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Cable Sprints, DSL Trudges, Free ISPs Pant
Aarthek writes: "A new report is showing how people are signing on to the internet. Notice that the growth according to this report shows that DSL has had less than 2% growth in the first quarter of 2001. Where Cable is showing a 18% growth. The full report can be found here." This certainly matches my experience with DSL vs. cable, but for various reasons you're probably familiar with, DSL can be a better way to connect -- if it's available in your area, and you have a solvent provider, and you're near enough to a CO, and they'll squeeze you in an installation time, and your house wiring is up to it.
Really it is what you can get. Money cannot buy speed. Cable is faster then DSL and after you factor in all the costs often cheaper, so long as you don't need peak hour connectivity. Satalite is really quick, (latency is a big issue) and only slightly more then the others. Dial-up is slow, and second most expenseive if you have a dedicated line. ISDN is slow (faster then dial up, but only if you pay double ISP charges for 128k), and most expensive.
Where I live ISDN is the fastest I can get without dealing with latency. My boss pays for the line though, I couldn't afford it on my own. I'm thinking about satalite, because ISDN isn't fast enough.
something like half the country (US) cannot get either cable modem or DSL.
As a former @Home user, I hated having bandwidth drop to modem speeds in the evening
Yeah...and DSL may or may not be better depending on a provider. At night, when my cable goes to hell, I can still get to hsacorp's web pages at blinding speeds - even after dumping cache, etc...
The problem is not from the homes to the company, but from the company onto the general net. There is only so much a T1 or T3 can handle. Same problem with DSL - if there were the same amount of users coming in via DSL and out a T1 as on a cable modem, I doubt there would seem to be a difference between the two at that point.
Mostly depends on how customer service oriented your provider is.
As does DSL, usually. Here in the UK, you can choose between a 20:1 and a 50:1 contention ratio for ADSL, depending on how much you want to pay. If you're really lucky (and have sufficiently deep pockets), you might be in an area where you can get SDSL, which isn't shared with other users, but it's so rare as to be effectively non-existent at the moment. Where ADSL wins over cable is that you're guaranteed a maximum contention ratio. As I understand it, a cable modem line over here will be shared with as many other users as the cable company can sign up. Also, cable providers tend to place all sort of restrictions on the type of traffic they'll allow, which is fine for Joe Public, but sucks for the rest of us...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Terms of service and connection authentication as well as several other things vary on the whole for Roadrunner based on your location. As far as I can tell, the Roadrunner trademark is a franchise sold to cable companies who set the actual policies. There's tons of information on Roadrunner requiring a "sign-on" that I don't have to do. I, on the other hand deal with the MAC address authentication DHCP. I believe some of the Roadrunner franchises use a phoneline for upstream bandwidth. Bottom line: Roadrunner policies, performance and quality of service are totally tied to region and completely distinct.
LetterJ
Head Geek
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
The good news is that it was not given away irrevocably, and we can change the law regarding broadcast licenses and start collecting some of the revenue we are due from this resource. Broadcast licenses should be a limited term lease or a revenue-sharing license.
I wrote parts of this stuff
I'm taking that into account, but only to a point (plus over-simplifying for discussion purposes). Though it's not exactly a linear curve, there still is a rapid increase in costs that does not exist in the broadcast model. The other thing to consider in calculating infrastructure costs is that it's not quite a matter of replacing the phone banks with a PRI - you need hardware to support it, and you need to make capital expenditures that, if you're running on an upgrade treadmill, never really do pay for themselves. I assume in my earlier post that the cost savings are $3/user-month from 10K subs to 100K subs, but unless that makes you profitable it doesn't matter.
The calculations that free ISP providers made figured they would grow to critical mass and that the subscribers would be worth a whole lot more to advertisers than they really were. The problem was that the more they grew, the more they lost. Although the fixed costs do diminish somewhat (in the central infrastructure portion) on a per-user basis as your userbase grows, the local loop/special modem/truck roll costs in the DSL business stay just as expensive for one as they do for one million. Which is why the only free ISP's that are hanging on by a thread are Juno and NetZero (Bluelight.com doesn't count - KMart just took it on to avoid Christmastime disaster when Spinway died) - the dial-up costs do scale better than the DSL costs could. There are profitable ISP's out there - lots of them. But they all charge for their services, even the "bare-bones" $9/month ISPs with no tech support, no personal web hosting, and outsourced Usenet. You can deliver dial-up ISP service pretty darned cheaply, but not cheaply enough to give it away. And forget about giving away DSL service - I mean, that's like giving away cable TV service in terms of costs.
