DSL vs. Cable: Which is superior?

[westmanguy]

Ok, in your area, which is superior, and in general which is superior?

We are going to see alot of:

Shaw vs. Telus & Rogers vs. Bell comparions, which is good.

I find, for price, I get the better speeds from my cable company. For reliability, I find the cable stays on and is never down hardly ever. But for consistantsy of speeds that is a winner for DSL.

But with DSL the farther you live from that box or station, the lower your speeds are (right?)

I always found DSL could be down at certain times, it was never down for me.

Another plus for DSL is it has a Dynamic IP. If you encounter problems, you reset the modem, and get a new IP address. With Cable, your stuck with that IP unless they do a hard reset.

So the poll is asking, generally which is superior, but in the thread you can speak of local situations also.

Cheers!

 

[dude1981]

DSL dude, cable sucks. It goes offline all the time, at least Cogeco does here in Ontario.

 

[westmanguy]

Dude..lol.

I said you compare it in general and locally. For me, locally its superior, and from studying, the way the comapnies apply it now, cable is superior to me. I think DSL is better, but not the way its applied rate now. The IPTV weakens it.

 

[DurkaDurka]

Ok, in your area, which is superior, and in general which is superior?

We are going to see alot of:

Shaw vs. Telus & Rogers vs. Bell comparions, which is good.

I find, for price, I get the better speeds from my cable company. For reliability, I find the cable stays on and is never down hardly ever. But for consistantsy of speeds that is a winner for DSL.

But with DSL the farther you live from that box or station, the lower your speeds are (right?)

I always found DSL could be down at certain times, it was never down for me.

Another plus for DSL is it has a Dynamic IP. If you encounter problems, you reset the modem, and get a new IP address. With Cable, your stuck with that IP unless they do a hard reset.

So the poll is asking, generally which is superior, but in the thread you can speak of local situations also.

Cheers!

With DSl, you want to be within 4.5km of the central office, otherwise the signal degrades. That is slowly changing though due to new DSl infractures being put, ie. fiber to the node.

I prefer DSL due to it having lower latency & am not hvaing to share my upstream path with a whole neighborhood.

 

[hermanntrude]

i've had DSL and cable before and DSL was waaaaay slower. I've never had trouble with cable going offline. In fact ive now been continuously online for 4 days. that's since i last reset my computer

 

[#juan]

I think it depends on the area you live in. I some areas, it has been my experience that either can be faster depending on the local situation. Where I am right now, Shawcable is best. There is not much relief in the price, if any.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

I prefer DSL due to it having lower latency & am not hvaing to share my upstream path with a whole neighborhood.

That's the critical technical difference that, other things being equal, makes DSL superior. Other things often aren't equal though, a lot also depends on the quality of the lines and the switching equipment and the level of care and maintenance the service provider offers. I switched from cable to DSL a few years ago because everybody in the neighbourhood had cable--the local cable tv service provider was first on the scene with ISP services--and performance had degraded to the point of making the service unusable at peak times, between about 3 and 6 p.m. when the kids got home from school. I also got a huge amount of email spam with the cable ISP, dozens of messages a day, and in the three years I've been using the DSL service from a different ISP, I've had one spam email get through and about a dozen emails the ISP's filters thought might be spam (they weren't), and I got a message from their operations people telling me how to get onto their server directly to decide for myself if something was spam, where I could either delete it or have it forwarded to my inbox.

DSL is technically superior, but a lot depends on the quality of the ISP.

 

[DurkaDurka]

I have had both cable and dsl, I left cable to dsl because Ted Rogers decided to be greedy and limit users to 75gb of downloads a month. Another thing I dislike about cable is Port Throttling/ Traffic Shaping. What that means is that they will throttle certains types of protocols depending on network traffic, meaning anything other then http, smtp, pop3 & nntp gets slowed to a crawl.

 

[DurkaDurka]

Bell is starting to roll out their new ADSL2 infractures, 16mbs + connections, can't wait to get hooked up on it. Bell is also launching IPTV later this year, which is a big reason for the network upgrade.

 

[DurkaDurka]

i've had DSL and cable before and DSL was waaaaay slower. I've never had trouble with cable going offline. In fact ive now been continuously online for 4 days. that's since i last reset my computer

The usual cause of slow speeds for a DSL user are:

Missing phone filters
Crappy inside wiring
Distance issue
EMI

 

[hermanntrude]

The usual cause of slow speeds for a DSL user are:

Missing phone filters---wasnt that, definately had the filters, cos when i forst got them, one didnt work cos the chinese kid who put it together hadnt eaten that day
Crappy inside wiring- could have been but wasnt an old house
Distance issue-the exchange was about a mile away
EMI

blah

 

[DurkaDurka]

blah

I'm serious, I worked a DSL help desk for 2 years, those are the primary problems related to slow speeds on DSL.

 

[hermanntrude]

I think it was a british thing. In britain the opinion tends to be that cable is better than DSL. probably because the phone lines in britain are generally ancient

 

[hermanntrude]

I'm serious, I worked a DSL help desk for 2 years, those are the primary problems related to slow speeds on DSL.

no sorry i wasnt blahing your post. i just had to write something outside of the quote or it wouldnt let me post it. blah was the first four letter word i could think of that wasnt rude

 

[DurkaDurka]

I think it was a british thing. In britain the opinion tends to be that cable is better than DSL. probably because the phone lines in britain are generally ancient

yeah, thats entirely possible.

 

[DurkaDurka]

no sorry i wasnt blahing your post. i just had to write something outside of the quote or it wouldnt let me post it. blah was the first four letter word i could think of that wasnt rude

you holding back? let it out!

 

[hermanntrude]

you holding back? let it out!

********************

 

[snowles]

Yes, it really does depend on your location and your surroundings. When everything is hooked up right, I have found more success with DSL, if for no other reason than almost every other spot I've lived has been areas with high concentrations of students - lots of downloading (and router-using) students means a very, very slow cable service. When I was on Shaw in a student building it was often slower than dial-up. By comparison, I often get 600kbps downloading on Sympatico regardless of whether I'm in Ottawa or in Atikokan; however, the experience is different for everyone - my parents, who live down the street from me, couldn't get Sympatico much faster than dial-up, even though one of my neighbours has the DSLAM in his yard.

As for price, I haven't found much difference at all with the services and the prices offered in Ontario, having been on Rogers, Sympatico on two occasions, TBayTel and Shaw. Now that Bell has imposed their paltry 30gB caps on their account users (thank God I signed a contract before then), it really is a wash for the area you live in - all now (but TBaytel) that I've ever been on have caps, though I haven't heard of Shaw actually imposing theirs.

Best bet is to use sites like DSLreports and to see what line speeds others in your area are getting, and to not be afraid to complain and switch companies if you can. There are now a lot of smaller sub-contracting companies from the major players of Canadian ISPs, and in any major city there are now a several choices of companies that will provide you with what you need.

 

[eh1eh]

The usual cause of slow speeds for a DSL user are:

Missing phone filters
Crappy inside wiring
Distance issue
EMI

EMI???

 

[Curiosity]

I have no idea which is better, but from the posts here I would certainly check the neighborhood
residents to see if there is a comparison

My primary question would be: How long do they take to fix a problem?

I don't even watch television that often but I want to have it available as we pay whether it is working or not....(or do they take off down time costs?).....

Even as I type this my television will probably go off the air .....:sad10: