• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Cable vs DSL

J

junglicious

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 24, 2007
Messages
474
I wanted to know what you users prefer. I know that cable is shared and can vary from neighbor usage and that DSL is direct but depends on how far you are from the central office? I wanted to know, in general which one do you prefer and have you tried both?

Thanks
 
Depends entirely on the particular ISP, really.

Cable generally offers a better alternative for a given area, but not always. Try to discuss it with people in your area. DSLreports.com is a good place to start.
 
I have tied both. Actually for a period of 2 months I had them both at the same time. SBC and Cablevision were the two companies in question. I have not used dsl for nearly a year. Both were a mixed bag imho.

Download speeds were better with cable than dsl.

Pings with dsl were more stable. IE, I had very close to the same ping all the time when on the same server. With cable it could vary, sometimes a lot. That prolly depended on what my neighbors were doing.

Pings were slightly lower with dsl to the same servers. Only a 5-10 ms, not a big deal.

I had no significant downtime with either service. At least none I noticed. If my internet goes down at 2 A.M. on a tuesday, I generally would not notice.
 
I've run quite a few variations of each...even both at the same time.

Rule number 1...there is no "One is better than the other" for everyone. Some will insist one is better than the other. :rolleyes:

What it boils down to..."It depends what ISPs are available to you..in your area, because.....all ISPs are not created equal.

On the average..cable provides faster speeds, for downloading.

Most people judge DSL solely on their experience with the local phone company...and not other...better (and yes more expensive) quality DSL providers. The phone company was crappy at providing dial up access....what makes people think the phone company best represents DSL? :rolleyes: Don't knock DSL until you've tried a few of the better DSL providers.

I was a reseller for a higher end DSL provider for a while...and for online gaming, it was fan-tas-tic. Bridged DSL...not PPPoE. I had cable for a while along side of it..consistantly this DSL was better.

Yet...the cable ISP in my area was pretty good too...and it downloaded a lot faster.

The local phone company for DSL....was worse for online gaming than cable.

So..my first choice...was the higher end bridged DSL, second choice cable, third and last...phone company DSL.
 
I understand that there is no one is better than the other unless all variables were equal. I currently have comcast cable and it seems like no matter what, my total combination dls from different server would not go over 700-800kb. my account ($50/mo) stats 6mb however I know that is not actual real time use but why can't i even get 1mb? My other alternative was to try out att dsl ($35/mo).
 
Where I live, Cox Cable has the fastest service. 9Mbps/768Kbps - standard speeds. You can pay for the premier package and get 12Mbps/1Mbps.

My service is very solid. I haven't had an outage in a very long time. Speeds seem to be consistent. Then again, all I do is surf the net these days, so even if my connection dropped a few Mbps during peak hours I wouldn't really notice.

You could get ATT DSL for about $5/mo cheaper and have speeds of 6Mbps/768Kbps. Since I bundle my Cox cable I save $5 and it ends up being as much as DSL.

The one thing about DSL here is that there are several levels of service. So if you needed something better than dial-up, but not as much as standard service, you could get that and spend about half as much. It's nice to have choices.
 
Dont forget to add FIOS to your list if it's available in your area.

My ISP is Comcast and I get about 12d/1u mbps
 
typically in an area with only DSL and Cable providers as options, Cable is going to be king, reason being the costs involved in getting DSL (long term contract, required landline phone line even if not used, and higher pricing for anything resembling Cable speeds) typically makes cable the better option

i know its that way here, if i wanted DSL, i would have to pay $20+/- for a landline i would never use + $40+/- per month for the highest tier DSL service (3-5Mbps) + have to agree to keep those services and equipment for at least a year under a contract

or i can call Comcast and pay $42/mo added to my cable TV bill (which i would have either way), and get much faster speeds (my average speed test results are 20Mbps/2.5Mbps) and have the option, if money is going to be tight for a couple months to simply call and say, cut off just my internet until i call back, and there's no hassle, call back up one day, say cut it on, and within hours it is back on.....

situations vary by location, but those are our two choices where i live
 
junglicious said:
I understand that there is no one is better than the other unless all variables were equal. I currently have comcast cable and it seems like no matter what, my total combination dls from different server would not go over 700-800kb. my account ($50/mo) stats 6mb however I know that is not actual real time use but why can't i even get 1mb? My other alternative was to try out att dsl ($35/mo).
Click to expand...

You are getting the ratted speed. a 6mb line will max out at around 750k down. The difference is if it is stated in megabits or megabytes. You gotta devide a mega bit is 1/8th a megabyte.

Anyway generaly speaking cable is faster on the download speed. Depending on how far you are from the co the upload can be faster on dsl.

YeOldeStonecat was right on when he said it varies by area. Personaly I have had less luck with 3rd party dsl providers then verizon(the phone company in my area). Yes some of the thrid party providers had some extra features sometimes but the service was never as good. Also when you had a line issue getting them to get verizon to fix it was always an issue. Came down to did you want to deal with the phone company directly or through a thrid party. Other areas are different. Besides the big second choice in my area is cavtel. Those people can't figure out how to turn on a computer let alone support a dsl line. Good example of how bad they are is that one of our clients has them host their email and website as part of the dsl contract(this was setup before I started with the company I'm with). They complained about email issues 3 or 4 weeks ago. I checked into it and all 6 or 8 servers in the cavtel email cluster that they were on were on at least 1 blacklist with most on at least 2. When I called them on it and got through to the 3rd level techs they look at are like yea you are right, we'll work on it. The fact that I had to tell them their email servers were blacklisted makes me wonder about them.
 