It's just such a shaky economic model to begin with that I'm surprised it even got funded - despite the "we'll fund anything, no questions asked" attitude of the last few years. In the end, TANSTAAFL.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
The only problem with the Free ISP model was that all the companies that offered it were based on the fantasies of crack-addled minds. That's the only possible explanation. I mean, just because people are accustomed to Free Stuff On The Internet, it does not mean that the Internet itself can be free. One reason that broadcast TV works as a free access model is that there is no need to build out infrastructure to connect each subscriber (unlike the ISP business). Cable TV, OTOH, charges a premium to access each home, because they need...
Infrastructure!
Just like the free ISP's did. What a coincidence! Something like a TV or radio benefits from the Network Effect (or Metcalfe's Law) because the broadcasting to the first TV costs millions of dollars (for the studios, transmitters, etc.), but it costs $0 per set after that. The more sets, the more money the broadcaster makes.
In the ISP business, though, it costs money to support each subscriber - in technical support, fixed wiring costs, phone/modem server costs (for dial-up networks), wholesale DSL costs (for folks like WinFire), and bandwidth. These costs don't magically get cheaper with size - they continue to grow. If you lose $5 per subscriber-month, then you lose $50,000 per month with 10K subscribers, and assuming (generously) that you can reduce your expenses by $3 per subsciber-month at 100,000 subscribers, you're still losing $200,000 per month at that level. It doesn't make sense now, and it didn't make sense then, either.
My local paper (the Boston Globe) has a consumer column that runs on Sundays. A few weeks ago it spotlighted the demise of free ISP's, and featured quotes from several customers of defunct free ISP's who "felt screwed". I tell you, I never laughed so hard reading anything other than comics in a newspaper.
After I recovered my breath, I then wrote a reasoned response to the consumer advocate and explained Economics 101 (which, unfortunately, I think most self-styled consumer advocates either skipped or flunked). Essentially, you can't sell a dollar for 90 cents and make it up in volume. Not surprisingly, I did not hear back directly from him, though he did cite my letter briefly in a follow-up column a few weeks later.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
yeah, blazing fast downloads... *MOST* people are interested in that. DSL you get about 80k/s (768/128k here) but cable (even when you are in the new moon ;) you still get decent speeds, 150+)
.02
DSL you have to deal w/pain in the ass providors (Verizon). Sure I get 80k/s, but when I cannot telnet anywhere b/c the ping response is soooo bad (1000+) I might as well be on 56k I would at least be able to get my work done.
I don't believe that telcos are doing anything to try and stop their customers from going to Cable. I personally believe that they don't want DSL. It is apparantly a hassle for them to appease the customer. They don't care if your connection is shitty, as long as they get their $32.50/mo. Your payment doesn't cover what they need to pay for their costs...
They oversell bandwith like crazy (even daisychain two shelves per T1 rather than one).
I am waiting for my contract w/Verizon to run out, and hopefully by then TW RR will be in the area here (supposedly sometime this summer) and I will be happier w/that.
Just my worthless
I don't get my ISP services from Verizon. Just the line.. I get two IP addresses from a local freenet that offers DSL services.. They weren't overly happy giving us the two IP's, but they did.
Verizon has VERY poor customer service. That's how they are ruining DSL. They seem to feel that it is ok for you to have 1000+ms ping replies, and they also seem to feel it is ok to let this continue for several months w/o any work being done.
I would rather the cable. At least there would be *some* periods during the day that there would be decent service. w/Verizon DSL there are no peak, off-peak times. I have poor ping responses at all hours/all days...
In my experience, the real bottleneck bandwidth-wise is almost never the last hop in a cable modem. (The cable company's own connection to the internet is often the limiting factor, but if they have two uplinks some sites may be slow while others aren't). If not, the limit's how busy the server you're talking to is, or some other bottleneck in an intermediate hop. Even at peak activity I've never seen a download from an otherwise fast site drop below about 140 kilobytes (not bits, bytes) per second. Average is 250-350, and theoretical peak (never seen it) is 500. I've never seen kernel.org drop below 200k/sec.
