DSL or Cable for online gaming (PSN, xbox live and PC)

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Ray2097

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 31, 2004
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Which technology should work better? I can use both, but don't know which one to choose for online gaming.
 
Well, if you're not running a server or anything latency is generally more important than throughput after a point. I'd say as long as you can get a clean 1.5Mbps down 256kbps up link, you should be fine. Double that would obviously be better. This is assuming you aren't sharing with anyone.

DSL does tend to have lower latency than cable last I checked in to things, but that was a long while back and DOCSIS 3.0 may have thrown everything for a loop.
 
It would really be more dependent on the ISP providing the service rather than which technology they use.
 
Thanx.

I'm asking generally, as a technology. Which should be better? Cable i can use is based on DOCSIS 3.0 standard. Offered speeds are ok on both services, but i wonder about pings etc...

So, DOCSIS 3.0 cable vs ADSL2+

PS: what's new in DOCSIS 3.0?

thanx
 
There is no concrete answer...there are many variables.
However to start with, generally DSL is lower latency than cable. So for online gaming..DSL is generally better. You have 1x dedicated run to the ISPs local CO. Remember...overall bandwidth is not the ultimate authority on latency, a good clean unshared connection is key. Cable internet generally has much higher overall speeds..throughput. But due to being shared (your local nodes)....sometimes,..depending on where you live, and which ISP you're using, experiences vary.

Years ago I had "bridged" DSL (no PPPoE) with a small specialized DSL provider, it was crazy low latency with my online games. I was consistently one of the lowest ping players in online servers I'd be playing on. Blew the freaking doors off of local phone company DSL and local cable.

The local phone company wasn't the best ISP back in the dial up days...what the heck makes people think they're the best for DSL? So when people compare or rate DSL services...they base that on local phone company DSL..which..duh..ain't the best!

As for cable..they vary greatly. Where I lived before, I had Comcast cable, it was pretty danged good. I lived in a fairly sparse area, thus not much sharing at the node going on. Ping were a little higher than my prior bridged DSL, however...they were lower than local phone company DSL.

Let me repeat that again....yes, my bridged DSL had lower pings than cable, and both of those had lower pings than phone company DSL.

Where I live now, I'm stuck with cable from a smaller local cable ISP..and it's "so-so", actually...less than. Max speeds are 7 megs...they don't even offer a boost package. Not happy with them, strongly wanting to give U-Verse a try.

Other factors...your local neighborhood...line quality of the street. Take 2x people using the same ISP...and those 2 people live about 1 mile apart. One person may live on a street with good line quality, the other person may live on a street with older lines and frequent problems, and have a miserable experience online and frequent issues.. Both people with the same ISP...yet two totally different views of their ISP.

The line coming in from the street to your house...wherever I've lived, I've ALWAYS had a BRAND NEW LINE come to my apartment/condo/house from the street. I was always worth it, and really it doesn't usually cost much.

Line throughout your house...the quality of those is important...from the NID to wherever your modem will be.

Errmm...just lost my train of thought, wife got out of the shower..gotta go bother her. :D
 
had att dsl for years. Upgraded to uverse. Pings in speedtest are 20ms local and up to 100 in US. I have a 12mbps package, and get that in most cases. Depends on where I'm downloading from but its nice to download games from steam at 12mbps or stream netflix on 2 tvs at once in HD. I should note we have a former employee discount so I am getting 12mbps for about the same price as normal consumer DSL at like 3mbps. So obviously my opinion is skewed since I pay less than the average consumer. But its been very reliable, never been down in the 3 months I've had it and the install was very easy. They have us a modem with built in router (G only) and a power backup for that modem. If I had to pay normal rates I'd go down to 6 or even 3 mbps uverse. We also have uverse tv, same as digital cable or direct tv really imo, but its a big step up from basic cox cable.

Does the cable line go out with the power? Thats where out input is from the coaxial cable in our house.
 
I'm using Frontier(formerly Verizon) Dry-Loop 7MB/768 DSL an it suits my needs just fine. Youtube was unbearable with the 3MB package, but since I've upgraded, 1080p streams just cruise. I prefer DSL over cable for a few reasons, but I've realized that in this day in age, anything less than 5MB down isn't enough for my needs. And if there was no option for a good DSL package where I live, I would go for the Comcast 12MB/2 for the same price that I'm paying for DSL.
 
I hate the 2Wire gateway you're stuck with if you go U-Verse. I'm increasingly convinced it is to blame for the occasional time-outs I get from otherwise reliable servers like HP and Microsoft with basic file downloads. Other than that, and the too-high prices, I am happy with the service. It's much faster over all than Time Warner Cable was with their highest tier "10Mbps" (only ever saw 6) service.
 
I'm late, but thanx for the answers, guys...

I have one more question to bump this:

Still have both services and one thing is not clear...

When i check pings, they are always marginaly lower on cable (recommend me some good ways to check everything about conenctions btw, i know only for speedtest and pingtest.net), but playing FIFA on PSN is always more "responsive" on ADSL than on cable. Why could that be? If pings to all servers are better on cable, how can game be more responsive on adsl? Are there any hidden factors that i should be aware of?

Please give me some definite guide to compare two connections (adsl and cable) and finally decide what to keep.


Thanx a lot again.
 
Latency depends a lot on the location of the service (and sometimes connections your provider has). If pingtest server is located in your cable provider's network, you'll have pretty good ping score. However, for servers that are located elsewhere, could mean a world of difference.

Best thing to do imo is to ping actual game servers that you'll be using and then decide on that.
 
silent-circuit said:
I hate the 2Wire gateway you're stuck with if you go U-Verse. I'm increasingly convinced it is to blame for the occasional time-outs I get from otherwise reliable servers like HP and Microsoft with basic file downloads. Other than that, and the too-high prices, I am happy with the service. It's much faster over all than Time Warner Cable was with their highest tier "10Mbps" (only ever saw 6) service.
Click to expand...

Could just stick a decent router in the DMZ of the 2Wire could you not? That's how mine is setup and I have zero problems.
 
/usr/home said:
Could just stick a decent router in the DMZ of the 2Wire could you not? That's how mine is setup and I have zero problems.
Click to expand...

In theory, yes. In practice, that's what I've been trying to get the damn thing to do since day 1 and it never works properly or magically resets / forgets about the DMZ after a few days. External routers are officially unsupported, so I can't even call and bitch at them about their horrible hardware / firmware.

I've got a WRT-610n running DDWRT.
 
Hmm, weird. Our ISP pushed out a new firmware for the 2Wires about a month ago. Took me like 20 mins to figure out how to get the stupid router to passthrough. What should've taken 30 seconds like it did on the old firmware... they dumbed it down too much making the advanced stuff hard to get to and figure out.... if that makes sense lol.
 
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