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Cable Beats DSL For Average Speed
zymano writes "CNET article here says cable modems are 50 percent faster on average than DSL connections which I think most have suspected . There are some connection rates that i found interesting like Cablevision reportedly having the fastest connections, averaging 800kbps, or 13kbps above the industry average. Mentions other cable company speeds. TimeWarner cable was not tested."
Anyone who has had both will tell you cable is faster and personally I think its more reliable too. I've had COX, At&t and Comcast for cable providers they were all pretty good esp. COX, but that was when they gave static I.P's and no caps. I had verizon for DSL and suffered throught it for way to long.
I often have problems with my cable modem. DSL isn't an option for several reasons:
A) I haven't had a phone line or paid for a land line in 5 years
B)Speed is truely a little slower
C)DSL is MUCH more expensive (at least for providers in my area)
D)It would be a large transfer investement to go to a different type of service - I have been able to do a lot of eBay selling and transfer of hardware as Charter has transition from @home (which was superior) to PipeLine.
The other gripe about cable not comparing to DSL is the misleading requirements. I had posted this in my journal before:
Charter Pipeline requirements
1)Workers / installers also make people think that is MEGABYTE AND KILOBYTE it is megabit and kilobit - they advertise the service with a k when it should be with a kbps or kb - but front desk people will often say "You should upgrade to the 1 megabyte service"
The way I have tested this is by hooking my Aiport BaseStation up to both - I used his (neighbor's) service, he used my service for a week. We both use Peer to Peer and both download a considerable amount of images and software updates. We also both upload to eBay a lot. There is a considerable sized class action action lawsuit in Greenville against Charter, this is one of the many things mentioned as a grievance in the suit.
2)They advertise on the Pipeline website that a Mac with a 601 PPC or higher is able to have the service. They install free ethernet cards (ISA,PCI, PCMCIA) in most every Wintel but won't install an AAUI adapter (on some Macs) or something like a PCMCIA card on the PowerBook 1400. They also tell my customers that I have sold 7300's (604e/180 processor) to, even if they have G3 upgrades that they won't even ALLOW then to get on Pipeline claiming it doesn't meet spec, when one can can view this message on their site: Pipeline Requirements [charter.com]
They also are under investigation for charging the bogus "line maintenance fee" - which they tell you if you don't have they will charge you to fix your cable, when technically (although not by law) they are a municipality/utility and must include line maintenance in costs.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Here in Tokyo, the place where you want to be when you want Internet connections for cheap, the standard DSL service is 12Mbit/s down, 1Mbit/s up. For abour Yen 3000 (about US$ 26). And so far no restrictions. And it's fast (within Japan 900kbyte/s if the server is fast enough, to USA usually 200kbyte/s).
Everything else in Japan and especially in Tokyo is expensive. But Internet is as cheap as you can imagine.
Those variations couldn't have anything to do with the fact that all three of those companies are selling different speeds of service? No, it has all to do with quality, not what is advertised!
Seriously, I think that whoever wrote that article had a serious case of USA-Today-itis, the urge to chart and compare things without any relevance.
Yes cable is faster, and sometimes a littel cheaper, but there is one little problem. If you want a dedicated IP address with most cable companies, you have to get their "business" connection. A dedicated IP is standard with my DSL provider.
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
What I have seen (NEPA, NW Ohio, and Minneapolis) DSL is more expensive and half the speed.
In NEPA DSL is 640/160k at $49.95/mo. Static IP over DHCP IIRC. In NW Ohio DSL is 768/128. It was around 49.95 the last time I had it (over 2 years ago) and it was Static IP. In Minneapolis (I cannot get it here in Burnsville) it's 640k w/a lot of download limits and it depends on ISP but around $55+/mo.
Cable OTOH was $49.95/mo in NW Ohio from Roadrunner. It was around 2000/384k. In Minneapolis we have ATTBI/Comcast at 1800/256 for 42.95 (it's going up though).
My IP on cable has been static, my connection is stable, and my speeds are great.
I would NEVER want DSL at the same price for 1/3 the speed.
I don't know if cable suffer the same signal (hence bandwidth) degradation over distance that effects DSL.
When BT were rolling out ADSL services in the UK you had to be within 1.5km of the exchange's. The further you are away from the exchange you get less bandwidth. Again I'm unaware of the current limits.
Does any one know if cable suffers the same?
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
I currently have both (company provided Cox cable for vpn, and DSL for my own access and running servers.)
What I've seen is that while the DSL is slower, it never goes down. In almost a year, I've not had a single time when I couldn't get to the internet. The cable, on the other hand, drops about once or twice a week now; though it's better than the 3 or 4 times a day that it was dropping during the conversion from RoadRunner to Cox.
