Author Topic: two questions (Read 1488 times)

SunKing · « **Reply #15 on:** November 11, 2004, 02:39:39 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Karnak
Where have you read this?

It certainly isn't being phased out in the Bay Area.

Cable sucks. Other people leach off your bandwidth. You get frequent outages. Your ping times are worse.

Working for a local ISP I hear that information from many sources while trouble shooting dsl outages ect. PACBELL, O1 communtications and other ISPs for example. I'm not gonna argue with you.

koda76 · « **Reply #16 on:** November 11, 2004, 02:55:05 PM »

I have a static IP on DSL....and have only one issue...the hops are shared with long distance and somtimes the LD wins out on the bandwidth. With cable you only have one pipe and everyone on that pipe shares the bandwidth. And with VOIP you will be sharing that bandwidth also.
DSL is much more secure and faster than any cable. and as someone mentioned above you have different speed choices, from 512k to 3 meg. Per subscriber....the baloney with cable is you share what ever they are advertising...so if they say they provide 1.5 meg you could get that rate if you were the only one on-line. odds are you aren't the only one on line and you have a dynamic IP which is shared.

68DevilM · « **Reply #17 on:** November 11, 2004, 02:56:24 PM »

wow, alot to say about dsl!

i think the best quote is "if it aint broke dont fix it"

ive never had any problems with cable so i think im gonna stick with it.

dsl just sounds to scary, not to mention that if i cancle road runner and dont like dsl, time warner will charge me installation fees to get road runner back.

thanks for all the input;)

StarOfAfrica2 · « **Reply #18 on:** November 11, 2004, 03:26:18 PM »

DSL or even ISDN (which I would far prefer if I had to choose one for gaming) are great, but not everyone can get them. Range is very limited for DSL, and if you arent in the right area ISDN is outrageous. The cable setup may be sucky when you have lots of people on your pipe, but it just plain reaches more people. Plus with the flaky phone system here, the relatively solid cable connections just make sense. Everyone has their preference, and its going to vary based on where you are.

I have to agree, "if it aint broke, dont fix it."

JB35 · « **Reply #19 on:** November 11, 2004, 03:36:04 PM »

I Currently have DSL , but in the small town I live in it took a long time to get it , I am happy with it because it is a nice jump from Dial up , but for the first 8 months till my phone company got a server near me I paid $60.oo a month , and that was not for the 1 GIG transfer rate but the 756 , now I pay $40.oo a month .

I understand that Cable will be avail in mid 2005 and I Will be switching to Cable , Faster Downloads plus I can Jiggle my Cable to warp when someone is on my 6

Cable has faster transfer rates and yes if it isnt broke why fix it .

koda76 · « **Reply #20 on:** November 11, 2004, 04:09:42 PM »

DSL has a faster transfer rate...a world record was just achived by transfering 840 gigs of data 10,157 miles at a rate of 4.23 gigs a second over the internet backbone. This was a gigE connection.

BigR · « **Reply #21 on:** November 11, 2004, 04:24:01 PM »

Here in Vegas Cox Cable offers 5mb down for 50 bucks a month. No dsl here even comes close. Also, they allocate MUCH more than 5mb of bandwidth to each neigborhood hub. I frequently see more than 600kbits/sec download which is faster than i pay for.

rabbidrabbit · « **Reply #22 on:** November 11, 2004, 04:39:53 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by StarOfAfrica2
Mosty I agree on the sat. issue, but you have to realize there are different types. The basic sat. high speed internet hookup has broadband speed downloads, but uploads thorugh the phone line. They do have true broadband sat. connections that have high speed both ways but weather can really affect your data transfer rates. You also typically have to buy the equipment and it costs somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 bucks. Plus the monthly fee is nearly twice what cable is (or it was when I looked into it 2 years ago).

the big issue you most seem to be missing is latency. The reason satelite is far worse than advertised is that at best you can can is 500 MS delay. That means for every object there is a half second delay between the time you request it and the time it comes. This is a major problem if you pull a web page with 40 or so objects. For this reason, 56k with a latency of ~200MS will pull many pages faster than a 1 MB satelite connection.

The comparison between cable and DSL is similar. At best, with few exceptions, the technology will not beat a 200 MS delay due to line restrictions while cable will frequently do under 40 MS. The difference is noticable when compared side by side.

There are other issues such as static IP's if you are web hosting and oversubscription of the ISP. But they are not relevant to the technology per se.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #23 on:** November 11, 2004, 05:09:27 PM »

I don't know where you are getting that latency information rabbid, but stop reading it. It's wrong.

There is no one answer to the question about which is better between Cable or DSL. First of all DSL is an all encompassing family of communications technologies. There are about 35 different types of DSL today.
So, if you do not know which type you are discussing, you will invariably butt heads.

As a general network technology, most forms of DSL are better than Cable, in terms of consistency. By the way, download speeds mean diddly. Most Cable ISP's run transparent caching servers, so you cannot gauge the actual performance of thier network with any degree of certainty. However, the last mile (your connection) is a minor matter in the overall Internet connection scheme.
How your ISP has implemented the network is more important as it pertains to the quality of the service. It is due to this, which cause many different types of reports about which is best.

