DSL vs. Cable broadband?

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DaRuSsIaMaN

[H]ard|Gawd
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Apr 22, 2007
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Hello, is it true that DSL typically has less ping than cable?

Right now I have Cox Cable at my house, and it absolutely SUCKS. I hate it. I can never play BF1942 without getting lag. I do download tests on speedtest.net, and I get results like 164ms ping and like 2-3 Mbps ... pretty crappy right? I mean other times it measures better, like 5-6Mbps and lower ping, but the bottom line is it's unreliable. I also hate the company itself, its tech support system and customer service. And of course, as is typical in USA, I only have one cable ISP available in my area...

So I'm thinking of going for DSL instead. Might I end up being much happier if I do?

Thanks
 
DSL has one only real meaningful difference when compared to cable. With cable, you most likely kept your public IP address for months at a time or even longer. I used to have the same IP for a couple of years at time on my cable ISP.

With DSL though, every time the modem reconnects or you power on/off, etc, you will get a new IP address. (Most ISP's offer static IP's. for an additional charge)

Other then that, the end result should be the same.

I have DSL now from Qwest and my ISP is Microsoft which comes with some goodies if I were to use them. It's very very stable, which surprised the heck out of me. My ping is ALWAYS the same on our clan's dedicated server. I do stay on Qwest's backbone for most of my trip which seems to help... ~5 ms jumps on a hop is nice.
 
DSL is usually slower but more stable than cable. At least that is the general difference I have found.

Varies a lot by ISP though.
 
Grentz said:
Varies a lot by ISP though.
Click to expand...

Yep, it depends on the market.. here, cable is 8MB down, 512k up from both the cable providers. DSL for me in this same market is 8MB down/ 800k up.

In some markets, Qwest DSL is available at 20MB down and Verizon as well has super fast DSL along with their legendary FIOS.
 
What's the FIOS you speak of? I've heard of that but I don't know anything about it. Why is it legendary?
 
Generally, by design, DSL is superior to cable when it comes to latency. I mean pure bridged ATM DSL.

Then you have PPPoE DSL, which most ISPs use. A little more overhead.

With DSL your speeds are usually rather constant 24x7.

Cable...usually higher speeds. But depending on ISP...often more "shared" and variable...although as ISPs upgrade substantially in most areas, this is starting to disappear and get more constant. Not as much "slows down at 8pm when everyone is online" as it used to be.

I've gone back 'n forth a lot with cable 'n DSL. I had a high quality business grade pure ATM DSL connection from a good ISP...nothing ever beat that for online gaming. However..due to me living far from the CO, my download/upload speeds were relatively slow. Was great being one of the lowest pingers on game servers though.

Phone company DSL..IMO usually not that great. They weren't the best back in the dial up days, what makes people think they'll be great with DSL? //shrug

Cable..this varies a lot. I've had great cable with Comcast where I lived before. And where I live now I'm with a smaller cable ISP...it's...sorta OK.

Pointers ti eliminate problems as much as possible.

Experience with cable...make sure you have good cable splitters..replace them yearly if it's outside. Have your cable modem off of the first leg of the first splitter. Have cable company run new line to your house.

DSL...have phone company run new line into your house..to the NID...and clean line to where your DSL modem is.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Experience with cable...make sure you have good cable splitters..replace them yearly if it's outside. Have your cable modem off of the first leg of the first splitter. Have cable company run new line to your house.
Click to expand...

Yeah... actually, I think the cables & cable splitters around my house are part of the problem. When we first moved into this house, I had a different ISP (which I sorely miss), and they had a technician come check out my "signal strength" (I think that's what he said if I remember right) and he said something was really wrong. He went around the house and did something with cable splitters but then said we should order a full crew to come in and do maintenance (for a fee). But we never got around to doing it (stupid me), and the ISP I have now, Cox, sucks at customer service/support period. Even if I'm willing to pay for it, I don't know if they'll even offer such service.

So how might I be able to do it myself or, better, how do I ask the ISP to do it for me, if they do agree to it? Like what should I tell them to do? Say, "come check out my cable splitters and cables around the house, check my signal strength" ? Or something like that? Or how should I talk to them? Because I know, they will first advise me to do totally stupid/useless shit like "release/restart my IP address" or whatever... they told me to do that once before in tech support and it didn't help worth 2 cents, ugh. So I'll have to be insistent on it, I think.

