Cable Modem vs. DSL Modem

I've always heard that DSL is faster than cable. Cable is also affected by how many people on your block have cable, the more people with cable the slower your connection will be. With DSL you have to have a phone line with the DSL provider, I believe, and for cable you must have at least basic cable to get it from your cable provider. I have cable because SBC is the only DSL provider in the area but our home phone is not hooked up with them.

 

A Cable Modem is usually double the speed of a DSL Modem. I've used both, currently i have DSL. The speed of a cable modem is much faster regardless of what your downloading, whether it be music, programs, etc...

 

Cable > DSL > Dial-up > Nothing

 

I love having a cable connection because it is always on ... When I had SBC DSL I had to connect every single time I turned on my machine and I had more problems connecting than I care to think about.

Cable has actually proved to be faster to me, but I think that depends on your location with DSL.

 

Where'd u get most of your info from?!?

Cable is up to 10 times faster than DSL (which depends heavily on your distance from the sub-station). Also, you definitely don't need to subscribe to basic cable to get it from your cable provider.

I've also never heard that cable is affected by the # of subscribers. I use my cable modem in a building where EVERYBODY gets cable, and I can still get bandwith upto the maximal speeds (1.5 MB/s... and that's over a wireless connection).

Best of all, you don't need to be paying a monthly rate for a (now) useless phone line.

 

I've used dialup, ISDN, DSL, almost used satellite(thank god I didn't), and finally Cable. Cable has been the fastest(by far) and most reliable of all of them.
My ISP is earthlink and I don't have to have Time Warner Cable to use it.

 

Technically speaking, neither is faster than the other and either can be faster than the other. Realistically speaking, it depends on your provider. My DSL througput is 1.5 Mb/sec. Comcast just jacked their cable throughputs back up to 3 Mb/sec from... yup... 1.5 MB/sec.

 

This has always been the problem with cable modem service. During peak times more people hop on and the bandwidth trickles down. As years have passed, however, companies have expanded their infrastructure (God, I hate that word) and increased their capacities to alleviate this problem. Now most people on cable modem service are not affected by the "peak hours bandwidth drop".

 

Well DOD just said neither is faster than the other. At least with Cox Communications, you must order AT LEAST basic cable to subscribe to cable internet.

 

I actually had such marginal cable modem service at one point that sometimes during peak hours, the signal would be too weak to provide a connection for me at all.

I've never gotten full speeds from my cable modem services (having had it at two different places), but the last cable internet I had was about as fast as my current DSL, which is running at the full speed my company offers.

 

ID2K,

Check out dslreports.com. You can do research for the providers for both DSL and Cable in your area before you choose.

I switched from DSL to Cable last year. Found it a lil faster, more stable and about $10 a mo. cheaper.

 

I should have put a caveat - cable can be slower than DSL, DSL can be slower than cable, but in most installations cable is faster. So there you go.

 

Your cable service is cheaper than DSL? Hmm... one of the reasons I switched to DSL was because it was more reliable where I live and the fact I'm getting 1.5 Mbit speeds for $29.99/month (Verizon). With cable I think I was paying something like $40 or $45 per month. Not worth it to me.

 

I had DSL through SWB. I was at $49.99 a mo. and even though they were offering new customers $39.99 a mo., they wouldn't adjust the monthly fee for their current customers.

I checked out dslreports.com (thanks rockhead) and found that Earthlink was getting better upload and download speeds than SWB/DSL and they were doing a special: $29.95 a mo for 6 months and then $39.95 a month.

Depending on the time of day, I get anywhere from 1500-2800 down (more often, closer to the 2800) and about 300-500 up.

 

I had the same problems almost every other day when I was using Earthlink DSL, and the customer service was below average. I now have Roadrunner Cable, I pay ten dollars less a month and my speeds are MUCH faster than I ever experienced with DSL. I'm currently @ around 2800 down and 750 up, and that's slow compared to my usual averages with cable.

Jebus, I sound like one of those r****ds on those RR commercials.

 

My Verizon DSL is always on. I've never had any broadband that required connecting or logging on each time.

 

Mine was supposed to stay on but it rarely did. Just one of the problems Earthlink couldn't/wouldn't fix.

 

Well DSL is pretty fast. I know one the ISP Bell Sympatico(Canada Ontario) is that you can download at 4Mbps and upload at 0.8mbps. Rogers Cable offered 4.0Mbps download/
640kbps upload. It's all depend on your ISP. BUt from what I've told that DSL you don't share it with other people.

 

DSL goes way beyond 4 MB/sec throughput. The problem is that as it gets up to 40-50 Mbit speeds (vDSL), the cost of it and the distance limits as well suffer.

All bandwidth is technically shared. DSL customers usually (always?) don't "share lines" until you hit the DSLAM at the telco. After that you're sharing just like anybody else. It's been a while since I worked in telecom so some of this is fuzzy now...