It may have more to do with who is administrating the particular network segment you're on than the technology itself; but I have found Cox to be horribly unreliable, and their tech support people to be "less than knowledgeable" and difficult to deal with.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
I have Roadrunner and use NAT. Only way they are not "NAT friendly" is if you try and call for support and then I just tell them the bare minimum. I usually say yeah I tried everything your going to tell me and I am still having a problem....NEVER mention the router, although they are ok with them, they generaly will want you to recable direct to the cable modem (as if that will magically give you an IP when their DHCP server is down). Also telling them you changed nothing usually helps a bit too (they usually accuse you of mucking with your settings...). They also "lie" and tell you your speeds will be slower through a router. Yeah they may be a little slower, but nothing you'd notice as usually your conenction to the router already runs faster anyway (100 Mbps between host and router). I wish all of the providers would have "check your list of downed servers and/or areas FIRST" as the first item.....usually they will tell you that they have no problems, but then when you cajole them to look further they say opps...the DHCP server is down....DUH! What good is connectivity if I can't get a IP?
Gorkman
I recently swtiched to optimum online powered by cablevision. I can attest that it is much faster than my old adsl service. I can d/l most linux iso's in under 30 minutes on a good server. Could't do that with adsl just wasn't fast enough.
Nope, its right
'b' = bits
'B' = bytes
Here (in the Czech Republic) we are actualy happy with anythning other than dial-up, but cable/dsl is very expensive. I think I would prefer cable, but it's not availible here. Until this February (A)DSL wasn't availible in the whole country, not only on particular streets/blocks. Cable is somewhat cheaper but is availible only in limited locations.
ADSL (what they call basic)
192/64 --- $45.9
320/128 -- $80.4
ADSL (standart)
256/64 --- $114.9
512/128 -- $204.5
1024/254-- $390.7
cable
128 / 96 --$37.2
320 / 96 --$51
192 / 128--$103
320 / 256--$206
If you could get kazaa users to use some other p2p program that isn't spyware,
You mean kazaa lite?
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
Fair enough, that makes sense I guess, it's just I'm used to getting pretty much 100% of the theoretical speed. I must be lucky :)
For anyone in the UK who doesn't already know about it, this site offers rankings and comparisions of all the different DSL providers. I don't know of any similar sites for cable, I guess direct comparisons are less useful as there are only 2 suppliers (AFAIK). But knowing how fast an average NTL 1mbps line actually is could be useful for folks.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I've got Cox, and to get a hard IP I can run a server on, I have to shell out $69/month for a 128k symetrical link. (It's 3mbps down and 256k up at $40 for a DHCP account.) Not too speedy compared to what Speakeasy's shilling for the same price... but Verizon has not upgraded the local switch to DSL-capable, and probably never will.
While we're on the topic of Speakeasy, I once had a 780k symmetrical link from them for $80/month. They no longer offer anything anywhere near that speed/price ratio... they've taken a huge step back. Yet, as has been noted elsewhere, DSL in Japan is dirt cheap for a pipe that can saturate a 10b-T link on the downstream.
This is what deregulation gets you.
The "game over" is in the next generation wireless. Goodbye, cable! Goodbye, POTS! Sprint already offers 155k symetrical links for $50/month... uncapped and unmetered. All you can eat. The other big wireless vendors will either quickly follow suit, or get eaten alive by Sprint. If they can even get a reliable link at 1.5mbps at $50/month, they'll steal huge share away from DSL and Cable at twice that speed. Everyone with a notebook will want it. Unlike on copper, wireless RF sees no cost benefit from throttling upload, so I can see hard IPs and servers being the deal maker for premium "geek packages." Then the other broadband vendors will either shape up, or get run out of town on a rail.
SoupIsGood Food
I've had DSL for 5 years with different providers and my download speed was always way above 1100 (most of the time even above 1200). No matter what time of the day or what day of the week. Same for upload.
I just moved and for some reasons I don't have time to elaborate i was 'forced' to go with cable and choose RCN. Now I am paying more money for the same 'package' I had with DSL and my download speeds are anywhere from 450 to 1050 depending on the time of the day and which day of the week and the latency is very noticable for online gaming compared to DSL. Also RCN now officially doesn't allow to connect more than one pc (with a router) to the connection and being more expensive already also wants $9.50 for a static IP address that was included in my cheaper DSL package.
So for me, as soon as i will be able to, I will switch back to DSL. More reliable, better reliable speed, better latency, multiple pc support and cheaper.