P.S. Also thanks for your especially informative post.
 
You can always do it yourself. Or if you know a good electrician. You don't NEED the cable company.

Look for where the coax comes into your house. Hopefully it goes down to the basement first, but many homes unfortunately have it terminate on the outside into a splitter.

Where the coax feed goes into the splitter...you want the cable modems line run into the first post. That first post gets the strongest signal..and you want your cable modem to get the strongest signal. Then on the other posts...feed your TVs in the house.

I've found outdoor splitters can need replacing yearly. Indoor ones can last longer.
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:
So how might I be able to do it myself or, better, how do I ask the ISP to do it for me, if they do agree to it?
Click to expand...

Don't bother calling them out for a fee to replace splitters. Buy and replace them yourself. Just don't buy the $.99 splitter you might find in Wal Mart.
 
Myself, i'm biased to Time Warner/Road Runner. Here are my reasons:

1. Local support. I know my customer service folks and service techs are in my area and know my area.
2. Speeds are decent. 8mb down if I recall for their standard service.
3. Reliability. Now this will probably vary per area, but here in the Austin Metro area (and surrounding areas like Round Rock where I live), it's always the other companies like Comcast or Grande or SuddenLink I hear the complains about. In the 8 years i've had their service in my name/property, i've had minimal downtime, and when there is, they take care of it expediently and professionally. My last service call was getting digital cable installed, and the last guy actually redid lots of the wiring outside because it wasn't clean like he would like it. Cost: $0.00!!!

I have heard good things about ATT Uverse and Verizon FIOS though. I just know what I have has made me very happy, and I probably won't be leaving it anytime soon.
 
gaming online is all about ping*. 168ms seems high? is it to a nearby server? Further away servers are going to have higher pings just due to distance.

Even on 768k DSL i got <50ms ping to servers within a few hundred miles. Now from the east coast us to UK servers i couldnt get below ~120ms. Same thing from east-west coast pings would be 100+ms.

Now its not geographic distance thats the real determinant, if your packets are being routed across the country and then back to your city for a different provider that will cause problems.

Find out the IP address of a server you want to play on, that you think may be local and run a traceroute command from your pc to that destination address. Look at the pings to the hops inbetween and look for any goofy routing going on.

*You do need a minimum datarate for games, but its fairly low. 1megabit is generally plenty.

**Verizon FIOS is awesome, get it if you can. I have a 20/5 plan and get <25ms ping to a bunch of (must be) local servers for tf2/cstrike.
 
ambientZ said:
Now from the east coast us to UK servers i couldnt get below ~120ms. Same thing from east-west coast pings would be 100+ms.
Click to expand...

Every single day, morning and evening, I play on a Battlefield 1942 server running a modded DC server, located in Germany. I'm on the east coast in the US. Ping? 75-85 all day all night.

Quite similar with a vanilla BF42 "Battle of Britain" server I'd play on located in the UK.

Much of your latency "across the pond" depends in which backbones your ISP uses.
 
FibreChanMan said:
Myself, i'm biased to Time Warner/Road Runner. Here are my reasons:
Click to expand...

Well... I WOULD sign on with a different cable company by now but I can't. Cox is the only company servicing my area w/ cable. So my only other option is going DSL, I haven't looked into that yet.
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:
*snipped*

I had a different ISP (which I sorely miss), and they had a technician come check out my "signal strength" (I think that's what he said if I remember right) and he said something was really wrong. He went around the house and did something with cable splitters but then said we should order a full crew to come in and do maintenance (for a fee). But we never got around to doing it (stupid me), and the ISP I have now, Cox, sucks at customer service/support period. Even if I'm willing to pay for it, I don't know if they'll even offer such service.

So how might I be able to do it myself or, better, post.
Click to expand...

your modem should have a signal or detail page that you can see upstream and downstream signal strength on. The only two I can remember off the top of my head are 192.168.100.1 for motorola surfboards, and 192.168.1.254 for 2wire modems.
 
i had cable when it was time warner and it sucked bad......always disconnected. i tried dsl and i loved it......always reliable. now im in a different house and im at the end of the pole so the signal degrades....technician thinks i need a signal booster but its been ok so far. i personally think you would like dsl but you have to qualify for it...........or rather be close to a telephone station.
 
ambientZ said:
gaming online is all about ping*. 168ms seems high? is it to a nearby server? Further away servers are going to have higher pings just due to distance.
Click to expand...