Now trying to use a cable modem as a server is ludicrous; upstream bandwidth is only about 20k/second. I uploaded 1.6 gigs to work once, it took a day and change. DSL is a MUCH better solution for servers, in theory anyway. (My own experience with it involves a lot of 15 second signal dropouts which aren't acceptable in a real server. But for a hobbyist starting out, who can't afford anything like server side hosting and needs "surfing" access anyway...)
Determining whether big evil cable corporations are worse than big evil phone companies is an open question, of course. :)
Rob
Yeah, same here. I got Verizon DSL in October 1999. I use a local ISP for the Internet part, so I pay a bit more than your typical Verizon customer: $34.95 to Verizon, and $64.95 to my ISP.
:-(
I called Verizon on a Monday to have it set up, the guy came by on Wednesday, did a little wiring in the house. I hooked up the modem, got three lights. He said, "Have fun," and left. Real quick, real easy, practically painless.
My ISP had already been in touch with Verizon, so all I had to do on my end was configure my gateway and my machines on my LAN, and I was surfing the net.
As for reliability, my system only went down one weekend in December 1999. Verizon changed something on my phone service and didn't inform my ISP who claimed that the changed required that they reset something on their end. Being the whiz that I am, I've never needed tech support beyond that, other than just getting my IP settings from my ISP.
Having multiple machines and running a www server, etc. were the main reasons I chose DSL over cable. Also, I don't think cable was available in my neighborhood until the summer of 2000, so I would have had to wait for quite a while before cable arrived. (We had cable television for ages, just not cable internet.)
Here in Lexington, KY many neighborhoods are like that. You can get cable, but you can't get DSL, or you can get DSL but you can't get cable. A handful of areas still can't get either.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
I have a cable modem, I'm waiting for my DSL to arrive. for 4 months I've been waiting for my DSL to arrive. I would have never switched from my cable modem, but my ISP is selling off it's cable modem business to @home, and I hear they don't play nice with linux, so I'd be SOL. I just hope I get the DSL before @Home starts port scanning me.
I post links to stuff here
Cable providers are such pains about running services on your computer at home. They absolutely want you to be a passive consumer of information, no matter what.
I have a /29 from my ISP, and run various low bandwidth services (including being a primary DNS server for several domains) from my computer at home. I could never do that reliably with a cable modem.
My actual available bandwidth is more reliable as well. Especially if I go through my ISPs squid proxy for most stuff. The squid proxy is connected to the net at 45 MBps and the higher peak rates can smooth out network bumps to make my transfer rate a smooth 65k/sec. I wish they were more vocal about their squid proxy because then there'd be a better chance that stuff I want would be in it, and I wouldn't have to fetch from the Internet at large at all.
Of course, having a good ISP is a must. I wouldn't ever use QWorst as my ISP. I've been extremely pleased with VISI.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Granted excite has made cablemodems in general un-likeable due to their stupid tactics and no clue how to run a service oriented business. (Excite people, the customer is always right and you must make them happy, even when they are idiots!) but DSL is worse. Telcos are notorious for having the worst customer service in the communications industry. (next to cellular, those people are just jerks) The telco's infrastructure is from 1920, and they barely maintain it. Cable infrastructure is less than 5 years old where cablemodems are available and the only problems other than excite, is explosive growth that is catching the local cables offices off-guard. (4 t-3's for my town should have been enough, they ordered another 3 t-3's to help fulfil demand)
but it also has another problem. Why the hell does cablemodem service go all the way to denver or wherever your service company is before hitting the net? when I hit the cable headend, I should ride a T3 to the nearest POP (university or backbone provider) instead of shoveling it 1/2 way across the country just so some over-controlling freak can control what comes in or out.
cablemodem service can kick the butt of anything else offered, if it was ran properly.
and Excite is not about to allow that.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Some reasons why DSL is better than cable: competition between vendors
You understate the value of this, IMHO. The competition between vendors means that there's product differentiation -- ISPs have to do something to make themselves stand out, and one thing mine does is allow me to do whatever I want with my connection -- run servers, connect my home LAN, and so on.
