which one is the fastest and most reliable?

I've had DSL for about 3 weeks now and no complaints.
Web pages pop up almost instantly and I can watch streaming
videos almost flawlessly. I love it.

With DSL it's dedicated. With cable the more people that have it in your neighbourhood the slower it gets.

I'm on DSL, i've never had the cable hookup so i dont know
about that. i've heard good things about cox though...

00769BAD said:

I've heard good things too!

Cable

thechronic said:

I've had cable for years, and I've never noticed it get any slower while my neighbors have adopted it. It may or may not matter today,but DSL has no viable upgrade path, while cable will continue to get faster. It's just the nature of the wire--coax can physically hold a hell-of-a lot more data than a thin copper wire, and the new cable technologies that are emerging look very promising, while DSL really has no future.

Today, however, one advantage DSL currently has is faster upstream.

I install dsl and to be honest it varys from area to area.Some places you can get dsl at very high speed.When you add in a router you can run multiple computers in the same place at no extra charge(you can't do this with cable).But some area's are too far from the Main Office(CO)and this makes the dsl slower or not available at all.In this case if you can get cable it's the obvious better deal.I think cable is cheaper to start but to get the faster speeds you have to pay more.

teller said:

Well actually DSL technologies do provide room for upgrades. You can go from a 256k line to 2mbit line or more if you wish, and the transport doesn't have to be copper twisted pair either, it can just as easily be single mode fibre and carry digital TV, audio telephony etc.

Also - theC - actually you can very easily share a cable net connection among lots of computers at home.

I find ADSL quite good for bursty traffic like web stuff, and my ping is acceptable for nice fast online gaming and such like.

DSL is better than cable in general, but it does depend on your criteria (cost, requirements, reliability) and what is available in your area. I have ADSL shared wirelessly for all my machines at home, and also for my online consoles and PC gaming etc and it kicks ass

ian said:

theC
Thanks ian,as for the cable remark i was going by what PC World said(i don't install cable so i can't say for sure)
but i do know that dsl can go to 6mbit download speed(i have seen it myself)so superspeeds are possible.Ian who do you have your wireless through,what does it cost per month,and what is the max download speed??

theC said:

Yeah the companies always tell you that the connection is for one PC only (to try and differentiate between their business product and their domestic product) but actually anyone with enough savvy to set up a home network (very easy) can share the connection using standard tools provided in Windows, MacOS or Linux.

The question here was which one of cable and DSL is faster.

In general, you will find cable is faster.

Forgive the cut-n-paste answer, but here's a quick summary:

---

Cable modems are typically faster for downloads than most if not all DSL lines, when the cable infrastructure is new or well maintained. However, cable has a few disadvantages to DSL.

The first disadvantage is that cable is an RF network -- this means that it is vulnerable to transient problems "within the network" from RF interference. Since cable is a shared media, there is a possibility that performance may degrade over time as additional households plug in, connect additional devices (videos, game machines) to the TV lines.

A cable company may react slowly to decreases in performance, as they never sell access by speed, or promise consistent speed or latency.

One of the largest disadvantages of cable over DSL is the upstream (return path). Cable companies are using a very narrow band for return signaling, below all the space allocated for TV channels. This band is prone to RF interference and is very limited in capacity. Upstream transmissions may therefore compete with others in the area, get delayed (suffer high latency) due to noise fighting techniques, and cable Terms Of Service typically prohibit any kind of constant upstream use. Internet use is shifting away from central servers broadcasting to many individuals and some interesting peer-to-peer applications are appearing (games, voice and video applications, communal libraries). These applications need a strong upstream channel.

In summary, cable modems are currently good value and strong competition for residential casual use, often available more cheaply and far faster than their ADSL competition. However, DSL is probably the more future-proof system, offering digital direct from the Internet infrastructure. If your DSL ISP is on the ball, your performance in either direction will not be different from peak hour to early morning, and DSL lines are available for a wide variety of purposes, both business and residential.

---

If choosing between the two, it depends really what you want from your connectivity. In general I find ADSL to be the better solution since I do a bit of online gaming so I need better uptime, reliability, latency, and upstream transfer rate. I've had ISDN (dual channel), cable and now ADSL and I've been most happy with ADSL.

Ian

Just got cable and I'm loving it! I can delete Battier's Orgnotes at the speed of light!

Sweet!

8)

2the9s said:

See, that's why I need cable too.

Dial up 56K rules!
...okay...maybe not. I'm just jealous.

ducks ducks ducks

every time i read someone is still on a 56 line, i just cannot blieve it. No pun fcourse, but i got cable a few years back, and i simply cannot imagine going back 2 the 5Kb/s downloads How would i get my music? let alone watch porn

SpcMs said:

I live in a rural area of England. There is currently NO PLANS at all to bring cable here.
It is not finacially viable according to those fuckers at BT who own most of the cable lines.

RandomDuck said:

That sucks... I read online somewhere that BT are about to launch a very big push for ADSL trials in rural Britain though - they've put millions into it. Sit tight, you never know (you could always give BT Openworld a call to see if your area is covered by the trial)

thechronic said:

DSL. Cable dumps all its speed into download, and the upload is relatively slow. Cable is a shared connection, DSL isnt.

If you do directly to the source, like Sprint or whoever is offering DSL in your area, you'll find prices comparable to Cable. Where I work at we provide DSL, but we're basically reselling through Sprint. If a customer comes to us for DSL, they have to buy all the equipment and pay for installation, which can get quite costly. If they go directly to Sprint, Sprint will bite the cost of the equipment (even though the customer wont OWN it) and walk you through how to install it over the phone.

Theres some more detailed info at our site http://www.onecomdsl.com (which I made by the way )
[This message was edited Tue Sep 3 10:34:45 PDT 2002 by Tom]