Distance doesn't affect ping. It's the routers on your path have the largest bearing on your ping. Depending on the congestion at each individual router and it's load, it might add high latency or very little latency to your route.

Sometimes DSL providers turn on a feature called interleaving. It makes the connection between the client modem and the DSLAM more stable, but it adds in 32ms of latency to your ping. My connection is such low latency that the 32ms of ping doesn't concern me. I ping at 48ms on one of my favorite BF2 servers in Texas. Our own ded server, I hit 92ms. So, I can afford the extra stability that interleaving offers.
 
Met-AL said:
Distance doesn't affect ping. It's the routers on your path have the largest bearing on your ping. Depending on the congestion at each individual router and it's load, it might add high latency or very little latency to your route.
Click to expand...

Speaking of that.....years ago when I setup a partnership with the company I worked for to resell biz DSL for a high quality ISP, I co-lo'd a game server I built up in their data center..running some Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 games. 4x OC-3s feeding that center. I had DSL from this ISP also. I lived about 70 miles away.

My traceroute to their data center...1x hop from my router at home.

My ping to the game server..usually 10-12ms. I've been to LAN parties with more lag than that. :p
 
Met-AL said:
Sometimes DSL providers turn on a feature called interleaving.
Click to expand...

A little more info on this.

Interleave is actually the standard for all DSL. To get around it providers turn off interleave. It was in place back when DSL was going to be for video mainly (the original idea behind DSL was telcos delivering TV to homes, not internet). Interleave protects against line noise and transmission errors and thus makes for a much more stable connection at the expensive of some latency (around 32ms as Met-AL said).

For internet use though, many lines do not need this extra layer and thus can be moved to what is known as fastpath. This is because TCP/IP itself has its own layer of error correction. Not all DSLAMs (where your DSL comes from) support this feature and it is not always an option as your line has to be good enough and have low enough noise margins to be able to switch over to fastpath.

Many times the faster packages (10mb+ ) automatically use fastpath instead of interleave because to obtain the higher speeds they need to use fastpath.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
You can always do it yourself. Or if you know a good electrician. You don't NEED the cable company.

Look for where the coax comes into your house. Hopefully it goes down to the basement first, but many homes unfortunately have it terminate on the outside into a splitter.

Where the coax feed goes into the splitter...you want the cable modems line run into the first post. That first post gets the strongest signal..and you want your cable modem to get the strongest signal. Then on the other posts...feed your TVs in the house.

I've found outdoor splitters can need replacing yearly. Indoor ones can last longer.
Click to expand...

Could the connection be bad for other reasons than just the splitters? What about the cable itself going through your walls and everything? Could that be frayed/bent or something and causing poor quality that way also?

The problem with doing it myself, though, is that I really can't spare the time. I'm a college student, and I study very hard, do homework or do research in the lab or write applications like all day, basically. I actually prefer to spend money over spending time. I figure a little money spent now won't matter in the big picture, but it would matter a lot more if it makes a difference in my grades.

So I can expect a cable company to provide that service, right?
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:
Could the connection be bad for other reasons than just the splitters? What about the cable itself going through your walls and everything? Could that be frayed/bent or something and causing poor quality that way also?
Click to expand...

"Could be"...yes. Generally coax cable is fairly durable, but some lengths in your home may be shot, or poorly terminated. Certainly possible. But I'd look towards the splitters first, and how it's all setup.
 
A DSL vs cable modem thread? Ohhh.

I predict a thread that will make the "Microsoft vs Linux" and "ATI vs NVIDIA" crowd shudder. :cool:
 
Met-AL said:
DSL has one only real meaningful difference when compared to cable. With cable, you most likely kept your public IP address for months at a time or even longer. I used to have the same IP for a couple of years at time on my cable ISP.
Click to expand...

Strange - I've seen the exact opposite. It really all depends on how the ISP has their DHCP server set up.
 
knothead34 said:
i had cable when it was time warner and it sucked bad......always disconnected. i tried dsl and i loved it......always reliable.
Click to expand...