Happy DSL customer / Unhappy Cable customer.
Nope. 350KB/s is 2.8Mb/s
Most people I know on DSL are capped at 1.5Mbps, while I routinely can download on my cablemodem at home at 350KB/sec. They're also usually capped at 128kbps upload, while mine (Adelphia Powerlink in Southern California) has been raised to 256kbps.
Funny, my uploads are "capped" at 1.5Mbps. I also have 8 static IPs. Try getting that from a cable company.
The difference between cable internet and DSL from what I've seen is that you have one choice of cable provider, and hundreds of choices of DSL providers. That means you get to pick your terms of service with DSL, and you get the terms of service dictated to you with cable. For me that means DSL wins.
Right now I have DSL through SBC. I used to have service through Time-Warner/Roadrunner, but gave it up last year. Why, you may ask? Simple: reliability.
Everything was fine with Roadrunner for about a year or so, until we started having line issues. After that, about every six months, we would end up having issues with the physical cable going from our junction box out back to the house. Each time, it would take us more than one call to get someone out, because the quality of techs were rather... well, varied. ("I know you don't support Linux... but the fact that the `Cable' light on my cable modem isn't lit tells me it's not a problem with my cable modem, you know?") The second to last time it happened, the tech lied and said he came out when someone was home at the time and never saw him, and the line had very obviously not been touched. The LAST time it happened, it took them TWO WEEKS to send someone out and fix it. The day after that, we started investigating DSL.
Frankly, we've been much happier with the DSL. We started off with DirecTV DSL and since moved to SBC... and not only is the service more reliable so far than Roadrunner's (excluding DirecTV getting out of the market... otherwise only slightly slower speeds but steadier connection), we're allowed to run servers and can host our own domains on it. Heck, for $15 a month more I get static IP's, which means no more worrying about the DHCP server switching my home address on me.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but so far I've found that in my area, at least (north Houston), DSL has shaped up to be more reliable than cable service.
Just my $.02...
SPEED is not everything. Freedom, security, and reliability of service also count.
Yeah, and there's also being able to get the service at all. Speakeasy's website said I was (finally) eligible for ADSL, rather than the super-expensive SDSL they had previously said was the only option. So I signed up. Eagerly watching the install progress on the website, I was dismayed when it got stalled at step 4 with a message saying, "Order on hold pending investigation". After a week or so I got an email saying that because Verizon had wired the CO with fiber, they couldn't hook me up.
Fast forward a couple months. I decide to sign up for Cox High Speed Internet. Filled out the form on the web page, went to CompUSA and bought the modem, went to the local Cox office and picked up my self-install kit, and was using the service the same day.
I consistently get 1.4Mb/s down and about 190kb/s up. Reliability has been nearly perfect with 1 minor problem; cycling power on the modem fixed it. Sure the bandwidth is capped to 2GB per day / 30GB per month, but I don't need that much pr0n anyway.
In short, DSL is not an option, but cable rocks.
I had SBC DSL and it SUCKED. Badly.
I constantly fought with them, they never got it to work right, had to unplug all but one phone just to get the modem to sync, very poor speed vs what was promised.
constant over billing, double and tripple billing, billing for installs that never happened, you name it, average over $100 a month in over billing, often worse than that.
Switched to RR and man it just smokes. That's all there is to it. All that FUD that SBC put out about your neighbors pulling the line down was just BS.
Cable is much, much, much faster and they don't rape you in the hiney every month like the DSL idiots do.
If it was raw speed I was strictly concerned about I might switch over to cable. I rarely download huge files, just the occasional CD image that I can wait for overnight. I usually get good speeds when grabbing those, as they tend to come from servers geographically close, and average around 200KB/sec. certainly not your speed, but not bad either. Latency and uptime are also outstanding on my DSL service.
The primary reason that I haven't switched over is that the contract that I agreed to when I got my DSL is that I can run as many machines as I want on the one connection and they can even be servers. They'll provide no support for such, but really, I don't need networking help. They even accepted mail for the short time that I had a mail server up and running. Compared to local cable companies where the best I can get is the unofficial we probably won't shut you down for doing that, I'm much happier on DSL.
If not now, when?
DSL is about the same as cable, but unquestionably better for most people who have a choice.
:o)
DSL is capped at 512 down 256 up, cable 600/128 (for most home users).
The extra upload bandwidth for DSL users it a boon for geeky types, as it makes saturation harder, but 128 is ok for home use.
Cable in the UK however is almost without exception:
Servers restricted or banned.
Download caps of 1gb/day.
Horrible contention at peak times.