If you need people's opinion, you really should look at reviews that are near you from:

http://www.broadbandreports.com/

Personally, I found DSL from AT&T to be more to my liking and fits my need. Cable from Comcast had the speed, but the reliability wasn't there for me.

I really do want to try FiOS as soon as Verizon comes around.
 
junglicious said:
I currently have comcast cable and it seems like no matter what, my total combination dls from different server would not go over 700-800kb. my account ($50/mo) stats 6mb however I know that is not actual real time use but why can't i even get 1mb? My other alternative was to try out att dsl ($35/mo).
Click to expand...

I had Comcast where I lived before..they're not available in the town I live in now. Wow do I miss them..when they rolled out Powerboost I was downloading at over 28 megs. Fantastic support, good reliability. Current cable ISP I have now sucks.
 
nobody_here said:
or i can call Comcast and pay $42/mo added to my cable TV bill (which i would have either way), and get much faster speeds (
Click to expand...

Trying to compare naked DSL with cable, when you have service? tsk tsk..

If you do not have cable television service, comcasts lowest-priced internet comes out to just over $60 per month after taxes, that is excluding the $99 setup fee for a self-install, and excluding their $29.99 6-month price for new customers. Upgrading from 4mb to 6mb only costs $2 additional per month, and I cant remember what it costs to get to 8mb... not much, but point being their lowest priced service is about the same as DSL's highest priced service (Qwest).
 
Personally, I'm going back to DSL once I move back to Colorado Springs(March '08). Comcast in CoS is now kicking people off if you download more than 250GB/month(One of my friends in CoS god kicked off in September). I do more that every other month. I have yet to see a DSL provider kick someone off for BW usage, so that's a plus. My pings will be higher with DSL(Qwest in CoS uses interleaving), download speeds will be lower(1.5Mbit, 16k ft from CO), but I can download nearly 450GB/month on a 1.5Mbit connection. Some food for thought.
 
If you can get a refund within 30 days, you might want to consider getting both and actually seeing what the real-world performance is. The claims of specific connection bandwidths are really useless, though you shuold expect that an ISP's higher end package is *better* than their lower end package.
 
Overall, DSL can't compare to a good Cable System. It can depend on the providers in your area, however.

The whole shared-internet thing about cable was proven a red-herring long ago. I wouldn't sweat it.

I have 15Mbit down/2Mbit up service. I actually get 25-27Mbit/Down and 2.2Mbit/Up, and reliability has been very good with Cable. My cable is fiber-optic at the poles.
 
As someone that just made the switch (not my choice) I can say that the cable in my area whips the ass of the local DSL service.

I am in Greensboro NC and I had Time Warner's Roadrunner service. It was grand. I never had to power cycle the modem, ever. Speeds were in line with what was advertised. 1.5 down 384 up. I could upload on a torrent at about 30k and still surf without much speed loss.

Now I have Bellsouth/AT&T DSL and I loathe it. Speeds are supposed to be 1.5 down and 256 up. I get 1.2 down and just over 200 up. Fine, I could live with that right? Well now I have to drop uploads on torrents to about 10k just to surf at all, and even then it is more laggy than I would like. Basically, in general it feels way slower than cable for everything.

Now...I am by no means in the city, but I am not in the boon docks either. So all in all I am dissappointed with the DSL around here.
 
I just switched from DSL to cable... what a mistake. (AT&T and Time Warner in my area) I went from constant 6M/768K to a line that varies from 12M/1M to nothing. I probably average about 500K/50K. My pings are probably twice as high, and it usually drops twice a day... YMMV, but I'd go for DSL.
 
RCGodward said:
I just switched from DSL to cable... what a mistake. (AT&T and Time Warner in my area) I went from constant 6M/768K to a line that varies from 12M/1M to nothing. I probably average about 500K/50K. My pings are probably twice as high, and it usually drops twice a day... YMMV, but I'd go for DSL.
Click to expand...

Wow...that is basically the opposite of my experience. Those are the same providers that I have to select from. Where are you located?
 
delemorte said:
Is that your actual download speed or your bandwidth test?


I wonder if you are commparing apples to oranges when it comes to big K vs small k.
Click to expand...

combination as in when I dl 10 different files from different servers or p2p and the total does not exceed 700-800 kilobytes.

I just cancel my home phone service since I only use a cellphone and the home phone only has telemarketers. from ATT the home phone is around $16-17 and their higher end dsl is like $35. That is over $50, pretty much the same price as my comcast cable. I would not mind paying that if dsl gives me an all around better dl speed. I think I just need to do that, have 2 service at once and compare them. I just don't want to have to go through all the hassle of signing up and canceling again.

Thanks for all the replies.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top