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."

Comments

Not Always True

[fine09]

I think we can agree that in some cases DSL is faster than cable. I live in a two university town where there are a lot of students in my area. That means there are a lot of heavy bandwidth users in my area.

Since cable in our area has a shared backbone for neighbourhood segments, that means that cable in my area is a lot slower than DSL. With Kazaa running all the time on almost all of the machines, I end up getting a faster connection for a lower price.

Re:Not Always True

[Apreche]

The real problem is that Kazaa is the p2p sharing program of choice. It uses so much bandwith for its spy/adware stuff that you don't even realize. If you could get kazaa users to use some other p2p program that isn't spyware, then it would be much much faster.

I've seen cable and I've seen DSL. Depending on who and where one is usually faster than the other. But either one is usually fast enough. They are both fast enough to stream video. And the difference isn't enough to save a significant amount of time when you are downloading a few linux isos. It doesn't really matter if you choose cable or DSL. You wont get the next significant level of speed unless you are at a college campus or have a lot of money.

Re:Not Always True

[leviramsey]

The problem with KaZaa, Gnutella and the various decentralized (apart from any authentication) P2P services is that they were designed by people who have no business nor knowledge when it comes to actually designing a network protocol.

Bittorrent, being much more centralized (and hence less ideal for warezing...) is a much better design, from a raping the net perspective.

I expect that it will be the bandwidth and QoS issues of those services that drives ISPs to put in more draconian bandwidth caps (as many universities are already doing), not action by the *AA.

Re:Not Always True

[b1t r0t]

Yes, cable's more vulnerable to that - although with DSL, you're still sharing the backhaul pipe from the DSLAM to the ISP, and of course all the ISP's customers are sharing the ISP's pipe(s) to the rest of the Net. The tradeoff is that cable has much more bandwidth to share.

I think you've got it backwards. With cable, the bandwidth that is shared is in the neighborhood segment. That's the expensive stuff to upgrade, because it requires truck rolls and trenching, and it only has limited bandwidth because there are dozens of TV channels crammed in that same bandwidth.

With DSL, the bandwidth that gets shared is between COs and to the ISP, which is all fiber these days, and easily upgraded. It may be as simple as telling a computer somewhere to allocate more ATM bandwidth along a line, or a little more complicated by switching out a couple of fiber NIC modules to higher speed versions.

The only time that DSL is even equivalent is at the Remote Terminal level, and those are usually fed by at least 155Mbit ATM lines. And it's a plain data fiber, with no TV channels, so it's still easily upgradable by switching out NIC modules.

Falling off a a cliff is faster than climbing down

[PsychoSlashDot]

That's nice.

Nonetheless, I think I'll just keep my 1.3Mbps down/800kbps up DSL link which DOESN'T require me to send things like say... POP3 authentication, or say... all the traffic coming in to my SMTP server in clear, sniffable text. The guy next door can have his cable, thank you very much.

Regardless of how "fast" cable is, it's not a viable option for anything more than casual use.

Latency

[beders]

No details on how laggy the connections are, the difference in speed is less likely to be noticed than say the difference between a ping of 10ms and 100ms in a FPS

Speed isn't the only criterion

[87C751]

Service level counts, too. 'Round here, cable means RoadRunner/TWC, and that means Earthlink is your ISP. No servers, not NAT-friendly, blocked ports, etc...

DSL lets you pick your own ISP, so you can select one that's a bit friendlier to geeklike usage. That can easily be worth a 160 Kbps speed deficit. (Qwest offers 640d/256u)

Did they compare similar services?

[harlows_monkeys]

It doesn't say in the article what they compared. Many (most?) cable companies offer one speed plan, whereas many (most?) DSL companies offer several speed plans.

Totally misleading

[BShive]

It annoys me every time I read an article like this. The actual title is "Cable beats DSL in speed race" where the speeds and reliability are entirely dependent on your area and services provider. For my area there's heavy cable saturation, and Comcast has horrible support, so I'd go DSL if it was even available. Better to ask people in your neighborhood about what highspeed they've got and/or visit dslreports.com to compare for your area, not rely on a empty article with barely any information. We don't even know when, or how they 'tested' - if they did at all!

I don't care... and this is why

[Musashi Miyamoto]

It doesnt matter that Cable is incrementally faster than DSL. (DSL already seems "instant" when I surf the web)

When you use a cable modem, you are stuck with a single provider for your internet access that you cannot leave without losing your internet access. If it wasn't for DSL, there would be no competition for the cable modem market. That means when their service starts to degrade (from the low point it is already at), you can do nothing about it but go without broadband.

