I have a cable to DSL question. (1 Viewer)

[Brandon_T]

Currently, my wife and I are trying to trim the fat on our budget, and the cable modem is a possibility. SBC currently offers dsl for 26.95 a month which is roughly half the cost of my current cable modem. Now I don't need 3mbps, but I do a lot of online gaming such as Medal of Honor and Battlefield games.

My main concern is I don't want to lag during these games, and will a 384-1.5Mbps connection do that for me? Has anyone else made this switch? Are there reliability issues? My cable really bogs down in the early evening, and I know that won't happen with dsl. Thanks in advance for you help.

Brandon

 

[KyleS]

I am in the process right now of dropping my Cable modem to go with DSL due to the recent price drop of DSL. Phone companies seem to be directly going after internet users and are giving great permanant price breaks right now way below Cable. mine is going to be 24.99 per month for 384/1.5mbps with a free modem (With wireless).

The DSL service for 26.95 a month will do just fine for games. What is more important is your up stream connection (the 384) but that is still plenty. Cable modems are shared so your "Lag" in the early evening is when everyone in your area hooked to the main switch is ON at the same time. This will not occur with your cable modem since you are on a 1 to 1 relationship with the local channel and from there it is on a T-1 back to the main office. I would make sure that the price you are getting is for the 384-1.5mb and not say 128/768kbps. Some carriers offer really low prices and say a business package that contains the 1.5 or 3mb dsl. DSL service is offered in my area for businesses or homeowners who want more and they have 768/3mbps connection for 39.95 per month. That is still less than cable and quite a bit faster.


KyleS

 

[Shane Martin]

I use DSL at those levels and no issues with online gaming. I play battlefield usually every week.

Given that I'm going with the package deal from Cox soon, I am doing the opposite. Cable modem, phone service, digital cable for $99 ain't too bad.

 

[Greg Dorsey]

As I understand it, you're more likely to get better ping with DSL than cable, making DSL the better choice for gaming. Of course I've had both (Cox cable and SBC DSL) and couldn't see a difference in ping time. One way to cut costs it to buy your modem rather than rent it. After six months or so the modem will have paid for itself.

 

[DaveF]

First, call your Cable Modem provider and tell them you're switching to DSL unless they reduce the price. Wheedle, cajole, and persist. Ask for a long-time customer discount. Ask for a multi-product discount (if you also get cable TV or phone service from them). Ask for a new customer rate. Finally, don't sign up for DSL until you've canceled your cable modem service. Canceling might get them to drop the rate to keep you as a customer.

I asked and RoadRunner dropped my rate by $10/mo. Also, consider any taxes and fees different from cable modem and DSL. Out here, $35 cable modem is about equal to $30 DSL + taxes and fees.

Is this DSL rate permanent, or a short-term discount for new customers?

I don't know which is better. I do know that switching providers, and changing your email addresses, is a bother.

 

[Joel...Lane]

My ISP is Juno and it's $9.95 a month. Hard to beat that price, though it is only dial-up so that's really not going to help you since you do a lot of gaming.

There are other possibilities though since you say you want to trim your budget in general.

We went from a $60 a month cable bill to a $20 satellite bill a month. We then moved and just never bothered to hook a dish up at the new house. So now we just use rabbit ears and it costs us $0 a month.

The quality isn't that great but we don't watch a lot of tv anyway. And with two young kids running around, we're trying to limit their exposure to tv in general. Is it okay to say that in here

There's always little things you can do like not eating out as much, if you do at all. Bringing your lunch to work.

Chop up those credit cards and as a last resort cut up the Best Buy card or equivalent.

Cut down on utilities and shower with a friend or in your case, your wife

 

[Brian Harnish]

KyleS wrote:


Don't you mean DSL modem where it starts "This will not occur with..."?

There is no way to share a modem unless you have a router or a switch connected to the modem. Now if you're talking about the cable service itself being shared, then you're right.

That is true of DSL as well. There was a huge lawsuit about that a year or so back regarding fraudulent marketing of DSL. The phone companies would claim that DSL isn't shared like cable is, but in reality, it IS. Both DSL and Cable exhibit the same shared qauality, but I highly prefer Cable over DSL. Why? Because Time Warner gave me a 5 mbps download rate (versus 1.5 mbps with DSL) at no additional charge to the cable internet bill. Talk about FAST.

 

[Brandon_T]

Thanks guys these are all great suggestions! Our cable bill is currently $100 a month with the modem. So we are making the switch to Dish network for 35 a month, and DSL for 26 a month.

I am a stay at home dad so I do like some tv, plus with my new projector I the HD option on dish is nice. I would love to shower with my wife, but we have a tiny shower downstairs, until the upstairs two person one is finished. Rabbit ears are not an option as we live in a valley and can't get anything anyways.

 

[SethH]

Do you actually get 3mbps with your cable? I only ask because I've never actually talked to someone who gets 3mbps with cable. I'm sure there are some out there, but my cable modem speeds (actual speeds!) are not even 1mbps. I gone over 1mbps a few times, but very rarely.

 

[Robert_Gaither]

In my area I can get the 5mbps cable internet but since I don't game or fileswap it's no big deal. I'm thinking about switching to dsl myself as yahoo was running a 1.5 mbps special for $19.99/month for a year (I wonder how much after that).



That's why I use either webmail and now migrating to gmail (1gb of storage with free pop access and fowarding currently). It's also convienient to have this hooked up to my Blackberry as I get responses to this and other forums in real time. I highly recommend against using the isp providers email address as it may keep you hostage for longer than you expect.

 

[Bryan_O]

I've had DSL for about 4 years and have been very happy w/ it (obviously if I stayed for 4 years).

A couple of years ago Comcast was offering free 3 months cable modem, so ordered it to compare. For me, download speeds were almost exactly double, but latency was also a slight bit higher. As I was clicking through pages, it just seemed to hang just a second or two longer than it should have before the page loaded.

I would have stayed w/ the cable, however, if the comcast billing dept, and cust. service was easier. - long story short, they lost the promotion code for the free three months and billed me an extra $120 all at once, threatened to cut my cable TV, and routed me overseas to talk to the billing dept.

 

[Jon_Gregory]

Well I actually get way above 3Mbps on a constant basis. I have tested mine in the early evening hours (peak times) and never get below 3.8Mbps. I subscribe to Cox's 5.0Mbps deal and get that for most of the day. Usually around 7pm is when mine will drop to around 4.0Mbps. I get a constant 600Kbps up all the time also.

I thought about going to DSL also a while back and decided that the bandwidth I get now is worth keeping cable.

 

[David Williams]

That's really interesting because this was the deciding factor for me in going with DSL. Cox here in Tulsa would not quote me a guaranteed minimum speed at all. They just claimed they were faster when pressed but said they couldn't guarantee a certain speed. Of course, it didn't really matter that much to me since I literally live next door to the SBC switching station for this area.

 

[Brandon_T]

Thats interesting David as I too live across the street from the local switch. Did they give you trouble about that? Someone told me they would try and charge me higher because they would have a hard time capping the bandwidth due to the fact that I am so close to the switch.

Brandon

 

[David Williams]

No one said a word to me and I usually top out around 1.7MBps, which is slightly higher than the max I'm paying for.