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Cable vs. DSL...which is better? (1 Viewer)

Andrew Pratt

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Dec 8, 1998
Messages
3,806
man you guys are paying through the nose for DSL! I'm paying around $25 USD a month for 1 meg service and had it installed in about 15 mintues once I picked up the modem (I had the choice of a free install of just picking up the hardware)
if you're looking for a great website with some reviews on various high speed connections in your area try www.dslreports.com
 

Tim Kilbride

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Oct 6, 2001
Messages
217
I have @home service here in New Orleans...far superior to DSL. Much faster/ more reliable. The reason it works is that Cox (the cable provider) has nothing to do with the service...@home leases bandwith on the fiber backbones. 3-5 Megabits is not uncommon download speeds...

TK
 

Michael Silla

Second Unit
Joined
Jul 27, 2001
Messages
313
I'm a little late on chiming in here but I'll throw my 2 cents in anyway ;)
Go for the Cable!.
I have had both in the past year or so and by far cable offers more speed for much less money per month. My Current plan with DSL is 640D/256U for an ungodly $47.50 a month. Sure enough, the fastest download speed I ever see is about 68 Kb/sec, far less than the typical 150-250 Kb/sec that I used to see on a regular basis with cable. To make things worse, AT&T charged me only $39.99 a month for a service that I felt was worth every penny.
The neighborhood to which I just moved recently does not yet have cable modem service offered to it. I thought about going dialup for awhile but the darn thing about Broadband is that once you've tasted it, it is sooooo hard to give up!. So this is why I am with Qwest.
Anyway, if I actually HAD a choice it would be a no-brainer.
Michael.
 

Michael*K

Screenwriter
Joined
May 24, 2001
Messages
1,806
AT&T came out yesterday and handled my cable hookup. While it was running great last night, the install didn't come without problems. First, the installer cut the length of coax too short for the run from the splitter to the room I have the modem in. He put in an extender. Then he discovered that my cable line on the outside of the house was never grounded. Yikes! Glad I never fried my TV. After hooking up the modem, the machine was pulling down an IP address, but he couldn't connect to any external sites. Since he didn't know his way around the Mac's networking software and he didn't want to listen to me (a Mac technician, by trade) he spent 45 minutes farting around trying to figure out what was wrong. Eventually he and his supervisor deduced that I must not have my account listed in their master database. They'd call me when I was listed.

After waiting a couple hours and not hearing anything, I tried the connection again. Still nothing. So I figured I'd recycle the power to the modem, which the tech hadn't done. Voila! Speedy Net connection.
 

Carlo_M

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Oct 31, 1997
Messages
13,385
It really varies by location. I live in West L.A., which you'd think would have cable modem slowdown, but I experience none when I'm home (from 6pm-midnight M-F, all weekends).
My girlfriend is also in West L.A. and has DSL. Hers is definitely much slower than mine at any given point. We've benchmarked using the Bandwidth Meter at www.2wire.com - her DSL constantly comes in at 400-600 kbps, and mine registers 1200-1800 kbps. We've run these tests at all hours and multiple times to get the ranges. But the proof is in the pudding. When I surf on her PC, my fave sites come up noticeably slower.
We both have the Linksys 10/100 Ethernet card. Her PC is faster than mine (P4 1.5GHz w/ RDRAM vs. Athlon 850MHz w/ SDRAM). She uses PacBell DSL, I use AT&T Broadband (formerly MediaOne) cable modem. We live within 7 miles of each other. I've had cable modem for 2 years, she's had DSL for 1.
 

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