Every SA I've ever seen from a cable company comes down to the fact that they want you downloading HTTP content and anything that remotely resembles anything other than the computer equivilent of watching TV is expressly forbidden.
I also think the idea that cable is a better basic infrastructure is flawed. One reason the cable companies are so paranoid about services is that their infrastructure limitations often limit the amount of bandwidth they can apply to specific geographic regions; you share bandwidth up to whatever point they've determined constitutes a LAN. My understanding is that in most "phase I" internet setups this is a pretty large area, and heavy usage can pretty dramatically impact performance.
DSL's private bandwidth is some advantage; I'm not on the same broadcast domain as the other people in my neighborhood! I don't get a bunch of BS traffic I don't need.
I have cable and I usually get around 50kB/s (according to Lynx). Not bad.
-- Cheers!
It's an interesting paradox: people want it, but all too many can't get it, especially with the implosion of DSL providers. Those of us still up and running on Covad's network get worried, seeing stockholder/bondholder efforts to preserve THEIR equity, CO de-activations, and general nervousness about the service in general.
Yet cable, with its' shared bandwidth, is growing like crazy. As a former @Home user, I hated having bandwidth drop to modem speeds in the evening. But if it's all you can get, what other choice is there ?? (And no, the new StarBand service does NOT support Linux, nor do they claim to ever intend to support "minor operating systems". . . I asked, and was shocked....)
Cable is also available here, but (1) i don't watch television and (2) you can't get a static IP.
...know why broadband providers (mostly cable, from what I understand) don't want anyone running servers?
The provide you with bandwidth - most of the time an ungodly amount "down", and a piddly 128/256 up (256 if you are real lucky on cable). Anyhow, even this paltry amount up would be good enough for basic server tasks, things that would be nice from a personal standpoint (in my case, I want to set up a bookmark list serving system for my personal use).
However, they won't allow it by their AUP! Why? Why is it like this? What is the difference between a server, and me actually sitting there, and for whatever manner, actually using up the full "up" bandwidth? I mean, I know physically it can't be done, not without some automatic process (which is a no-no, because it looks like a server) - but say it could be done. Why not just say you can have unlimited down, but only 14.4K up, because we only need it for mouse clicks anyhow?
I can understand the broadband providers not wanting people to set up warez/pr0n/mp3/you-name-it-quasi-legal/illegal wares site - but what about those of us who want to use it to better our overall access (like my bookmark server example - but it extends to other things like VPN use, etc)?
Don't tell me to go ahead and try it - I have heard that argument before, and also anecdotal stories of "I'm doing it, no probs, go for it!" - I am certain you can do it, just be hush about it, run on a funky "high" port, and don't consume bandwidth, and things will be generally fine.
I just want to know what they are so paranoid about - or why they won't let us pay a little extra to get that functionality (and when I mean a little extra, I mean a little extra - not the TON extra for "business" class service - which is the same a residential, just better phone service, should you need it, and maybe a higher "up" speed, but not enough to justify the insane prices)?
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Is my ISP. I run Suse 7.1 at home. While they don't support linux, they don't object to it. The only thing to be aware (or beware) of is that you have to put the '-h hostname' command in your dhcp client startup. I've had great results with them. No downtime and good speeds on the download. I don't run a server, so upload speed isn't an issue. The install was great. The installer came when they said he would, only took about 1/2 hour.
Best Slashdot Co
Some reasons why DSL is better than cable:
Some reasons why Cable is better than DSL:
Some false reasons whey DSL is better than cable:
For a more eloquant summary of the differences see: Simson Garfinkle's excellent review. It's a bit dated (Sept 1999) but it's still does a good job of cutting through much of the rhetoric.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Several posts have mentioned the "problem" of shared bandwidth when using a cable Internet connection. I'm skeptical about how real this problem is. It seems to me that the only issue is how soon sharing occurs as you move away from your house. With cable, I share bandwidth with all neighbors on the same node (there are multiple "nodes" in my town). With DSL, I have a dedicated line four blocks to the phone company, but certainly from that point onwards my neighbors and I must all share the same set of T1 lines, or whatever type of line the phone company uses to get Internet in the first place. It seems to me that this "sharing" issue is really a red-herring. If it's really a problem, I'd love to see a sound technical explanation of why that is so.