I recently had AT&T stop out about their Uverse package, but have been on Road Runner since '99. Figured i'd give it a try and see if the cable package was better than TW (i hate TW for tv). I cancelled AT&T in less than 24 hours. Nothing but problems for the ~24hours I had it. Not to mention the tech cut my landline when he did the install :eek: .
 
Porn Loader said:
I recently had AT&T stop out about their Uverse package, but have been on Road Runner since '99. Figured i'd give it a try and see if the cable package was better than TW (i hate TW for tv). I cancelled AT&T in less than 24 hours. Nothing but problems for the ~24hours I had it. Not to mention the tech cut my landline when he did the install :eek: .
Click to expand...

Did you try working with them a bit? Could have been a line issue or something.

THis is why this discussion is really pointless, it just depends on the ISP in your area (time warner for example is not the same across the country).
 
Grentz said:
THis is why this discussion is really pointless, it just depends on the ISP in your area (time warner for example is not the same across the country).
Click to expand...

I definitely agree. Everyone here knows a horror story w/ xxx or yyy provider.

And honestly, no. I didn't give AT&T a "fair shake". They were willing to send techs out and see if they could fix the issue(s), but not for two weeks. If it dropped TV and internet once or twice maybe I would have been in a more patient mood. But it didn't. It dropped multiple times in the first couple hours it was installed. Maybe I'm getting too impatient as I get older? :D
 
Ouch, that sucks, I am surprised for a telco...most are pretty fast on the techs. Embarq is usually 2-4 days at most.
 
ARGHH!!! I found out that I don't even have ANY dsl service in my area! GRR WTF?? Why is this place so backward?? I live in Mesa, AZ, which is part of the Phoenix metropolitan area... It's the goddamn capitol of a state! And apparently Phoenix is the 5th most populous city in America now ... city?? Did I say city?? This makes me feel like living in a hillbilly RV camp!

Ugh, so I'm totally stuck with this Cox for broadband. The only other option is satellite... haha yeah right.

Okay, what does a place need for DSL service anyway? It just goes through the phone -- how hard can that be? Do they need special fiber-optic cables? Is that why maybe they don't have it here?
 
You have to be within the range of a DSLAM or CO which is DSL capable. Your lines also have to be compatible with it as many still use boosters and switch gear which are not compatible with the high frequencies of DSL.

Just because you live in a city does not mean anything. The difference can be down to one or two houses away. I was just on the edge, my neighbors 4 houses down were not and could get full service. Now they upgraded services in my area and I can get full 10mb service if I want as well.
 
Met-AL said:
DSL has one only real meaningful difference when compared to cable. With cable, you most likely kept your public IP address for months at a time or even longer. I used to have the same IP for a couple of years at time on my cable ISP.
Click to expand...

oh my QFT I had an ip for 4 years till my modem gut hit by lighting. I was sad that it changed because I had memorized the IP. When I called asked how much a static IP would cost they wouldn't sell it to me. Wasn't my account though. When I move out in a few months I'm gonna ask up front If I can get one.
 
It all depends on the location and the provider.

In Ontario Canada, cable has always been faster than DSL (talking residential)

I've never had issues with my pings, local game servers i'm sitting between 20ms-30ms pings.

On a 10/1 Cable line currently. Also lucky enough that where I live it doesn't have a very high saturation of cable connections also.
 
I've had a very bad experience with SBC, before they merged with AT&T. They'd always have some problems with their servers that would bring the whole internet offline.

Switched to Time Warner, all problems gone. Better speed & ping too. IPs tend to change every reboot, though, FWIW.
 
As its been said , your likely stuck with Cox until your local phone monopoly decides to upgrade the boxes you have in your area. DSL technology is basicly low frequency sounds that get sent over the same copper data lines as your land line based telephone, except that you can't hear the tone because its above the human range of hearing. Filters on the line amplify the "tone" and it gets understood by a proper modem on the line, however.. not ALL DSL is the same technology.