They don't treat your internet access like a critical service, like electricity or telephone. If your electricity went out, the governement requires the electric company to get it back on asap. Its that critical. Now that companies like Vonage are providing phone service across broadband, internet access is going to be just as critical... however, under the Bush administration, I doubt there will be any additional demands on industry...

Bizarre

[radish]

I fail to see the validity of comparing services with different advertised rates. I have a 512kbps DSL line and I get 512kbps basically all the time. How could a 512kbps cable service be any faster? It couldn't.

Uh huh...

[Travoltus]

Cable modem providers typically
a) do not allow any kind of service to be running on your PC
b) are coming up with draconian "bandwidth hog" charges (for people who actually constantly ~use~ the full speed the ISP advertises)
c) get bogged down during peak hours
d) caps their upstream to 128kbps or 256kbps (all my friends on Charter, RR, and ATTBI report this cap)
e) are inherently insecure because someone can always circumvent the cable modem and snoop all the traffic on the subnet (neighborhood)

As opposed to DSL which typically
a) allows you to run any service you want
b) does not get bogged down when a lot of people on your block are getting online
c) does not hit you with "excessive usage" charges if you use your DSL service at full speed all the time
d) caps their upstream to the same speed as cable modems, and at 1.5mbps (at least for my PacBell connection) is as fast as the Cable modem service in *my* area
e) is far more secure because there's no way anyone on your block can snoop your internet traffic

SPEED is not everything. Freedom, security, and reliability of service also count. A Ford Pinto with a rocket engine is still a Ford Pinto.. except you die much faster.

Re:Uh huh...

[Spectre]

Could you define "typically"?

I've had three different cable modem accounts with different providers over the years ...

a) any service is ok (although they warn about the dangers of running open services, especially Windows file and printer sharing)
b) no excess use charges
c) no difference in throughput at all hours
d) upstream bandwidth is capped, 384K on two of the accounts, 512K on the other
e) true ... pretty inconsequential concern, anybody at your ISP can and IS snooping your connection as well

Worst. Article. Ever.

[Greg W.]

What an utterly appalling waste of time! They talk about the speeds of these services using a single number, as if they offered symmetric capacities. Everyone knows that the common residential Internet services are asymmetric, with upload typically being one-half to one-tenth of the download. But they don't even talk about upload, which is where DSL stomps all over cable's ass.

Nor do they talk about terms of service, which is where DSL stomps all over what was left of cable's ass. Read a typical cable modem service ToS some time -- go on, I dare you! You can't run anything but Windows, you can't run NAT, you can't run services, you can't leave your computer on when you're not in front of it. Now read a DSL ToS for comparison.

But this "article" (more like propaganda from the cable companies) doesn't discuss any of that. They pretend that the only thing that matters is how fast you can download pr0n. And if that's what you want -- to sit in front of a mouse-driven boob tube and salivate over pictures all day long -- then sure, cable modem service is for you. Go knock yourself out.

Re:Obvious

[mattmcl]

I've also had both...Verizon DSL, and RCN cable modem (which seems to be another notable omission from the study). RCN is much much faster. Their new "MegaModem" service claims to have 3 megs down and 768kB up. Although I've never had speed THAT fast, it does do very well (in excess of 2 megs) when downloading from good sites.

Re:How about "THANK &DIETY I HAVE BROAD BAND!!

[Anonymous Coward]

And why don't you be thankful you even have electricity. There's a lot of people starving in the world and you're complaining about your Internet connection...

I had to say this.

Market Schemes Destroy Cable

[Aetrix]

I live in a medium sized apartment complex (4 buildings with 24 1-4 BR Apts). Recently our local cable provider signed an exclusive contract with our landlord to offer cable TV and "high speed internet" (read: cable modem) to all of our residents. This wonderful addition was included in rent with no additional charge (yet.) The problem with this - the cable connection is slow as shite because every Tom, Dick and Harry (and their 9 kids) is using the connection!

I'm now seeing about 3 spam snail mails coming to my apartment advertising specials from the same company (That I suspect are canvasing the neighborhood around our apt complex) it's going to get even slower!

Are these cable companies shooting themselves in the foot by completely flooding their market? Both from a marketing perspective, and a ISP perspective, this is a BAD IDEA.

