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DSL speed vs. Cable

Nikki

Nikki

Member
I currently have Road Runner Cable and have had nothing but problems with slow speeds and my connection "hanging". Anyways, I just signed up for DSL and honestly have no clue WHAT I signed up for!

It's through Bellsouth (our phone company we have) and they offered DSL Lite for $9.95 first 6 months and then $24.95 after that. OR DSL Ultra for $17.95 first 6 months and $32.95 after that. We pay $44.95 right now for cable, so the cost is better. They said we will be bound to NO contract since we have their premium plan on our home phone. I'll make sure to read the fine print before I even activate it because I've always read that there was a commitment. ANYWAYS....

They said the 'Lite' is 256K and that the 'Ultra' is 1.5mb. Is that good? I don't know what my cable speed is. :-?
 
I have Comcast Cable Internet and its now up to the 4MB barrier for downloads. Its almost always near that speed because I am close to a Node. So during peek hours my speed isn't affected. I am paying 19.95 for the first six months and that it goes to 44.95 after the promotion is over. No contracts or anything like that. With Cable internet I can't choose a package like DSL.

Depending on your distance from the DSL hub/station your speed will vary. The furthest you are it will be slower, the closest than obviously it will be faster.

Go to DSLReports.com or 2wire.com to get an idea of your speed is. I highly recommend DSLReports.com for the best results. You can also compare speeds in your general area with the same subscribers of your service.

Also, I would get the latter DSL package because it's the fastest.

I hope that helps :-D
 
I also have a company associated with comcast and we have speeds around 3mb, gosh i love my cable modem.
 
If it helps, I have 256K and on downloads I average between 35-45Kbps. As EastBaySaint mentions, there are a bunch of variables at play in connection speeds, so I'd definitely check out the site he references. Depending on what you find, I would probably recommend starting at 256 and if you need more juice, upgrade later.
 
You can always check your speed by going to http://www.bandwidthspeedtest.com. I have cable internet with RoadRunner as well and my speed is 1.6 mb. But its slow for me because I'm using a wireless adapter(to enable more than one computer to use internet). I've always been under the impression that DSL was slower than cable, or at least it was when I had it.
 
cable

Sean said:
You can always check your speed by going to http://www.bandwidthspeedtest.com. I have cable internet with RoadRunner as well and my speed is 1.6 mb. But its slow for me because I'm using a wireless adapter(to enable more than one computer to use internet). I've always been under the impression that DSL was slower than cable, or at least it was when I had it.
Click to expand...

Mine tested at 2.2 meg "great" using cable.
 
Sean said:
You can always check your speed by going to http://www.bandwidthspeedtest.com. I have cable internet with RoadRunner as well and my speed is 1.6 mb. But its slow for me because I'm using a wireless adapter(to enable more than one computer to use internet). I've always been under the impression that DSL was slower than cable, or at least it was when I had it.
Click to expand...

I've gone from DSL to cable to DSL again in the past two years in the same town. I switched because I moved and got a much better introductry offer. Obviously I like DSL better since I switched back. My observations is that the cable modem is sometimes faster than DSL, on off peak, but during peak hours it is noticably slower. Either way, the speed difference isn't enough to sell me one over the other. Reliability was the biggest difference for me. In my 1.5 years of DSL, I've had only a couple internet outages, and they have all been corrected promptly, within 24 hours, and without somebody having to come into my home. Then there was my 6 months of Comcast cable internet, where we lost connection 3 times---all 3 times I had to schedule a 4 hour block to have a guy come out to look at it, and all 3 times it was out for 2-5 days. That was absolutely unnacceptable to me. My circumstances could be unique, but I know I'm not switching back to cable anytime soon.
 
I cancelled the DSL as soon as I got the equipment because they were wanting all these upfront fees. I ASKED the woman on the phone when we signed up for it if there were any activation fees, rebates, etc and she said NO and that it were no hidden charges. Whatever. I soon found out the other woman was way wrong.

The cable people came back out and it's working much better. There are still times that it will act up and either go slow or do nothing at all, but those times are less and less now.

I just did a speed test and these are the results:

4.6 megabits per second

Communications: 4.6 megabits per second
Storage: 562.9 kilobytes per second
1MB file download: 1.8 seconds
Subjective rating: Awesome

Date & time Friday, April 15, 9:29PM*
Test type: IDT4 Free
Connection type: Cable
Region: North Carolina
Data size: 1024KB
 
DSL is 1.5Mbps down/128k up around here. It's available for about $25 per month in most areas.