Out here on the east coast of the United States the market is monopolized by Verizon who owns the lines other companies have to use in order to provide DSL services.
Problem with this, Verizon offers DSL services at the same time so it seems according to most (as well as common sense) that Verizon would be reluctant to lease lines to provide the service at a fast pace (if even they do without giving them the runaround).
What happens when you call Verizon for DSL services is horrendous, you're often told you would have to wait upteen weeks or months before they can get to you, or it turns out they haven't wired your neighborhood yet.
Well logically cable is almost in every single neighborhood so its easier for people to just call up their cable companies and have it added on to their bills without hassle. No waits, etc.
Doesn't mean cable is better than DSL could just mean DSL isn't available in an area, or people just don't want to wait too long for it to be installed.
Want Root?
I've switched between Cable and DSL numerous times (4x), and in my experience, it totally depends on where you are; ie, location from CO and how many people you're sharing the Cable loop with. I suspect that in the end, Cable is easier for the providers to scale since more often than not I've ended up finding Cable is the best choice in most of the numerous locations in Toronto that I've lived.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Young upstart ingrates. You've no idea how good you've got it.
I just called @home to request that my service be transferred from my apartment to the house I'm moving into. Their customer service is swift. They said that within 30 minutes of making the transfer request the service would be turned off at my old place. Then I could make an appointment to have the service installed at the new place. Furthermore he wouldn't even let me hear the list of avaliable appointment times before he would cut off my service. Pigfuckers.
________________________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
In the Nashville, TN area, DSL isn't doing too bad.
There are several different providers, but Bellsouth is the most popular. Telocity is also in the area and seems to be doing well.
Most of the people around here I know who have DSL switched to it when it became available, and they were using a cable modem. They're all happier with DSL.
Another interesting irony is that in some places around here, Intermedia isn't even signing more people up for Cable, as it appears as if they may be having problems keeping up with increased demand. So, for some people going with DSL is the only option even if they did prefer Cable.
Also, most of the people I know with DSL get 1.5/256 connections, so you won't hear any of them complaining about speed.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
the BS about dsl not being shared is phone company propaganda. do you really think they don't over subscribe users? *every* internet connection shares bandwidth somewhere along the line. the only difference is with dsl it's a hop or two further upstream.
My roommate wanted to get DSL run to the house and was told by the folks at BellSouth that it would be "no problem". They sent him a modem and he tried for a couple of days to get it up and running. They sent out a technician to check the phone lines (which checked out ok) both inside and outside the house. After about a week they told him that the house was right on the edge of the 15k limit (or whatever the magic distance is).. so we went with a cable modem instead. I hate being a customer of the evil AOL-Time Warner megacorp, but I have been surprisingly pleased with the service in this area- eastern edge of Memphis. Outages are rare.. I think it's only been out once over the past year. In the old neighborhood, outages were a weekly thing.
So what's the point of this post... ummm.. I guess that the phone companies should make an effort to improve their infrastructure if they want the number of DSL subscribers to increase.
I met These Guys (http://www.plusten.com for the goat wary) at the Colorado Linux Info Quest. They're offering a microwave service for the Denver and surrounding area. They seemed to think they could push 4 megabits my way if I wanted to drop the cash for the service, and they don't have to bend over and take it from the telcos like the DSL providers do.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I can just picture the massive amount of DSL vs Cable posts that are gonna hit /. in the next few minutes. Let's not ignore the internet-TV family of services that's going to make AOL users look like internet guru's. So far, the different flavors of internet-TV haven't taken off, and satelite is too damned laggy to pay the big bux for. What I'm concerned about is that the main players in the internet-TV market are Microsoft and AOL, neither of which can be trusted to stick to any form of standards, creating extensions to html, restricting the use of the service to further their own agenda. I hope that if internet-TV based services do hit the net in a big way, that we have the presence of mind to step back and insist on net-wide open standards.
Look here, angry old man, your time has come and gone. On the internet, patience isn't a virtue, it's a potentially fatal mistake. The old internet is to be respected, but not to such a religious extent that we still need to live it even now -- do you start your fires from scratch to appreciate human civilization too?
Some DSL competition still exists.