Basically, you are looking at a regional issue. In some areas of the country, DSL will be better, in other areas of the country Cable will be better. There is no one answer, simply due to the last mile being a small part of what makes one better than the other.

StarOfAfrica2 · « **Reply #24 on:** November 11, 2004, 05:11:10 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by rabbidrabbit
the big issue you most seem to be missing is latency. The reason satelite is far worse than advertised is that at best you can can is 500 MS delay. That means for every object there is a half second delay between the time you request it and the time it comes. This is a major problem if you pull a web page with 40 or so objects. For this reason, 56k with a latency of ~200MS will pull many pages faster than a 1 MB satelite connection.

The comparison between cable and DSL is similar. At best, with few exceptions, the technology will not beat a 200 MS delay due to line restrictions while cable will frequently do under 40 MS. The difference is noticable when compared side by side.

There are other issues such as static IP's if you are web hosting and oversubscription of the ISP. But they are not relevant to the technology per se.

Stands to reason. I didnt mention it because I just plain didnt know what latency was like on a sat broadband connection. I researched it enough to know I preferred staying with dialup at the time. I didnt like the fact that DISH was advertising the heck outta their "broadband" capability, and what they were really advertising was the download/phone upload deal. Which is fine for people who just want to surf porn sites or let their kids do their homework. They totally misrepresented it as being something it was not, and when I confronted them with it I basically got the "can you get cable? no. can you get DSL? no. call us when you are ready to hook up" treatment.

rabbidrabbit · « **Reply #25 on:** November 11, 2004, 05:16:58 PM »

Generally agreed Skuzzy but I'm not sure about your arguement for DSL. In my experience there are technical limitations to DSL that makes gettting latency under 200MS difficult whereas the Cable conections I have had over the last 12 years have done much better. Often I would get pings under 50 MS to major hops. You are entirely right in saying how the particular ISP implements and subscribes the technology as well as peering points is just if not more important.

Can you show me a implementation of DSL that can get sub 50 MS pings to yahoo for example?

Skuzzy · « **Reply #26 on:** November 11, 2004, 05:33:08 PM »

Ever tried an OC192? Yep, it is in the DSL family. Again, it all depends on what form of DSL we are talking about.

Besides, Cable suffers from packet retries due to collisions on the local node. So measuring latencies is very difficult. They will be all over the place for Cable due to the collision problem.
Now, if you are the only one on the node, then you got a good deal, but probable doing business with an ISP that is not going to be around very long either.

Also note, you are talking about ping times. Those have nothing to do with the electrical interface. Ping times are not effected by the choice of DSL or Cable.
They are effected by the number of hops you have to traverse over the Internet more than anything else.

rabbidrabbit · « **Reply #27 on:** November 11, 2004, 05:55:41 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Ever tried an OC192? Yep, it is in the DSL family. Again, it all depends on what form of DSL we are talking about.

>> You have OC 192 to your house? We are talking consumer products on this thread. Comparign apples to oranges will not be much help.

Besides, Cable suffers from packet retries due to collisions on the local node.

"So measuring latencies is very difficult. They will be all over the place for Cable due to the collision problem."

>> collisions result in retry events, these packet kills will knock up the ping times because the sender will not get a response and resend. There are a number of utilities out there including the simple -n command to help determine a longer term average. The standard deviation of your results will give you a pretty good idea of the number of collisions. In my experience with RESIDENTIAL DSL , the standard deviation is higher than a properly functioning cable node.

Now, if you are the only one on the node, then you got a good deal, but probable doing business with an ISP that is not going to be around very long either.

>> I'm not the only one on my Comcast node and see consistent polling to my webserver from the web monitor. My parents are on a Node that was probably in existence since the time I signed them up for it 12 years ago. They experience slow downs during peak hours. As we agreed before, the ISP issues are more important than the technology.

Also note, you are talking about ping times. Those have nothing to do with the electrical interface. Ping times are not effected by the choice of DSL or Cable.
They are effected by the number of hops you have to traverse over the Internet more than anything else.

This is not really correct. Each additional hop you make incurs a few MS switching delay but that is often the least of your worries. Network load, peering points on the border gateway routers, choice of technology all apply to lesser degrees. My very high ping times over satelite and medium high ping times over DSL and faster Cable ping times disagree with your arguement. Can anyone show me a sub 100 MS ping to yahoo off a residential DSL connection? Unless the technology has be changed then I doubt you will see much better than 200 MS or so.

In my book they are roughly the same utility for residential customers. If your cable ISP sucks, try DSL. Almost certainly, both are much better than dial up or satelite but switching back and forth between DSL and cable usually has little benefit though Cable tends to edge out DSL in the ideal for most residential customers. Whether your ISP is anythign close to ideal is another issue entirely.

38ruk · « **Reply #28 on:** November 11, 2004, 06:57:52 PM »

I do tech support for a major cable co , and i have to say that packet loss is a very common thing. all you cable guys try running pingplotter for an hour or so and see how often a packet drops. It might not be apparent in a 5 minute session, but it is a common thing 38

rabbidrabbit · « **Reply #29 on:** November 11, 2004, 07:04:39 PM »

You will see packet loss on any product. Granted, the worse the product (satelite for example) the higher the loss rate and standard deviation. That loss can come from many locations along the pipe. Not intending to be personal ...