DSL speeds/Cable modem

[bloosqr]

It just so happens I was hunting around for broadband here in philadelphia and ended up signing up for DSL service. Our cable service is Comcast (which I believe is based in philadelphia). The main issue I had w/ Comcast was you had to buy their cable service or got the $5 tacked onto your bill + installation fees of $100 + box rental and of course the NAT issue. The standard "safe" DSL here is verizon (also my local phone company) which offers 768 down/128k up for ~50 a month or ~40 w/ a year contract. What I ended up signing up for was a company called digizip based in nyc. For $50 a month (or $45 w/ a year contract + their LD) you get 1.5mbit down/768 up + 5 static IP addresses + no installation fee etc etc. There is a company called "cyberonic" that seems to offer something pretty similar. Having "mad" upstream bandwidth at 768k and 5 static IP addresses pretty much did it for me (No port blocking, any # of machines etc). In any case I just ordered this, can't vouch for the reality of the situation but it seemed to me a better deal than cablemodems w/out any guarantee (but w/ typical download speeds pretty decent) and not having to "hide" my machines..

-avi

Population density = cheap internet

[SuperBanana]

Everything else in Japan and especially in Tokyo is expensive. But Internet is as cheap as you can imagine.

Two words- population density. Remember, Japan is a fraction of the size of the US; US providers have to deal with the expense of all the areas where population density is much, much less(except in very concentrated areas); the guys in the city may be cheap to wire up, but the guys out in the burbs cost a small fortune(and there's fewer of 'em.) You can't, for the most part, charge drastically different rates- the city people subsidize the suburbs.

Besides, a large percentage of the US is perfectly happy with dialup...

Re:Population density = cheap internet

[jonadab]

> the guys in the city may be cheap to wire up, but the guys out in
> the burbs cost a small fortune(and there's fewer of 'em.)

No, that's just it: there are not fewer of them, or at least not
substantially fewer. For every big[1] city, there are several
hundred[2] small-to-medium communities. The average population
of these small-to-medium communities is around five or ten thousand
persons[2] each[3]. Some are larger, some are smaller. Some are
near the big cities (suburbs) and many are not. None of them have
the impressive numbers of people like the big cities. But when you
add them all up, it comes to a lot[2] of people. Then there are
the people who live five minutes' drive outside the city limits...
a typical non-suburban small community of ten thousand people has
a couple thousand[2] more of those people living around it. (This
is less a factor for suburbs, because they are mostly surrounded by
other municipalities.) And then there are the twenty-some
percent[4] of the population who live in rural areas. When we
get wired broadband to _them_, we'll have set a new standard for
what it means to be a first-world nation. (Currently, mere phone
lines to every house will just about satisfy the communications
infrastructure requirements.)

Now, some states (California) are more urban, but then some
(Indiana) are more rural. Anyway, my point is that we tend to
think of "most" people living in the big cities, but while most
people do live in a municipality, a great many of them live in
ones we would not generally consider to be quite urban.

[1] Say, a million or more. Some people would draw the line
a bit lower, but I had to pick a size to talk about. Is
a city of a hundred thousand people really "urban"? Can
people in cities that size all get cheap broadband?

[2] Statistics courtesy of Jonadab's Flagrant Guesstimation.

[3] It depends what you count. If you count every community with
a name, there are more like a thousand of them per big[1]
city, but it brings the average population way down. If you
only count actual municipalities, there are some n in the low
hundreds per big city, but the population is a bit higher.

[4] Almost one-third in Ohio, which is about average; it's much
higher in some states, and much lower in others. However,
the states with the lower percentages of rural population
have the higher populations, so the overall percentage is
somewhat less than what you get if you average the numbers
from each state.

Yep, but...

[PotatoHead]

I have choice of ISP with DSL here in Portland. (www.spiretech.com BTW.)

Comcast has the cable service here. They fuck with you and my Spiretech does not.

So I trade speed for:

- Shell access via SSH to my account on their server.

- Some web space and basic services on their end.

- Sane user policy

- Good service

- Flexible billing. (I run a 6 month plan)

- Choice of computing platform and modem.

Unless I am downloading ISOs every day, the connection speed really does not matter. Most wait times are due to server side crap (mainly ad servers and such) not transfer speed.

Sure the cable is fast, but you have to register each computer, cannot run servers, get port scanned to make sure, vpn not allowed unless you pay commercial rates, poor customer service, drain bramaged techs, phone calls and letters and e-mail for additional cable TV services (Pay Per view) and I suspect content discrimination.

That is what choice is about.

Choose wisely, choose a service that lets you choose your provider.

For me that is clearly DSL regardless of speed.