Check ispmenu for comparison of DSL services still available at any particular address. [/plug] It also compares dialups.
You can also get 5Mbit down if you pay twice the price. (Price for the above btw is $25/month)
it's in my head
I have almost the exact same setup as you, 2 blocks from the CO, Verizon DSL,and for the same amount of time (I'll assume you ment october of 2000). Although you havn't had any problems yet be prepared for a tech support headache if you ever do. Verizon has about 90% idiots in the tech department. I'm generally happy with my service, although would KILL for a static IP address. Verizon seems to have the odd idea in this area (South east PA) that if you want to switch DSL providers you can't. A few of my friends have tried to switch, when they canceled thier accounts with verizon they placed a "hold" on all thier lines for 6 months. No other DSL providor could access the lines because Verizon is the local Company here, they controll the wires. There is another provider here that offeres static IPs for the same price as Verizon, I would love to switch but I'm affraid of getting cut off from my bandwidth.\ =\=\=\=\=\=\
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=
Why? Simple reason: the earliest installation date for my DSL service would be 60 days from my move-in date! 60 days without broadband - and I work from home 1/2 time. So, I called AT&T Broadband and asked how long it would take to get cable modem access: 6 days from order date (and only that long because I called Wednesday before Thanksgiving!).
Now that I have cable I won't be going back to DSL for any reason. Cable's latency and bandwidth blows the doors off DSL for the same price. Sure, cable is shared - but my neighboors are mostly retirees...
Anyway, I can't believe I put up with DSL as long as I did (when I said I was happy with DSL, it was because ignorance is bliss). Thank goodness for the incredible installation delay! (BTW, I had my cable modem 2 days before I had my local telephone service enabled. Now, that's service!)
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
First of since when is system security the cable operators job? You are connecting to the internet you should understand what that involves and how to address the security issues that arise from connecting to a public network. Second don't say cable modems are a bad technology just because your cable operator doesn't have the people, time, or money to design a network that can handle the traffic that their customers genterate. When 10BaseT doesn't work in the building anymore you upgrade to 100, when that bogs down you install switches, when that starts having issues you go Gigabit at the core... but none of that will work if you don't layout the infastructure in a way that works. Cable modem networks are no different. You have to monitor your taffic and address the areas that need it.
Shared bandwidth is a myth. Everyone on the internet shares bandwidth. What do you think the DSLAM at the CO does with all those DSL connections? It multiplexes them on to a single 100BaseT connection most likely. Right there your sharing bandwidth. The problem is not bandwidth sharing it is network design and monitoring.
I have a coworker who has been running a similar setup for a couple years, and neither of us have ever had any complaints or threats from Comcast. I have it on pretty high authority that they will not crack down on anyone for running a server unless they start disrupting the network.
Besides, If I wanted to run a "serious" web server, I wouldn't do it on a cable or DSL line anyway. Co-location gives you a lot more bandwidth for the money, and puts your server at least one hop closer to the backbone. The package I'm looking at gives me 4U of rack space, 10/100 Ethernet connected to multiple T-3's, UPS protection, 5 static IP's, and 2GB/mo of bandwidth, all for $200/mo. Can't beat it with a stick.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Since then I've had no problems with the service.
I'd definately recommend them if you live within their coverage area.
Fight Spammers!
But, dealing with AT&T and Road Runner is also a pain in the posterior. Not only do they require the MAC address of each NIC, but when you mention Linux, their response is "We don't support Linux." Of course, I responded, "Did I ask for a linux command?". I set up a Win2K machine, their first response was, "remove TCP/IP and reinstall." When I asked what that would do, they didn't know, but said they were sure it would fix the problem. I asked if they would bet $1,000, but they would not put their money where their mouth is.
The question may not be the technology, but the compentcy of their support people.
Fight Spammers!
Here in Rochester, NY, the two big competitiors are Cable (Time Warner, Road Runner), and DSL (Lightning Link, Frontier [Global Crossing]). Time Warner's cable used to advertise being the fastest... until they capped their bandwidth at 2 Mb/sec. Now Frontier has upped their maximum DSL speed to 3 Mb/sec (Of course, dependent on distance from CO), and are advertising themselves as the fastest in Rochester.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
As a user who's been on all sides of the fence, I can see why cable use is growing so rapidly. When I was using DSL all I had was problems. It wasn't connection problems as much as service problems. When I called for service, both of the ISPs that I had really had no clue what was going on most of the time. They'd end up blaming it on the last-mile provider, who in turn would blame it on the ISP and then the loop begins. The fact that there are usually 3 parties involved just gives more room for confusion.
