Cable VS DSL

[Dennis Peacock]

OK....I've about had it with the lack of service I get from my cable modem and ISP via my cable modem. We finally have DSL via SBC Yahoo! available in my area. the cost would be cheaper....but I'm wondering about service? Will my internet experience be better via DSL that with my current cable ISP? I ain't worried about having it shut off. I'm on DirectTV for my TV needs.

Any ideas about the differences? I'm on the end of a line from the cable company that is in the next town from me...or about 20 minutes drive. Internet service is fair for the most part....but there are MANY times when I call them and tell them that their DNS is down, their router is down or when a switch of theirs is down. They ask me how I know....I send them the info I have gotten from the network and send it to them. They fix it and all is well. Sheesh!!!!!!!

[Mark Riegsecker]

[QUOTE=Dennis Peacock]OK....I've about had it with the lack of service I get from my cable modem and ISP via my cable modem. We finally have DSL via SBC Yahoo! available in my area. the cost would be cheaper....but I'm wondering about service? Will my internet experience be better via DSL that with my current cable ISP? I ain't worried about having it shut off. I'm on DirectTV for my TV needs.

I don't know what dsl stands for but I have internet through the air. They came out and put a 15" square receiver on my barn ran a cable to my house. WaLa ..
I get it without any interference, the phone can still be used and it's fast. It's a bit pricey though at $39 a month. and you have to be within a reasonable distance to a broadcaster (tower in my case) But I'm on line all the time with no startup waiting. As I said I don't know any thing about how it works but it works for me.

[Dennis Peacock]

$39 a month is not pricey....try $64.75 per month for just Cable internet service alone.!!! :eek:

[Randy Moore]

Dennis,

I have SBC Yahoo DSL up here in OlatheKansas. I like it a lot better than what I had thru the phone lines and AOL. IMHO, for what it is worth, you will be a lot happier with SBC DSL. And you won't believe the speed .:)

Randy

[Jim Becker]

Dennis, I've used both Cable Modem Service and DSL. My current setup is Verizon's DSL (3mbs down, 768kbs up). Cable modem service in my area is "faster", but throughput/performance is not because cable modem service is "shared" at the neighborhood level. DSL is consolidated at the CO. (Central Office) Cable was the first available in this area and when DSL finally was in the cards, I actually had both in the house for a little more than a month. I stayed with DSL and am happy I have. Only one outage in nearly three years and that was due to an accident taking out a pole. Cable was down a few times a month, albeit briefly. DSL is also less expensive for me at $29 a month plus tax. Cable modem service is about $45 here. Do remember that DSL performance (and availability) is dependent on distance from the CO. 18,000 feet max and many times they limit it to less.

There is no guarantee that DSL will be better service than you have now, but at least you have a choice you didn't have before. Cable tends to be "faster" in most markets, at least on incoming, but that doesn't amount to a hill of beans if it's down too often and the customer service is bad...not that SBC has a good rep, either, alongside all the other providers! We'd all be fired if we treated our employers' customers the way many of these outfits do... ;)

------
Verizon is starting to roll out fiber to the prem services in many markets, including this one. (called FIOS) Once that is available, for about $49, I'll have 15mbs down and 2mb up (base service is 5/2 for about $30 a month) The phone lines also travel via the fiber (much cleaner) and they will be offering "cable" as soon as they have regulatory approval/franchise for the area/state...again, for less money than COMCAST.

[Joe Mioux]

Hi Dennis:

I have SBC DSL both here at home and at work. Both have worked well. Prior to DSL I had a Wireless INternet Provider and that worked well also.

The reason I switched was price SBC DSL costs about $29 a month vs $59 a month for Wireless. DSL is also faster 1.8 gig up and down vs 384k up and down.

Joe

[Jim Becker]

Joe, interesting that you have symetrical service (1.8 up AND down). That's quite uncommon with DSL. Do you have a business service?

[Dennis Peacock]

All good and interesting things to take note of here. I don't care if I have "blinding" speed all the time....I just need reliability of connection. :D

With decent service, I will be able to "work from home" about 2 days a week instead of driving in to the office to work. I already to this when I'm OnCall, like this week in the evenings....so as long as I don't have an outage, I can maintain customer support while at home. In my line of work, there are "steep" penalties for computer outages (read Thousands of dollars per minute). :eek:

[Perry Schmidt]

Well, everyone's service is different, but...