I'm paying $45 per month for 4Mbps down/512k up Cable. If DSL were available in my area, I would switch to save money. A whole lot of speed I don't need/use.
 
Nikki said:
I currently have Road Runner Cable and have had nothing but problems with slow speeds and my connection "hanging". Anyways, I just signed up for DSL and honestly have no clue WHAT I signed up for!

It's through Bellsouth (our phone company we have) and they offered DSL Lite for $9.95 first 6 months and then $24.95 after that. OR DSL Ultra for $17.95 first 6 months and $32.95 after that. We pay $44.95 right now for cable, so the cost is better. They said we will be bound to NO contract since we have their premium plan on our home phone. I'll make sure to read the fine print before I even activate it because I've always read that there was a commitment. ANYWAYS....

They said the 'Lite' is 256K and that the 'Ultra' is 1.5mb. Is that good? I don't know what my cable speed is. :-?
Click to expand...

I have Verizon Online DSL at home 3.0Kbits down and 768Kbits up. As a general rule of thumb faster in not necesarily better! I tried Charter Pipeline cable internet at the time Verizon was offering 1.5Kbits down and 256Kbits up. Although my connection was faster at the time I had very flaky service. Charter put me on a splitter with 10 other families and my modem was always losing sync with the equipment at Charter.

With DSL this is unlikely to happen unless you are on the border of loop where you get your DSL service. Currently Verizon will not let you have service when you are around 15k feet from a Central Office. However some resellers of DSL service like Westelcom which lease lines from Verizon will push the envelope to get more customers.

I personally don't like cable internet because in my area I have found that having everyone share one big pipeline in the neighborhood usually results in more latency on you internet connection, more hacker attacks, poor VoIp serivce, etc.

However with Verizon it is a straight shot to their DSLAM so I'm only sharing bandwidth with others that are hooked into the DSLM directly like me and not on a crappy cable line shared by the whole neighborhood.

If you have anymore questions or if I lost you feel free to PM me!
 
I used to have roadrunner.

it was often down, and didnt work, and gave me crappy speed when i wanted to use it (peek hours) and it jsut got worse and worse.

using dsl, i get a pretty great connection. I have been dling stuff at roughly 600kb per second before... I am content with it.
 
Soon both DSL/Cable will be old tech.

Embrace the future.

Stovebolts will even be able to have highspeed then!
 
Update:

I didn't even OPEN the DSL stuff when I got it because I found out that they were going to put all kinds of charges on my bill. The woman that "sold" me onto it lied to me. I figured as much.

We still had problems with our cable access and I was calling them EVERY SINGLE DAY. I told them I would keep doing that until they fixed whatever was wrong. They told me for months that it was my computer.

Anyways, FINALLY a guy came out and he said he was going to go check things at the top of the road and other neighborhoods around us. He was a street up from us when all of a sudden our connection started working lightning fast. It was that way for about 5 minutes and then stopped. He came back to our house about an hour later and I told him that when he was at that other road messing around, it started working great. He looked puzzled and went back up there. I think that was the main line. I don't know what it was, but it's been working great since! Here's my current stats:

3109.8 Kbps
 
I have cable and it just tested at 4.4 megabits per second, of course, nobody is up at this time. 0430 hrs.
 
I have DSL, but the closer you are the better with DSL, I think 22,000 feet is the limit if I can remember right. But anyway this is the future below.

This chip can make your internet connection 100 times faster.

CHICAGO, April 12 (UPI) -- An electrical engineer at the University of Illinois is testing a superfast computer chip that cycles 600 billion times a second and could get a lot faster.


The new chip developed by researchers led by Milton Feng eclipsed the previous record of 560 billion cycles set by Japanese engineers. Feng told the journal applied Physics Letters the chip may reach speeds of 1 trillion cycles a second, the Chicago Sun-Times said.

The chip promises to make applications like Internet connections 100 times faster than current broadband.

The indium phosphide and indium gallium arsenide semiconductor is super efficient. It runs cooler than current silicon chips and would greatly extend battery life of portable electronic equipment like cellular telephones and laptop computers.

The new chips initially would cost 100 times more to manufacture, but those costs would drop quickly making the chip more affordable, Feng said.
 
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