Cable or DSL?

[GWBlack3]

I currently have two computers networked in the home. I am all set up to share an internet connection (hardware router, cat5, 10/100,etc). However, I am undecided between Cable and DSL. I see advantages and disadvantages to both. Any suggestions? Any horror stories about either? In my area DSL is slightly cheaper and free to setup although I was initially leaning toward Cable. Any info/help would be appreciated.

[Count]

I have Cable at home, and kinda wish I could switch to DSL now. DSL you get a certain amount of bandwidth, Cable is variable. The problem is that cables max speed is higher, but in my experience it almost never gets that high. Then again I might just be bitter now because i just payed my bill.

[terence]

Right on count. When I got cable modem 6 months ago it was the s#&t! Now it seems to get slower and slower each month. @Home wants to limit bandwith yet they haven't lowered the price of cable modem. If I had a choice now, I'd go with DSL.

[Rand]

Get a Pairgain 768 Megabit modem. Though they say it uses a single pair ( data ) wire for data transfer, they also can be set up to be run on a regular telephone line. Basically what it amounts to is speed is up, cost is down.

[Siamese]

I say it depends, if u live in a old folks areas where they are unlikely to have cable, go for cable, i know htis guy who lives in an elderly neighborhood and hes lovin his cable, however i have another friend who lives near our UNiversity area and everyone has cable, he gets close to a 56 K connection, if ur like this guy, go for adsl.
Thats what i think,. I personally have adsl and its fast enuf pleny for me,

[nortsm]

I have DSL and I love it. It is not as fast as cable, but it is very consistent. Covad is offering $150.00 rebate. i signed up for 2 years and I did not have to pay for the install or hardware.
How exactley did You make it part of your network?

Thanks nortsm

[GWBlack3]

nortsm...using a Linksys BEFSR41 Cable/DSL Router...real simple....keeps you from having to use double NICs and NAT/proxy software.

[Rand]

Correction...

Mine is set up on a leased wire pair ( same as a standard telephone wire ) between my house and my ISP. So all I pay is the standard telephone line cost. The telephone company will try to say that you need to pay more since it transfers data only ( there is no dialtone ). But I *****ed them out on trying to give me the price at FT1 since all I'd be using is a standard phone wire, and not FT1 ( however many pairs that was.. I forgot for the time being ). All I can say is the phone company will love you http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/biggrin.gif

Another small catch was I had to have a firewall setup at my ISP's end. No problem there. Got a used 386 computer for $15 and setup a firewall to fit on a 1.44 floppy. It never fails http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/smile.gif Let's see any windows lover do that. http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/biggrin.gif

[Count]

Hehe... firewall? I just reinstall my OS every other day when it gets hacked to pieces. Thinkin maybe i should just run it on a ramdisk or somethin

[n8]

well, i live in tacoma, WA and got @home cable the month it became available. it was great then, but it's slowly gotten worse. they are putting way to many people on each node and the cost ($40/month + $5 per additional ip) remains the same. if i payed the bills and i wasn't going to move out of here within a year, i would switch to uswest dsl, which is between $20-30 a month now i think. i think performance-wise, the dsl is about equal with cable, although more consistent. the thing that newcomers don't often realize about high bandwidth connections is that the internet itself is lagged to hell, and the speed you get for each server depends on a lot more than how your connected. as far as horror stories go, @home goes out for an hour occasionally, maybe once or twice a month that i notice, and is especially laggy for some reason at other times. i've heard that the dsl service goes out for days sometimes but i've never subscribed to it so i don't have any firsthand experience. i also use the cable to connect my home lan, and it was very easy to set up and has always worked flawlessly. i didn't bother trying to do the peer to peer thing, i just get an additional address from @home for 5 a month.

so overall, you are correct that each has it's ups and downs. i think the best thing for you to do would be get ask people in your area who have the specific isps you're considering, and go from there.

[piz_bruin]

I have @Home service and it works great. I average in the 180-190Kb/sec range downloading, but of course it depends on the site/server on the net I'm attached to. Cable modem or DSL, if the sites server sucks, so does your speed.

[icexe]

hell I'll take anything that comes my way. I've been hearing promises of both cable and DSL "coming soon" for six months now.
What really, really sux is that I had cable at my last house, now I can't get anything faster than 28.8k on my phoneline. Its like being rich one day, then losing it all the next - it just hurts even more knowing what you used to have http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/frown.gif