For many users, when the 201st person logs onto their cable section all the users get booted off.
Bad news and mail service.
Trasparent (slow) proxy/cache for http.
Single dynamic IP.
SMTP capture/redirects.
24 hour (in the phone queue) tech support.
Crap modems which need rebooting once a day.
MAC address locking, one host connected only.
For the same price as cable on DSL you get (this exculdes users of BT Openwoe, but with DSL you can choose your ISP):
Servers ok.
Almost no contention (avg rates at peak time are 460k/sec).
1 static IP address.
Good mail and news service.
No SMTP or HTTP proxy.
No download caps.
Very high reliability.
Choose your own modem, which works.
No MAC address locking and positive support for NAT DSL gateway users.
And for less than £5/mth more than cable you get (in addition):
8 static IP addresses (/29).
Decent technical support 9-5.
And if you live in London, for an additional £10/mth you get 2mb down during off peak hours. Sweet!
I will never change to cable
Beep beep.
Disclaimer: I work for the local telco
Now that said, I'm not in marketing, I'm a field tech, and I get this question a lot, I have a fair amount of experience with both systems, (my parents are on cable (no dsl in their area yet) and I have a few good friends working for the local cable company) so I'll try to be relatively unbiased here.
I'm often asked "how does DSL compare to cable" the real answer is it doesn't, the two are different technologies. and can't be dirrectly compared to come up with an answer of "X is faster than Y", here are a few points to consider...
The theoretical end of things:
-the local cable company uses cable modems with a maximum possible speed of 10Mb/s downstream (I can't remember the upstream)
-the local telco uses equipment (DSLAMs and DSL modems) with a maximum possible speed of 8Mb/s downstream and 1MB/s upstream
The administrative side of things:
-the local cable company throttles this to 1.5Mb/s downstream (I can't remember what they set the upstream to)
-the local telco throttles this to 1.5Mb/s downstream and 640kb/s upstream
The practical downside of things:
-Cable is usage dependant, the cable system is based on one line running in to the neighborhood and splitting to all the houses, so the more people online at a time the slower the connection.
-DSL is distance dependant, you've got just over 3km of cable before you can't get DSL, and if you're over 2-2.5km you won't be getting full speeds, so just because you have a phoneline doesn't mean you can get DSL.
The practical upside of things:
-Cable being shielded can run for amazing lengths with verry little loss allowing extended distances, if you have cable tv around here you can probably get cable internet
-DSL runs on the phoneline, and you have your own line from your house to the phone exchange, so you don't share bandwidth with anyone untill you get back to the phone exchange, (you do from there on out just like you would with any ISP but there's lots to go around (at least around here there is))
The practical summary:
-if you live a long way from a phone exchange in a community full of people who use the computer only for their email once a day. Cable is going to be faster.
-if you live really close to the phone exchange in a community full of slashdotters. DSL is going to be faster.
Now most of us don't live in either one of those sittuations, so around here at least, the two compare verry closely on the home packages. the main difference is stability (the kind affecting speed, the kind affecting uptime isn't discussed here), on DSL you get what you get, if you got speeds of 1Mb/s when they hooked you up, you'll probably continue to get that speed, whereas on cable you may get 1.5Mb/s at slack times and 500-600kb/s at busy times, it all depends on what type of usage you have and at what times you make use of it.
Final Disclaimer: I only compared the "home" packages here, and only on the point of speed, there are many other factors to consider when getting a connection, both companies offer many packages catering to different needs at different costs, do your research before going with either, just keep the stuff mentioned here in mind because the marketting departments of neither company will ever mention the downsides to their own system....
This is one of the stupidest tests I have ever seen.
They are comparing DSL to Cable for bandwidth... without giving specs on the DSL. DSL is not the same as cable!! Cable is a community shared network, and DSL is a DIRECT line. If you buy DSL at 768k, your going to get 768k! They completely forgot to mention this little tidbit of information in the article.
Sure, your basic cable connection dollar for dollar is going to be faster. $35 will get you a cable internet connection, its usually atleast $50 for DSL ( of the 768/256 category).
I just dont get how 'technical articles' can be written by people who obviously have no technical background.
-Bill
-Bill
I am sorry to say, sir, that you are incorrect.
ADSL stands for Asymetric DSL, meaning that it
reserves more of the bandwidth for the downstream
than the upstream.
Almost always the DSL _line_ is running at a
fixed speed. True throughput depends on the amount
of congestion and oversubscription that the
ISP allows. In our DSL service (>500 customers)
we engineer for zero congestion on our
DS-3's outbound to the NAPs in Seattle, Denver,
and Calgary.