ADSL or cable

[spickee]

I'd appreciate anyone's opinion, adsl or cable modem. Speed/reliability/speed. I know speed twice, but I have heard rumours that once a few dozen people are hooked up on the same router with cable modems things really slow down.

Many thanks

Spickee

[LordFartbag]

We have had cable at one location for a couple of years and aside from an occasional connectivity problem everything has been OK, customer service when problems came up has been really weak and this has pissed us off pretty good - this service (Comcast in Virginia) is uncapped on the dl, we get anywhere up to 500 kbytes a second!! (4mbps) on d/l depending on speed of server at the other end, this so-called neighborhood congestion has yet to materialise as far as we can see - the upload is capped at 120kbs.

Cable at the other location is AT&T Roadrunner (was Mediaone) d/l is capped at 1.5 mbps up at 350kbps, we see d/l rates from this of 80-160 kbytes a sec, the cable guy assured us we would NEVER see neighborhood congestion and he was quite emphatic about this, said they had learned from other co's mistakes and planned it better with better equipment, I guess we'll see about that, connectivity so far (only 2 days!)has been perfect.

now for dsl, we had Bellatlantic infospeed, 640 dl, 90 up, worked fine except for one thing, every 5-10 mins or so you could connect to no web page at all and had to wait 20-45 secs. to start connecting, this dead-spot was like clock-work and I grew to hate it, so far cable has had no such problem, right now I am happy as **** I switched but of course there hasn't been enough time to grow contemptuous of Roadrunner yet, time will tell I suppose, hard to argue with the speed of cable

now on cable we also get a semi-static IP, not true static but they tell us it isn't likely to change for a long time, our DSL changed each time (we had the winppoe type of interface and if your DSL has this you may wish to avoid it, we had to dial-up each time for the service BTW, some DSL is much better I guess), a static IP has advantages such as the ability to leave up an FTP server for my close buds to leech off of and for me to access from remote locations

[brandon184]

Go with DSL. It can often show better preformance over cable.

Just make sure, that if you do get it, it is setup correctly in every aspect.

- Brandon

[MadMatt]

Broadband is crazy right now - the whole industry is growing faster than the companies can keep up. They're both fast - equally so for *most* things. If you have both available in your area, my suggestion would be to figure out which companies are providing the best support. Yeah, 6mbps d/l might be great, but if the XYZ cable co is going to leave you hanging for days on end, you will be much happier with a *mere* 512kbps DSL line that works. (just an example)

[Gutter Ball]

I have cable, but I'm thinking of switching to DSL when it gets cheaper($30 for cable vs $40 for DSL). Sometimes I'm BLAZING fast, sometimes I'm suuuper slow. I have connectivity problems periodically(especially if I'm playing online games!!!!). My friend's on the other side of town don't have cable access yet, but they do have DSL and they're connections are very reliable and consistent.

[smokin1]

For a home user with a decent provider, cable is the only way to go...static IP..for both it's benefits and downsides, fast downloads..a proxy built in if you use their software... if you need better business connectivity/reliablity. Go T3 or better. I have seven computers at this location on cable and running through a router, and no speed degradation at all. I have 6 at another, and the same story..
http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

[This message has been edited by smokin1 (edited 09-06-2000).]

[lonestar]

ive had both, currently MUCH more happy with my DSL service than i ever was with a cable modem.

but i only use my internet for downloading from websites and playing quake
DSL is much better for online gaming, my ping is pretty much always the same on a particular server

had em both, take DSL any day
of course everybody has an opinion

[socalgal]

Hi spickee

CNET just published a DSL vs. Cable article, you may find some of the info useful.

http://home.cnet.com/internet/0-3762-7-2643119.html