I currently am on a cable-modem hook-up with COX and seriously considering switching over to Qwest DSL, since COX raised their price to $50/month compared to Qwest DSL Premier for $35.99/month.

Does anyone else face the same problem I have?  If so, do you find that DSL is faster than cable-modem?

When I worked for the phone company quite a few years back, DSL was a big joke as it was nothing more than accelerated dial-up -- Qwest claims it's now Broadband and faster than COX cable-modem ... would appreciate actual facts instead of opinions.

Hey there TA,

I had this issue about a year ago.

I was with Comcast and decided to transfer the cable internet under the business name. They told me that this could be done without interruption and my new monthly charges would go from $55.00 per mon to only $99.00 per month for a business account. No difference in speed or service.

I contacted Qwest and switched over to DSL for $34.99 per mon. I can't say that I noticed any overall speed difference. The biggest difference I noticed had to do with the evenings. With Comcast it always got slower between 4pm and 9pm and every once in a while I would lose connection. Since my switch to DSL with Qwest, no difference in speed at anytime of day.

We have four computers here at home, 3 use the wireless connection to the modem for internet access. No difference in speed. Before connecting the other three computers to the modem I contacted Qwest about doing this and how many computers could be hooked up. They told me that I should be able to connect 18 - 20 computers through the same modem before I noticed any drop in speed.

I would suggest the use of DSL over cable.

I alway suggest going wireless and hacking the neighbors........don't tell anyone I said that.

thegreatyo wrote:

I alway suggest going wireless and hacking the neighbors........don't tell anyone I said that.

It is the best but everyone don't have a neighbour with wireless modem to hack.

DSL is basically a means of sending two signals down the phone line

low frequency for the voice calls
high frequency for the data

This means you need a crossover circuit at each point in your house (commonly known as a micro-filter)

I don't know about the cable side if things (don't have cable!)

But i do have dsl.

standard is ADSL with a contention ratio of between 20:1 abd 50:1 [SDSL and1:1 ratios are available if you've got the cash!]

DSL allows for speed increases as technology is developed, hardware changes generally don't affect the end-users hardware requirements

Eg - i have a 50:1, 2mb ADSL for £20/month
so i share my connection with up to 50 other end users (not a problem in the country, but the services are over sold in the city)
download is 2mb/s. upload is 256kb/s

The A stands for asymmetric (upload and download speeds are not the same).

Knowing what i do about DSL - i would choose it over other services in the price bracket. a T1 would be nice, but not possible!

Some ISPs over here will give 16mb/s SDSL (expect 1000's/month!)

I think cable (Cox anyway, that I also use) is a bit faster. Advertised 7mb/s download. I ran two "tests" that achieved 3.5 & 5 Mb/s with upload about 10% of DL. If I interpreted everything correctly, It makes our connection about twice the speed of DSL which was my understanding before.

That said, who cares? You still have to wait for their (any given sites) server and conection, which is the bottleneck much of the time.

Seems like the speeds Northie's talking about are plenty fast for me.. Save a few fun tickets.

We have two computers on a wireless setup that are both used a lot. It works so well I seldom think about it...

DSL speed is dependent entirely on where you live. The further down the line your are, the slower your speed is going to be.

$50 is outrageous tho. Around here, we pay about $30, and the cable speed is rockin'. Not to mention reliable.... they did start out with a lot of problems in the beginning, but after a hundred phone calls from me, they starting fixing all kinds of stuff around town.

I don't care what anyone says, Cable will always be better, BUT - this is entirely dependent on how much money the cable company in your area is willing to invest in their business. The bandwidth is practically unlimited, but if they don't pony up for it, then you'll get junk service.

I would highly recommend seeking out somebody that has DSL in your area to get a feel for the speed.

Another note.... wish people would stop knockin' cable companies. They are by far the best TV and internet access source available. The problem is the people that run the business in YOUR area. These cable companies are treated like big international chain business, but in the end, they are really like individual small business's. If the owners of these places would actually COME TO WORK, instead of sitting on their butt at home collecting a massive check, then there would be.... blah, you know what I mean.

/rant.

Another note.... wish people would stop knockin' cable companies. They are by far the best TV and internet access source available.

Cable does have a good hardware set up

BUT:

No one's gonna lay a cable for 2 miles along a minor road just so that i can have it.

BT put telegraph poles up many many years ago so I can have a phone and BB; Sky kindly broadcast their programmes through the sky (surprisingly enough) so all i need is a dish/antenna/aerial thing

We have the same service, TA. Cox cable modem. We have the modem directly connected to a router; the desktop has ethernet to the router; the laptop has a wireless connection. Even running both computers, which we do most of the time, it offers decent speeds.

Of course, the speeds vary between the 2 computers, due to age and hardware.  The desktop just isn't as fast as the new laptop. For me, the speeds are sufficient most of the time. It just depends how fast the originating site sends the data, when downloading programs.  If they only send at 300kbps, it doesn't much matter how fast your DSL/modem works.

I hate the prices that Cox charges. Even bundled with our TV, we pay $45/mo, but we're trapped. Our complex has a contract with Cox, so we can't change service providers.

Personally, what I know of DSL vs. Cable Modem (which is precious little) - I'd stick with the cable modem. If you can find someone who's got better prices, go with them.

I appreciate everyone's reply -- when working as the Area Manager covering 7 southern states for Southwestern Bell, they introduced DSL to us, and I told them it was crap because all it is, is simply accelerated dial-up with ads removed and they'd end up with alot of angry customers.

My biggest complaint is that COX has jacked the price up again to $50/month with the same old BS ... "We had to raise our price due to NEW technology".

I called and said ... "WTF do you mean by NEW technology???  Nothing's new; I'm still hooked up to the same damn modem; same cabling; same PC; and I haven't seen one damn twinkle-toed COX jack-ass out here installing NEW equipment, cross-connect boxes, etc!"

They disconnected my call -- guess they'd never heard such rantings from a pissed off old Marine Grunt...

Yeah, they have no sense of humor! 

hey skip - we've got both cable modem ( from coosa cable ) and DSL ( from century tel )

when I first got them I did some measurements/comparisons to see which was faster and stuff

Well that was a long time ago, and I forgot the specifics, but I remember the general cases of comparison

here is what I found

DSL is more reliable than cable.  Though both cable and DSL claim to be always on, cable has frequent outages.

For downloading movies and music over torrents, or Gnutella,  - cable is faster.  Noticeably faster.

For websurfing - DSL is faster.  Not blazing faster, but its fast enough you'll notice.

For uploading stuff to your site like FTP, cable seems to be faster.

Thanks John - I'm going over to a friend's house Sunday, who has Qwest DSL Broadband, to see just how fast it is; he strongly prefers it over COX, especially because it's $15 / month cheaper ... this will most likely help me make the final decision; I just have a hard time justifying a rate increase to $50 / month when there's no significant change in speed.

well for us its kind of strange, but DSL is actually cheaper than cable

We didn't mean to keep the cable once we got DSL, but we got a PlayStation 3 at Chirstmas time, and it just so happens that its right near where the cable modem is, so its more convienent than plugging it into the router on the DSL line

Mutilated1 wrote:

hey skip - we've got both cable modem ( from coosa cable ) and DSL ( from century tel )

when I first got them I did some measurements/comparisons to see which was faster and stuff

Well that was a long time ago, and I forgot the specifics, but I remember the general cases of comparison

here is what I found

DSL is more reliable than cable.  Though both cable and DSL claim to be always on, cable has frequent outages.

For downloading movies and music over torrents, or Gnutella,  - cable is faster.  Noticeably faster.

For websurfing - DSL is faster.  Not blazing faster, but its fast enough you'll notice.

For uploading stuff to your site like FTP, cable seems to be faster.

Reliability - I had that problem too in the beginning. It had to do the fact that everything was running on 30 year old copper wire in town, and the connections were even worse. When they went through and replaced everything, it worked great. I just kept complaining, and they eventually fixed everything.

Websurfing - I'm not sure when you did your test, but if it happen to be on a win 98 system, then chances are, the cable performed like garbage. 98's TCP/IP setup was not configured properly for high bandwidth surfing and downloading. I remember going to a site (wish I remember the name) and getting a patch that throttled the heck out of it. Since then, XP has proper settings for TCP/IP

Uploading - This is entirely dependent on the ISP. Can't do anything about it.

I think the reason DSL is faster than cable for websurfing yet slower for downloading is because allthough cable may have higher throughput, DSL is only one hop to the back bone thus the latency is a lot less.

Really if you want info from true speed freaks and tweakers go to http://www.dslreports.com/ I'm sure you will get a severely biased but true advice there.
BTW: I've got Comcast now but Have a choice between WOW cable, Comcast, and ATT dsl.
I pay $42.95/mo for 8mps dl and between 300k and 1mb ul.
Speed for me really depends on where I am downloading from. Microsoft updates are so incredibly fast I kind of use that as a benchmark. I never had dsl so I am curious also, although for the speed I have right now I would only save about $7 a month.
Never have trouble with downloads, always fast. Uploading media though is all over the place.
Is dsl more consistent than cable in this regard?
As for

I remember going to a site (wish I remember the name) and getting a patch that throttled the heck out of it

Oh, it's called Dr. tcp use with caution!
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/tweaks/1._DRTCP Read the readme!
you'll find all you need at the url above.
My problem is I've had Comcast like six years now and reluctant to change. Oh, yeah I had the same service when @home (Excite.com) went belly up then attbi bought them and now Comcast. Used to be spotty during those time but for the last few years dead reliable. Word of advice though, if you have an unpingable firewall like I do, put a shortcut to winipconfig on your desktop, unless you like rebooting your computer.
Curious too, Dan
Eagle, there is no need for a business account unless you hit that 500gb threshold. Rumor really but that's when people get that dreadful email thay will be cut off for one year if they don't dramatically reduce their bandwidth usage.

dann wrote:

Eagle, there is no need for a business account unless you hit that 500gb threshold. Rumor really but that's when people get that dreadful email thay will be cut off for one year if they don't dramatically reduce their bandwidth usage.

Thanks Dann. The reason for changing this to a business account was for the old "tax-man". We home school our kids, so I set up an office at home for the business and by changing to a business account I am now able to write it off as a business expense.

I've had both, and my DSL is only $12 a month (AT&T Yahoo), where cable was $50 - Cable is a little faster but hardly noticable, especially to me because I'm about 3,000 feet from the phone company:D

Although the speed of the DSL is determined by location of your home compared to the location of the closest router (I think it's a router, but whatever that thingy is that boosts speed and helps it distribute it further is) has already been covered, I saw nothing about the up side of not being all that close. OUR DSL has two different prices. If we're close to one of those hub thingies (if I keep using the jargon, I might just stumble across the right words LOL), we are charged $33 per month (assuming it includes the telephone package too), if we are far away, it's slower, so only cost $10 per month.

Of course, since we live in Philly, and the nearest transformer is also the main "scent post" for the neighborhood dogs, we're not offered the cheaper price. Just wanted to mention there is one, in case you're out in the boondocks, Skip.