ass. I pretty much expected to have one day a year missed from work to sit and wait for the service tech to come and find out the buried cable between my D-Mark and the what-the-hell-ever was bad and to change me out to a new pair.
 
Depending upon where you are going, spending a few more dollars for business class might be a good thing. The main different isn't so much the speed (It can actually be lower on business) but the customer service side. Generally speaking there are quicker turn around times when dealing with business class service and you might have a bit better luck with the issue getting fixed sooner. I've had issues in the morning with internet service and was able to get a tech on site in the same day and have it fixed. If your income is dependent upon your internet that either having 2 options like phone tethering plus a home connection, or getting a business class and seeing if their customer service is better at fixing the issues when they arise.

Without really knowing what she needs to accomplish with the VPN it's hard to say. Chances are good that even a 3G phone tether would be able to cover what is needed to get work done, so getting some type of home connection but also making sure you have a wireless backup available is probably the best bet. There probably won't be any type of prioritization of your VPN on any ISP you choose, and DSL versus cable is probably a moot point for VPN usage. As stated the main difference is if there is a lot of uploading that needs to be done.
 
Well, we've been moved in for a couple of days (yay!). However, cable speeds are about less than half of what they were at the apartment. Hurray! Cable tech says I have good signal (we're getting over our maximum upload speed, so I believe him), but I'm still pulling around 6~7 Mbps down, whereas we used to pull consistently 16~18Mbps. So I may give DSL a try after all.
 
Another update. Turns out the cable company screwed up our account. They put us on the 3 Mbps package (so in actuality - we were doing great for that package!). I called and they reversed it back to our old account - which is what they should have done in the first place. So we're back to the 15 / 2 package for $29.95 a month. Not too bad. We'll see how it performs on the VPN soon enough...
 
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