VDSL for instance is the new hot DSL type that takes the copper phone wiring in your house/apartment and runs it up to a range of 3000 feet to a big converter box (VRAD) that then gets coverted into fiber (think FiOS), At&t is currently using this technology for its U-verse service and it works out pretty well depending on how the condition is for the copper wiring in the customers home. There are also other types of DSL technology but honestly since you have Cox you and have zero DSL access , that situation likely won't change anytime soon.

I had issues with Comcast for 4 months at my old residence and after calling managers in support everyday for almost 3 months and dealing with nearly 12 different tiers of tech's that came to my house and monitored outside in a van over a 18 hour period for the issue I was having (perodic dropout for no real reason) I FINALLY got it fixed. It turned out to be a bad amp on my line at the distro box about 1.3 miles from my apartment. It was ultra frustrating but patience and time fixed it. I suggest you ride Cox until they come out and properly investigate your issue. Right now that's really your only choice.
 
Godmachine said:
I suggest you ride Cox
Click to expand...
Hahaha... yes, I will do my best to ride... cox...

So I just called them up to complain about the high ping, and they will send a technician tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. However, the woman told me that perhaps my old modem is part of the problem. Do you think that's possible or is she b.s.-ing me? It smells like b.s. to me... I mean, it's true that the modem is like 5 years old; however, that doesn't really matter for ping, does it? I've been noticing progressively worse ping even while having the same modem. The ping used to be no problem a while ago. It can't be the modem deteriorating that caused the change... right??

Also, I do have another modem lying around, a newer, better one. I never bothered to try to put it in before, since I was thinking along the lines outlined above. So I asked her if I should try that one. After telling her the model of it, she told me it wouldn't work with their services. Wtf?? It's a D-Link DCM-202. I asked her why, and she said something about DOCSIS but it was kind of sketchy; I didn't get what she said. Now I'm looking at the list of supported modems on Cox's site... they support ones like the Motorola SB5101 or Moto SBG900, for example (there are others). How are those any different from my D-Link?? The DOCSIS standards are the same! The D-Link one supports 2.0 also, those Moto ones don't have anything better... wtf? Do they have some kind of blatant brand scheme such that they only support those companies who payed them to support it?? Is that what it is?
 
An old modem could be causing those issues , for sure. See if you can get into the modem's network menu (if it isn't to old) and check the signal levels and then post em. Getting into the service menu depends on the brand/model so you'll have to do the foot work. An old modem could be leaking signal , dropping it completely for instance (but say only for a fraction of a second which basicly forces the packets being sent/recieved to error resulting in your high pings) so its entirely possible , but its also possible your line is the issue which you'd have to rule out the modem first.

If you have a spare modem hanging around .. call up Cox and have them add it to your approved IP pool and hook it up. If its still giving you really high pings after you test it with a trace route then you've likely ruled out your modem issues entirely. DOCSIS is kind of like a speed standard and if both of your modems are approved for it than it doesn't matter if you use the ones EXACTLY supported by Cox or not but the phone tech's will not offer support for any kind of 3rd party hardware.

Try out my suggestions and post your results , I'm pretty sure once you rule out if your modems are the problems , you can have them come out and do some line tests to see if its a bad amp on your line or something more complex and get it all fixed.
 
Alright well I didn't get into the network menu of the old modem ... however, the technician came and put in another modem, one of their "approved" ones which is supposed to be newer and better. When he first hooked it up, it was performing better. We did speed tests and it had like 12Mbits d/l, like 3Mb upload and 86ms ping. Better than what it was before.

Now however, everything seems to have gone back to old again. I just did a couple tests right now and you can see the results in the images.

test3.png


test4.png


It's down to like 2-3 Mbits d/l and 100-140+ ping, as you can see. So ... what can I conclude? Also, how do I do trace route test? I just use that site that you see in the images to test my ping. Is that a bad way to do it?

Could it be my router by any chance?
 
Well your going to the right site to speed test your new modem , if the tech gave you an approved one for Cox then really what you need to have done is another tech to come out and do line tests on your outside hook up. See if perhaps you're suffering from drop out in your signal when other users get online.

Do your speeds degrade at certain times of night? How about early in the morning? Are they faster then than say .. at 8:00 in the evening?

Another issue could be that you have too many people on your line and the tech needs to move you over to a different channel at the node.

Either way you are going to have to really pressure Cox in order to get this resolved. Be patient and keeping pressing them.
 
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