Cable vs DSL

[68ROX]

Ok...I have DSL now, and am pretty happy with my connection.  I have a favor to ask...but ONLY  of those players who have used cable modem  AND DSL....

I will be moving soon, and the area may or may not have DSL.  My new house also has a satalite dish, and I 'm not sure if I want to go with cable tv or satallite tv..

But for playing AH...

Which is better?  Cable or DSL?  

Thanks!

Manfred Albrecht von Richthofen
Rittmeister


    ROX

[2bighorn]

Originally posted by Casinoman
But for playing AH...

Which is better?  Cable or DSL?  
 

There should be no significant difference.

[Paul]

Where is your new house?

[Eagler]

it will depend on the quality of your cable system vs the telephone system as to which one is best for your high speed needs

[JB73]

best thing for playing AH is the network you are on.

if you are in the boonies, far from the nearest box, DSL will probably be flaky.

on the flip side in a large metroploian area cable might be flaky with too many users on the local area.



you can play AH on dial-up as long as the connection is stable, you won't know the difference, PING consistency is the most important, not the fastest but varying PING rate.

[JB88]

cable just feels sexier.

(ahem)

[TalonX]

Cable, hands down in my experience.

I tested Bell South, both versions...cable won big time.

In Comcast land, I rely on neighbors input to report that the cable beats DSL handily, as well.

[pellik]

There are several factors to consider here. The biggest consideration is what cable and DSL providers are available in the area you're moving to.

The general rundown goes like this:

Newer cable providers generally offer the better bandwith value. When I say newer I just mean to exclude the very old cable services which require your up pipe over the phone. There are very few of those older services like that left, so it's pretty much just a moot precaution. While cable providers like Comcast and Time Warner do offer large pipes for ~$50/mo, their services is crap. The cable running into your house is on a loop with every other house near you, sometimes in your whole neighborhood, on the same loop. This means both bandwith and latency are significantly reduced during peak hours. Not only that but if there are enough dweeby kids running P2P programs like Kazaa or BitTorrent everybody will take a constant bandwith hit. The more popular cable internet becomes the worse these problems get.

DSL costs a lot more then cable. Those $30/mo options are really crappy and offer service quality similar to Cable, but without the speed. But the really great thing about DSL is that you at least have the option to spend more money for better services if you want to. I cancelled my cable about 6 months ago to switch to Speakeasy DSL. Their support staff is the best I've ever known, and they go way out of their way to not just solve your problems but to make things right. (It's like a big company staffed entierly with Skuzzys)

The problems to watch for with DSL is how far away from the hub you are. Your DSL provider should check this for you before they actually sell you any service. The distance to the hub directly determines how much bandwith is available to you, and what latency you should expect.

If all of this information is just a little too abstract, here's the story of my bandwith hookup:

About 9 months ago I moved to where I'm at now. I got Comcast Cable internet installed about 3 weeks after I moved in, and about 2 weeks after the date they said they would install it when I first called. I got a bad cable modem, but I live only 1 block away from the Comcast office where they replace them so I was able to walk over and get a new one. My service was just crap. I was getting consitant packet loss averaging about 4%. I couldn't play AH at all! I called to complain and had to get through three techs who DIDN'T KNOW WHAT PACKET LOSS IS. I finally got up a tier to an actual american tech who made an appointment to for a service tech to come over about two weeks later. When I told the service tech I was having packet loss he seemed annoyed with me, and after checking my lines once he told me that most of their customers don't care about packet loss so they don't try to fix it. I cancelled the cable, but despite the fact that it never actually worked they wouldn't refund my install fee and I was out $100 for absolutely nothing.

Speakeasy DSL has been an incredible experience. I pay $60/mo now, but that gets me a shell account, a static IP!!!, and a whole lot of bandwith. They don't even offer dynamic IPs. They screwed up my billing when I signed up by putting my card on an automatic billing cycle when I requested they send me a bill, and I wound up with 3 free months of service. On top of that I called to get that fixed at 3am and talked to a local in Seattle. We also spent about 20min talking in simpsons quotes while waiting on a line test I requested. All of their techs are competent, patient, and genuinly care about their jobs. They offer national service, so definitely check them out when your considering which provider to go with.

Anyway, I'm dosed up on an insane amount of coffee, so I can only hope this all makes sense and is helpful.

Best of luck moving.

-p.

[StarOfAfrica2]

Depends on where you will be.  The farther away you are from a box, the slower DSL is, where cable doesnt care how far you are, but is dependent on how many people are sharing your bandwidth.  Here, cable maxxes out at 5megabits, DSL at 3megabits, wireless (when they get it up) will be 1.5megabits.

I know you didnt ask about it, but dont even think of using sattelite for gaming.  I did once.  The expense alone isnt worth it, but the quality of the connection is nowhere near enough for gaming.