I've had DSL provided by SWBell for...6 years now?? Started out as just SWBell, and now it's SBC Yahoo. Reliability is quite good here. (Dallas area) I can count the number of outages that lasted longer than an afternoon on one hand over the 6 years....and I still have some fingers left over :) And these were very rare. When I've had problems and had to call (3 times total), the line service is generally good, and the yahoo service is also generally good. The ONLY issue is when it's a gray area - yahoo sends you to SBC who sends you back to yahoo....you get the idea. But every time the problem was resolved in resonable fashion. (The biggest problem/outage had nothing to do w/ the reliability or service - billing cut off my DSL incorrectly when trying to upgrade to a pro line. Once they figured out why it was back in less than a minute.)

Cable in the Dallas area I'm told is also reliable, but if you do have a problem getting service is difficult.

Even though the cable is shared, I've yet to sit down on a cable connection that's slower than my DSL. So although there's the 'myth' about sharing a cable connection, until Jim said he's had problems I've never heard of anyone else having speed issues w/ cable due to the hub sharing. My coworkers all say cable is faster. (Since I work for a computer company, many of my coworkers are network engineers and we all use VPN, if it was slow, they'd know... :)

But for service, or consistant upstream, DSL is the way to go! I'm very happy w/ my DSL. My brother has it in Atlanta, and parents in Wisconsin - all 'Bell' DSL, all have good service.

Perry

[Cecil Arnold]

Dennis, I have SBC DSL. Had it for 3-4 years now and other than one or two outages that lasted for a few hours the only other problems I have had is having to reset the modem occasionally. I've now added a router so LOML can have access on the "old" computer and as of Aug. 31 will get DSL pro (3 mps insted of 1.5) for about $29 per month which is a reduction from the $49 I had paid for the slower service. If you are too far from the central station you maynot be able to get the service as I understand there is a distance limit.

[Joe Mioux]

Joe, interesting that you have symetrical service (1.8 up AND down). That's quite uncommon with DSL. Do you have a business service?

Jim, at both stores I do. The shops' monthly rate is more expensive. To clariy, I may not have the same up/down rate at the house.

[Vaughn McMillan]

Dennis, add me to the list of the happy DSL subscribers. I currently have Verizon DSL, and prior to that I had Earthlink DSL (which was provided by Verizon and marked up about 100% by Earthlink). I've had a DSL connection for years (since it was first available in the LA area), and can only recall one downtime, and that was because the phone line into my house was physically down (and in the driveway).

There are indeed speed differences between cable and DSL, but as others have mentioned, cable can get slower as more people get on the same line as you. (Jim Becker is the first person I've seen who noticed the cable slowing down, so I don't think it's real widespread.) Even with its ostensibly "slower" speed, DSL is no slouch, and it's more than fast enough for my needs. (I do a lot of telecommuting, and transfer some pretty big files to and from the office.) From the description of your needs, I think you'd be very happy with DSL service.

- Vaughn

[Jim Becker]

(Jim Becker is the first person I've seen who noticed the cable slowing down, so I don't think it's real widespread.)

It was usually at about 2:30-3pm...when school lets out. It was quite noticable at times. One other thing...at that time COMCAST had a probibition on any form of business use, and yes, that included even simple email access. Everyone did it anyway, but the rub was you could pay more (a lot more) to "officially" allow business use, but it was still the exact same service. No more speed. No more priority. That really turned me off since my office is at home and I'm on VPN 24/7. I believe they have changed that now (but am not sure since I no longer have their service) and frankly it wasn't enforced. But it does bring up a good point...know the terms of service of your provider.

[Michael Perata]

I currently use SBC dsl. It is fast enough for me. I occasionally will dump a couple hundred MBs to a server, takes a couple of hours so I do it late.

A while back PacBell (pre-SBC) used my neighborhood as a test site for fibre optic dsl - 20+MB up and down - and that was a downrated system. PacBell was talking of 50+MB feeds eventually. Unfortunately they diabled the test facilities, but left the fibre. Sigh.

[Joe Mioux]

Hey Jim!!!

Do you work for the phone company????:) (I know you don't,but....) I just got a phone call from an "SBC" person offering a lower price on my DSL.


Joe

[Jim Becker]

No, I work for Avaya who used to be a part of Lucent who used to be a part of AT&T who used to...all the way back to Western Electric. But I don't do carrier stuff so it must just have been your lucky day!

[Rich Konopka]

Joe, interesting that you have symetrical service (1.8 up AND down). That's quite uncommon with DSL. Do you have a business service?

I had symetrical DSL a few years back with Covad which was through the SBC spinoff company. I had so many problems with it and had so many technicians that I finally gave up after 6 months and went to cable and have not had nearly .001 % of the preoblems I had with DSL.

My cable is 39.95 / month and I get decent speeds of 4mb down and 256k up.

