moochpuppy Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 I'm looking into getting a high speed internet connection and was wondering which is the better option, DSL or cable? Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southsider2k5 Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 My personal opinion... I have had both, both the phone company and cable company SUCK to deal with if you have problems. I have had SOOOO many disasters dealing with Ameritech, and I would tell anyone NOT TO GET AMERITECH, if you can help it. On a preformance level, it depends when you do your surfing. Cable fluxes according to usage, so at peak times it is slower, where as DSL is dedicated to your house so it is always consistant. Cable is faster when no one is on, and DSL is faster when a lot of people are on. Cable is also nice because it is always on and you don't have to connect to it. I personally would lean towards cable, but I would see what specials they are running, usually you can get at least one of them for about $30 a month for a while as opposed to the usual $50. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clujer420 Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 Cable is also nice because it is always on and you don't have to connect to it. I have DSL, and all I have to do is click the IE icon, and my homepage pops right up. Isn't that what you're talking about? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southsider2k5 Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 I have DSL, and all I have to do is click the IE icon, and my homepage pops right up. Isn't that what you're talking about? Cable is connected as soon as you turn on the computer. DSL has to connect and does when you click your IE icon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clujer420 Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 Cable is connected as soon as you turn on the computer. DSL has to connect and does when you click your IE icon. LOL, so we're talking about what, a 1 second difference? Just long enough to drag and click the mouse? Just as a reference, mooch, I've had DSL for about 3-4 months now, and I've never had any major problems with it. It will occasionally need to be reset and my username/password re-entered, but that process only takes a couple of minutes. The set-up is a breeze (about 20-30 minutes, just following basic directions), and obviously it kicks the hell out of dial-up. Also, FYI, the company I use is Earthlink. They don't have very high ratings from their customers, but I got the modem and all the equipment in the mail pretty quick (about 1 week), and like I said, have had no major issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerbaho-WG Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 Cable is connected as soon as you turn on the computer. DSL has to connect and does when you click your IE icon. Wrong, DSL is always on, and so is cable. With Cable, you have to share a big pot of bandwidth with other customers. During some times, mostly peak hours, that pot of bandwidth can become quite small and turn your Cable into 56k. But, during off-peak hours, the Cable will fly. With DSL, you do not share bandwidth, you have your own dedicated line. Your speed will very because of your distance to the CO (Central Office), wiring in your house, etc. I've had both, and I'd take DSL any day of the week. If you live in the middle of nowhere, get Cable. Otherwise, get DSL. BTW I have Verizon Online, and it's great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southsider2k5 Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 Wrong, DSL is always on, and so is cable. With Cable, you have to share a big pot of bandwidth with other customers. During some times, mostly peak hours, that pot of bandwidth can become quite small and turn your Cable into 56k. But, during off-peak hours, the Cable will fly. With DSL, you do not share bandwidth, you have your own dedicated line. Your speed will very because of your distance to the CO (Central Office), wiring in your house, etc. I've had both, and I'd take DSL any day of the week. If you live in the middle of nowhere, get Cable. Otherwise, get DSL. BTW I have Verizon Online, and it's great. WTF, I have Ameritech DSL and they make me connect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clujer420 Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 Wrong, DSL is always on, and so is cable. With Cable, you have to share a big pot of bandwidth with other customers. During some times, mostly peak hours, that pot of bandwidth can become quite small and turn your Cable into 56k. But, during off-peak hours, the Cable will fly. With DSL, you do not share bandwidth, you have your own dedicated line. Your speed will very because of your distance to the CO (Central Office), wiring in your house, etc. I've had both, and I'd take DSL any day of the week. If you live in the middle of nowhere, get Cable. Otherwise, get DSL. BTW I have Verizon Online, and it's great. WTF, I have Ameritech DSL and they make me connect. Define "connect". With Earthlink, there's a logo that you can click, and it brings up a sign-on screen where you enter your username and password. But, I was curious to see what would happen if I simply clicked the IE icon, and it loaded just great. No need to sign-on. Maybe that's because I have my UN/password saved? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spiff Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 I live in a decent-sized city and I have cable, but even during peak times it doesn't slow down much at all. Never even gets close to 56k. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DonkeyKongerko Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 I have Cable in Schaumburg and it used to suck. This was back in the @Home and later ATTBroadband days. The company did not have enough gateways/routers and there was a huge bandwidth problem in this entire area. Within the last year or so ATTBi improved their service and now Comcast has taken over and continued to improve the reliability of the service near DSL quality. Here is the thing, cable can be awesome for a great price but there is some risk of congestion during peak hours. Your DSL line will probably never download as fast as a cable line unless you pay the big big bucks for the highest speed DSL service. I like DSL for running servers sometimes but for the highest speed downloads I would recommend cable. You should probably read about the cable company in your area though and make sure they have a decent reputation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moochpuppy Posted August 4, 2003 Author Share Posted August 4, 2003 I have Cable in Schaumburg and it used to suck. This was back in the @Home and later ATTBroadband days. The company did not have enough gateways/routers and there was a huge bandwidth problem in this entire area. Within the last year or so ATTBi improved their service and now Comcast has taken over and continued to improve the reliability of the service near DSL quality. Here is the thing, cable can be awesome for a great price but there is some risk of congestion during peak hours. Your DSL line will probably never download as fast as a cable line unless you pay the big big bucks for the highest speed DSL service. I like DSL for running servers sometimes but for the highest speed downloads I would recommend cable. You should probably read about the cable company in your area though and make sure they have a decent reputation. Comcast is the cable provider in my area but from what I read on their website you have to have basic cable service from them in order to get the cable internet connection and I'm not about to give up my DirecTV. The DSL service is through Qwest. I would go with their deluxe service which is a speed of 640k. Is that pretty good? (by no means am I a computer person). It's $31.95 a month. Another question I have is say I order the DSL through Qwest, do I still have to pay for a ISP like MSN at an additional $21.95 a month. BTW, thanks everyone for your responses so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spiff Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 640k is pretty stellar. If you think about it, over 10 times faster than the optimum of 56k (which almost never happens), but nowhere near 10 times the cost. If you pay for QWest, you don't have to pay for MSN anymore. QWest is your new ISP. BTW if you or anyone else wants to know what your bandwidth speed is right now, or could be, check out this site. http://computingcentral.msn.com/internet/speedtest.asp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bmr31 Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 I have cable and its fantastic. However, since moving to a bigger city, i do notice it slower during peak times. I have no other complaints. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southsider2k5 Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 640k is pretty stellar. If you think about it, over 10 times faster than the optimum of 56k (which almost never happens), but nowhere near 10 times the cost. If you pay for QWest, you don't have to pay for MSN anymore. QWest is your new ISP. BTW if you or anyone else wants to know what your bandwidth speed is right now, or could be, check out this site. http://computingcentral.msn.com/internet/speedtest.asp 5405 kbps... nice T3 line here at work Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spiff Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 640k is pretty stellar. If you think about it, over 10 times faster than the optimum of 56k (which almost never happens), but nowhere near 10 times the cost. If you pay for QWest, you don't have to pay for MSN anymore. QWest is your new ISP. BTW if you or anyone else wants to know what your bandwidth speed is right now, or could be, check out this site. http://computingcentral.msn.com/internet/speedtest.asp 5405 kbps... nice T3 line here at work yikes. mine was 1092 for cable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southsider2k5 Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 640k is pretty stellar. If you think about it, over 10 times faster than the optimum of 56k (which almost never happens), but nowhere near 10 times the cost. If you pay for QWest, you don't have to pay for MSN anymore. QWest is your new ISP. BTW if you or anyone else wants to know what your bandwidth speed is right now, or could be, check out this site. http://computingcentral.msn.com/internet/speedtest.asp 5405 kbps... nice T3 line here at work yikes. mine was 1092 for cable. Where I work you need the bandwidth to get orders to the exchanges ASAP. Delay's cost more money than the cost of the line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spiff Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 640k is pretty stellar. If you think about it, over 10 times faster than the optimum of 56k (which almost never happens), but nowhere near 10 times the cost. If you pay for QWest, you don't have to pay for MSN anymore. QWest is your new ISP. BTW if you or anyone else wants to know what your bandwidth speed is right now, or could be, check out this site. http://computingcentral.msn.com/internet/speedtest.asp 5405 kbps... nice T3 line here at work yikes. mine was 1092 for cable. Where I work you need the bandwidth to get orders to the exchanges ASAP. Delay's cost more money than the cost of the line. makes sense, though delays must cost you a decent amount considering the price of T3. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southsider2k5 Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 640k is pretty stellar. If you think about it, over 10 times faster than the optimum of 56k (which almost never happens), but nowhere near 10 times the cost. If you pay for QWest, you don't have to pay for MSN anymore. QWest is your new ISP. BTW if you or anyone else wants to know what your bandwidth speed is right now, or could be, check out this site. http://computingcentral.msn.com/internet/speedtest.asp 5405 kbps... nice T3 line here at work yikes. mine was 1092 for cable. Where I work you need the bandwidth to get orders to the exchanges ASAP. Delay's cost more money than the cost of the line. makes sense, though delays must cost you a decent amount considering the price of T3. Potentially a ton of money, not to mention lost business. I would never give my orders (if I ever had any money to place them ) to any firm that had anything less. A delay with something like that could be brutal if the market turned in your face. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heads22 Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 I live out in the middle of nowhere....so I have cable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LDF Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 ok i have read all responses on the board. in ref to what is said, i would listen to cerb. by what he said, he know his stuff. in ref to speed, you need to figure out the city and where the central office is going to be. both dsl come from the telephone companies. next is to check the company you are getting the product from. some cable companies are now shutting down some of its ports. this is where you can d/l media from, from any of the sites that is out there, that is, if you do alot of d/l'ing. i do. i have had dsl and cable. i will stick with dsl everytime our. i live within 1/2 mile from the CO. my speed is good to very good here. but the problem is where i live i am very limited on d/l'ing and if you remember, i couldn't get connected to soxtalk, blackhawks, and bulls4ever sites for a very long time. what i did was hooked up a dns server from school (t1) and now i can get to my sports site and i can still d/l. but where i live i am very limited, my neighbor has cable and the prices between the 2, my is cheaper by $10 a month and his dl speed is horrible. i would like to see how the new msn dsl is doing? the best was direct tv dsl, too bad they went out of business on the dsl. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GASHWOUND Posted August 6, 2003 Share Posted August 6, 2003 Old topic, but I wasn't here that day But I'm still waiting for DSL to roll into my area, but i don't think that's gonna happen until early next year...Cable??? Forget about that...They aren't expanding... My only choices are SAT and Wireless high speed internet and that is just to expenive for me at this moment... This new local CO. called AIRbaud offers the high speed wireless internet, but the Monthly Fee is $49.95, Installation: $199, Equipment (rent) $10 Or Equipment (purchase): $349 Which would be about $60 bucks a month...A little to rich for my blood.. and anyway, is the stuff below(301K and s***) is that good for this price??? 301K (Download & 201 Upload) BURST to 801K!!!! Web-mail w/ 5 e-mail addresses 5 Mb personal web space Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clujer420 Posted August 6, 2003 Share Posted August 6, 2003 Old topic, but I wasn't here that day But I'm still waiting for DSL to roll into my area, but i don't think that's gonna happen until early next year...Cable??? Forget about that...They aren't expanding... My only choices are SAT and Wireless high speed internet and that is just to expenive for me at this moment... This new local CO. called AIRbaud offers the high speed wireless internet, but the Monthly Fee is $49.95, Installation: $199, Equipment (rent) $10 Or Equipment (purchase): $349 Which would be about $60 bucks a month...A little to rich for my blood.. and anyway, is the stuff below(301K and s***) is that good for this price??? 301K (Download & 201 Upload) BURST to 801K!!!! Web-mail w/ 5 e-mail addresses 5 Mb personal web space Avoid any company that charges an installation fee. Most companies nowadays will charge $0 for installation, as it's very easy to do yourself. They send you the wires/modem in the mail, and you follow the basic directions. I recently got DSL through Earthlink, and it's $29.95 for the first 6 months, and $49.95 for the next 6 months. It's a 1-year contract, which is pretty standard. The equipment was free, and since I installed it myself, obviously it too was free. I've only had a minor problem here and there, but there is almost never downtime, and the speed is pretty good (usually in the 600-800k range). Also, if you decide to go with DSL, make sure that you check to see how far away your house/apartment is from the CO (Central Office). DSL has a range of up to around 15,000 feet, which is a little less than 3 miles. The closer you are to the CO, the better speed you will have. I am less than a mile from my CO, so that helps. If you're 14,999 feet away, you might want to wait until something closer comes along. And in terms of the e-mail addresses and web space, that is all standard. Don't let that determine which company you use. Besides, who needs 5 e-mail addresses? And no, that does not seem like a good deal to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danman31 Posted August 6, 2003 Share Posted August 6, 2003 I had Ameritech's "DSL" and now I have cable. The DSL is in quotes because it's not your typical DSL. The DSL sucked. I had troubles getting it to work and it was slow. It would space out at times and the speed wasn't great. It also had awful download time. The cable is awesome download, it's always on and it's so much faster. It was a similar price too. Cable is the way to go if you can get it cheap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest hotsoxchick1 Posted August 6, 2003 Share Posted August 6, 2003 BTW I have Verizon Online, and it's great. hey cerb.. can ya hear me now?????? sorry i couldnt resist... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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