 

Pellik got his up before me, and while I agree mostly with what he said dont take his cable experience as universal.  As you said, you may not have a choice, dont go into things prejudiced against cable.  You will only get frustrated.  Yes, you are on a line with everyone else.  Yes you will take hits from time to time.  But good companies try to minimize that.  I've been here in Hawaii for 3 years now, using Time Warner/Oceanic, and only had problems twice.  Each time was only a few hours, and I was warned in advance.  I average a around a 105 ping to the HTC server (and alomst all of the higher pings are either in Dallas or St Louis).  I dont break 60ms until I'm past LA.  Equipment has always worked first time, and when I needed an upgrade the tech was there within 2 days to give me a new cable modem (old one still worked, just upgrading equipment).

[HavocTM]

http://www.dslreports.com

or

http://www.broadbandreports.com

See what is available (not always accurate) and user comments.

I have had DSL for two years and absolutely LOVED it.  Using SBC/Ameritech/Yahoo whatever it is now.  1.5 Mbps up/ 384 down.


I have not used cable but I have found it to be fast on the users' machines I have worked on.  Cable does tend to slow down in peak hours as more folks log on.

I have also had Frame Relay and Starband satellite.   Satellite has great download but the latency makes it pretty useless for AH.

[HavocTM]

Here is a very good FAQ:

Q: DSL vs CABLE? (#129)  
A: This is a question that is asked everywhere you look. Which do I want ... DSL or Cable?

DSL service shares bandwidth amongst ALL users connected to the same DSLAM. Cable shares bandwidth amongst ALL users connected to the same CMTS.

DSL's advantage?
The dedicated circuit prevents other users from affecting your connection to any significant degree. (In most cases.)

Cable's advantage?
Generally cable can support higher bandwidth rates, and can usually provide service to a larger area than 18,000 wire-feet, DSL's limit.

Cable modems are typically faster for downloads than most if not all DSL lines, when the cable infrastructure is new or well maintained. One of the most common complaints seen in our cable forums is that of increased latency and other problems as more subscribers in a given area come on line. Additionally, cable has a few other disadvantages when compared to DSL.

The first disadvantage is that cable is an RF network -- this means that it is vulnerable to transient problems "within the network" from RF interference. Since cable is a shared media, there is a possibility that performance may degrade over time as additional households plug in, connect additional devices (videos, game machines etc.) to the TV lines.

A cable company may react slowly to decreases in performance if it reacts at all, as they never sell access by speed, or promise consistent speed or latency.

Another of the disadvantages of cable over DSL is the upstream (return path). Cable companies are using a very narrow band for return signalling, and this is positioned below all the space allocated for TV channels. This band is prone to RF interference and is very limited in capacity. Upstream transmissions may therefore compete with others in the area, get delayed (suffer high latency) due to noise fighting techniques, and cable TOS (Terms Of Service) typically prohibit any kind of constant upstream use. Internet use is shifting away from central servers broadcasting to many individuals and some interesting peer to peer applications are appearing (games, voice and video applications, communal libraries). These applications need a strong upstream channel.

In summary, cable modems are currently good value and strong competition for residential casual use, often available more cheaply and far faster than their ADSL competition. However, DSL is probably the more future-proof system, offering digital direct from the internet infrastructure. If your DSL ISP is on the ball, your performance in either direction will not be different from peak hour to early morning, and DSL lines are available for a wide variety of purposes, both business and residential.

[culero]

Yeap. I moved to ISDN from analog dialup years ago, but dropped that to go cable when it arrived in my neck of the woods. I am in general happy with cable.

But I'll drop it in a heartbeat in favor of DSL when that becomes available.

culero

[Clifra Jones]

All good information. I will just throw in my personal experience.

I was a cable customer and had no real bad issues with it besides cost. Comcast in my area (Jacksonville, FL) is just getting to expensive. One issue I did have was infrastructure. the cable on my steet is in poor condition. I could not get better than a 1.0 MB speed no matter what and I needed a signal booster on my line to get good signal. Comcast was NOT going to fix this to make me happy as I was the only person on the street who ever complained about it. In all truth the decision to switch to DSL was all about price though.

Switched to 3mb DSL and have great speeds. 3mb consistantly. BUT there is one very odd occurance. Ping times to HTC.

With cable my ping times were were in the 70's. They are not in the 90's. Why? Savis. My comcast connection to not go through Savis. Now I  do. Doesn't that just bite the big one!

So, check your infrastructure. If you have crappy phone lines your not going to get good DSL, if you have crappy cable lines cable will be poor. If both are fine go for the best price. Best speed for the buck.

[SirLoin]

AH is way better that Warbirds

Opps..wrong thread.

[Elyeh]

I guess it would depend on who your ISP is gonna be.

Here in Las Vegas I have Cox cable
I have a 5 meg line and my latest speed test at dslreports .com was

5014 kbps  up
736 kbps down

ping rate to AH tonight was 62 (Only have lost connection once last week when the server was acting up)

This is a transfer rate of 626.8KB/sec

I 've used them for about 5 years now.
Only outage was once due to an system wide upgrade and once for a modem that went bad which they replaced the next day.

Tech support is 24/7 (and they know what they are talking about)
It dosent seem like they are reading off flash cards like some tech support.

Cost is $40.00 a month

Dosen't dsl have a maxed bandwith? (I thought I had read that somewhere)

Anyway just FYI for comparision shopping