Which is better: Cable or DSL?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Xenos, Mar 28, 2003.

  1. Xenos

    Xenos Private E-2

    I recently got the offer of Verizon DSL in my area. I remember the person who called stating it has a download speed of 768 and upload speed of 128. I don't know if they are kiloBITS or kiloBYTES. I currently have one way cable. Its only annoyance is my limited upload bandwith since I have to connect with a 56 k modem. The download speeds average around 40 KB/second. The highest I have seen them is around 150 KB/second, and that's usually on a big site like Microsoft. Now I am guessing that the KB is for kilobytes. I know with cable connections you share the line and with DSL you don't. What kind of download speeds should I expect with DSL? I know it varies with how far you are from the main office, and quality of phone line etc.. Would I get better results with DSL and what is the kilobits and kilobytes difference? Also, I have heard that DSL is horrible for gaming compared to cable. I remember getting ping times around 40-80 when I had 2-way cable a while ago. Can I get the same thing with DSL as well?Any help is appreciated.
     
  2. Kodo

    Kodo SNATCHSQUATCH

    Unless it's SDSL they're offering then go with cable..
     
  3. iamien

    iamien Cptn "Eh!"

    the s[eed you said for the DSl would translate to 728/8... its in kiloBITS so you divide by 8 to get it in bytes
     
  4. goldfish

    goldfish Lt. Sushi.DC

    I think they are talking about symetric cable, rather than asymetric (im not too farmiliar with cable, but i know a friend with a simelar setup) for gaming its better to have symetric because you are sending and recieving. DSL is alright, it does the job ok, but symetric cable is better. i would imagine that asymetric is ok too, i dont have much expireience, but i would have thought your upload would be a problem when it comes to games.
     
  5. Coco

    Coco Sergeant Major

    it's sort of impossible to give you a correct answer to this question. See both cable and dsl have the about same speed (in theory). But pretty much no matter which one you go with you get capped way before you'd ever max out what the cable or the dsl line can do. In theory both can easily do over a meg a second. Most ISP tend to cap you at no higher then 300KB/sec though.

    So basicly what i'm saying is it really dpends on your isp. If you live in an area where everony has cable it might slow you down a bit and dsl may end up being faster but no matter which one you go with you share your connection. The only diffrence with dsl is you have a direct line to your isp and then the connection gets shared with ever other dsl line your isp has. With cable the line you have to your isp is shared with other users. That line just has a smaller bandwidth then the big one at your isp main office. So if not to many people in your area have cable it doesn't matter cause you'll still get full speed out of it. If too many people come on it could max out the cable on the way to your isp and it would slow you down but in most cases that doesn't happen because of the caps the ISP's impose on you. The whole shared line with cable is mostly a marketing gimick which really doesn't effect anything. It may start to effect things if they remove the caps on the lines but till then it's a mute point.
     

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