[Tom Hurlebaus]

Dennis,


I might have missed it while quickly reading through these replies, but I believe SBC is currently offering DSL for $15 +tax a month if ordered on-line. Check out the SBC Web site for clarification and details.

Tom

[Dennis Peacock]

No, I work for Avaya who used to be a part of Lucent who used to be a part of AT&T who used to...all the way back to Western Electric. But I don't do carrier stuff so it must just have been your lucky day!

Yup....we use Avaya here where I work.

Supporting Jim Becker from Conway, AR....

[Dick Strauss]

SBC does have a 14.95/month DSL pkg right now. However, this is their bundled price and is much higher if ordered separately. At least that is the case here in No. Ohio.

I've been with Adelphia for 6 months. Their service is horrible. When you have a problem you can't contact the local office directly to find out what the real issue is. The send you to some nationwide tollfree number. If you need a tech it takes 10-14 days, even if your service is out. I had speeds of 3Mb/s prior to my outage that lasted 6 weeks. Now I'm lucky to get 1.5Mb/s. Their next speed level is 256kb/s for $24.95/month.

Needless to say, I'll be switching broadband providers ASAP. The other cable co in town is Buckeye Cable. Their prices are even higher than Adelphia's. So it looks like I'll be an SBC DSL customer shortly.

By the way, I don't see much change in speed except at about 6-6:30AM.

[Leo Hill]

IME, quite simply the best, both for testing your connection and researching reliability issues.

http://www.dslreports.com/

Leo

[Ed Breen]

Hey Jim,

I'm pretty sure that SBC has just either bought or tendered for AVAYA,LUUCENT, ATT&T, so you may be working for the big bell. Anyway, I live rural and so far cannot find a provider with a tower near me. I use SBC DSL at work and over two years have had no problems. I'm hoping to get dsl at home through a cell phone provider.
Ed

[Jim Becker]

Ed, SBC is buying AT&T--it's was announced a long time ago. AT&T is a separate company. So is Lucent. No effect on us. They are all customers...as it were.

DSL is copper based only with a limit of 18,000 feet from the CO "as the wire travels". Wireless carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, Cingular and others do have data offerings but they are very slow and VERY expensive. But they are mobile and primarily designed for business users who travel extensively and need to stay in touch for email, etc. There is promising 4th generation technologies coming, but they will not happen until the 3rd generations stuff is deployed...and it's barely out of the chute now and only in certain areas.

[Jim Dunn]

Got an old Spirit AT&T system here. But now it's an Avaya system?:rolleyes: Can't keep up with who I'm supposed to pay:eek:

Also got a cable modum and couldn't be happier. Down loads @2.8 what ever it is. My son works for SBC and has a DSL line and his down load speed is 1.5. Think I'll keep my cable modum as I'm only paying $19.95 a month.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Dennis....as stated by Jim Becker.....Cable is initally faster. My neighbor has DSL. It's faster than telephone but not as fast as my cable. Typically cable only slows down when more people are using it. It, cable, is shared with other users and the more people using it, the slower it gets. If you are in an area that's sparsly densitied, it'll rip. But if you have a lot of cable modem users in you area it will slow down. 6 years ago my employer began pushing all field engineers to get cable modem broadband if it was locally available. In the 6 years I've had it I've only lost service on a couple of occassions. Like you I can do a lot of troubleshooting via broadband, error log analysis, order parts, etc. I've had good luck with cable service in my area. Good luck with your decisions!

[Dennis Peacock]

Dennis....as stated by Jim Becker.....Cable is initally faster. My neighbor has DSL. It's faster than telephone but not as fast as my cable. Typically cable only slows down when more people are using it. It, cable, is shared with other users and the more people using it, the slower it gets. If you are in an area that's sparsly densitied, it'll rip. But if you have a lot of cable modem users in you area it will slow down. 6 years ago my employer began pushing all field engineers to get cable modem broadband if it was locally available. In the 6 years I've had it I've only lost service on a couple of occassions. Like you I can do a lot of troubleshooting via broadband, error log analysis, order parts, etc. I've had good luck with cable service in my area. Good luck with your decisions!

Howdy Ken....been missing you 'round these parts. I've decided to go with DSL. My cable service drops almost every night around midnight and things slow down on cable in the mornings and evening. IF DSL will at least keep me connected and provide anything better than 128K rate? I'm going for it. I signed up for the DSL Pro at $24.95 a month and according to what they are offering with that package....it should be around 10 TIMES FASTER that what I have now. I guess we'll see.

Thanks for the advice everyone..!!!!!