With cable, however, I've had none of these problems (mainly because they have no one else to blame the troubles on). If I called support to see what was going on with the network they always had an answer and the service was back up within hours instead of days like my dsl.
When I first decided to get dsl for broadband I thought it'd be good because I had heard that ping times would be better and I'd get a constant download speed. I was really wrong. I'm getting faster downloads, faster uploads and faster pings on my cable than I ever got on my dsl. Now that I've got cable I'll never be going back to dsl.
And Then...
I signed up with Verizon DSL (768 down/128 up) in October 2001. In about 25 days I had a working connection, and to date I would estimate the downtime as virtually zero (maybe an hour or two in 6 months). My connection speeds are usually in the 700 - 800 kbps range during the day, going up as high as 870 kbps during off-peak hours. Upload speeds are consistently in the 130 kbps range. Packet loss is zero. Latency is decent enough that I can play (and serve) UT games without problems. I couldn't be happier.
But you must consider that my apartment is on one side of the block, and on the other side is the CO. Distance means a lot with DSL, and (if the houses weren't there) an athetically inclined person could throw a baseball from my window and hit the CO.
Also, I am using a local ISP with great bandwidth. I pay a little bit more than if I had gone with Verizon as my ISP, but I welcome the chance to support the few remaining independent ISPs.
So that is my experience (a great one!). When people are knocking DSL, remember that not everyone has had a bad time with it.
-- null
DSL in many areas is a myth- an unsubstantiated rumour.
My co-op here was trying to get DSL- he signed up with Verizon, had them schedule the appt., asked at the time of the appt. to be sure they'd be able to install it- they came out, took one look-see and said that they couldn't install DSL there.
He signed up for cable. The best part is, after scheduling the appt., after being lied to about the availability, Verizon continues to bill him!
DSL would be a great, fast method of connecting, if more than 2% of the people who want fast access could use it. I'm well aware that cable's performance degrades as more users clog the pipes, but for now it's good.
I'm betting that the next big advance will occur right before cable gets so bogged down that I can't stand it any longer.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
If it wasn't for all this bloat everywhere on the net, then we could all use a respectable browser such as Lynx or gopher.
-vax computer, vi, lynx. 'nuf said
Timing is everything. I recently moved back to the big city, very much against my wishes. The one plus to the move, I thought, was that I'd be able to get DSL.
After moving in, I discovered that there is _no_ form of broadband that services my house. No DSL, no cable modem, and I don't have a clear view of the right part of the sky for one of those sattelite link-ups.
That's why for several years now I always make sure that I do have broadband available before I move. When checking out apartments, I always ask the rental agent if broadband is available. Then I find out who the cable and telco providers are and then contact them to be sure. Granted, you could still end up getting doinked on the DSL deal if they don't know for sure if it is available in your area, but it's better to at least try and find out. Some people thought I was crazy, but it's worth it to make sure.
Those who are on shared networks and turn on the "file-sharing" option, will be hacked into.
The same thing will happen with DSL as well. The only difference is that the person who hacks you on cable will be the punk kid down the street as opposed to the punk kid on hte other end of the country.
Timing is everything. I recently moved back to the big city, very much against my wishes. The one plus to the move, I thought, was that I'd be able to get DSL.
After moving in, I discovered that there is _no_ form of broadband that services my house. No DSL, no cable modem, and I don't have a clear view of the right part of the sky for one of those sattelite link-ups.
I persisted, though, and after six months of searching, finally found an approximation of broadband: iDSL (for $100/mo!), from Northpoint. I wrestled with whether I wanted to pay that much for 128kps, and finally decided to do it. The day I was going to call to order the hookup was the exact same day Northpoint announced bankruptcy, and they cut off all their existing customers!
Yup, timing is everything. My pessimistic side say "it figures". My optimistic side say "Wow, a day earlier, and you would have been taken for all that up-front money! Lucky you!"