Cable vs DSL?

Post by **Lucifer** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 1:20 am

Ok, here's what I've got. Right now I'm on a pretty good cable connection. I think I'm the only person in my neighborhood or something like that, I almost always have the best available bandwidth. But you guys have seen the pings out here. Anyway, $46/month.

I've been offered something with 1.0mbs/3.0mbs by AT&T. It's DSL. The upstream looks better than what I've got, but I can't do a real speed test right now without installing Java, apparently. Links to non-java speed tests would be appreciated.

Anyway, the service will cost a max of $38/month, and since I"m an existing cable customer of a different company, they've offered me 3 months free. I like the deal, but I want to know all the ramifications before I commit myself to it. (They tried a package deal with phone service, but they just can't beat my voip line. Competitive, finally, but can't beat it)

So what have you guys experienced? The companies involved are Time Warner (with Earthlink as the actual ISP) and AT&T. I used to be an AT&T cable customer and I was very happy with their levels of service, I would expect their DSL service to be the same, so the only real question is whether or not the line itself would be to my advantage. The Speakeasy guys (who don't offer service in my area) tell me that DSL gives better pings (i.e. has lower network latency). Is this true?

Fonkay · Post by **Fonkay** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 3:24 am

this might do it
http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/

kyle · Post by **kyle** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 3:37 am

run that a few times to get an average because with my DSL i got anywhere from 1.5MB/s to 2.4MB/s

Website · Post by **Z-Man** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 8:29 am

My ADSL experiences have been extremely good. The connection trouble I had a while ago, which I blamed on my new provider at first, was tracked to my defective phone outlet at last. Other than that, the connection was extremely stable. No packet loss between me and my ISP, and no ping fluctuations. One downside: my ISP only offers interleaved mode where packets are split and the bits are shuffled around for better error correction, that makes pings 30-40 ms larger than they could be. You should probalby watch for that.

Post by **Tank Program** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 8:32 am

ADSL is fine here... Not that you can really compare European ADSL to American...

skullflame · Post by **skullflame** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 11:41 am

i have alltel and get 10.0mps and its only 19.95 a mounth so thats good you should look into alltel

Jonathan · Post by **Jonathan** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 12:50 pm

I'm also looking for some good info; I'm currently connected through a shared cable connection from Chello/UPC most of the time, and everything but its peak throughput sucks (note about it being shared: there are no other heavy users, and it's consistly bad). OK, say, the tool ping tends to give reasonable results, but 'real' traffic tends to mess up badly, destroying games.

I should have the option of getting my own DSL connection. So, what variables are there, what tends to be the difference between price ranges, if/how can I look for more than theoretical peak throughput without having to investigate too deeply, etc?

Edit: I did manage to get accused of cheating today.

microbus · Post by **microbus** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 6:08 pm

I've had ADSL since 1998, and have only had two problems since
then. One time my modem quit on me, and another time one of
my computers could connect, but not the other. It was something
with the ISP, and they had fixed within an hour.
Running that speed test, just once mind you, came up with this:

Communications 1.9 megabits per second
Storage 229.6 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 4.5 seconds
Subjective rating Great

Freewheelin'56 · Post by **Freewheelin'56** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 12:41 am

I have been on cable for many years, no problem. Here is my first run of the
bandwidth test.

Communications 3 megabits per second
Storage 367.4 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 2.8 seconds
Subjective rating Awesome

Fonkay · Post by **Fonkay** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 1:03 am

Communications 2.7 megabits per second
Storage 329.8 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 3.1 seconds
Subjective rating Great

on cable here..

Had Communications > 4 megabits per second on my old cable connection back home though.

Post by **Lucifer** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 3:25 am

My run didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, and it didn't include upstream transfer.

Maybe I should just install java and run the one linked from the wiki. I'm going to need a good upstream test anyway when the dsl gets hooked up.

So yeah, we went with it, but I made sure we got an option to back out without penalty early. There will be a penalty later, but I should know pretty quickly if it's going to be better than the cable. What it came down to was that the only way I'd know is if I did a side-by-side comparison, so sometime after Tuesday, I'll do that.

Watch for Lobsters on Crack in the server list and let me know how it does when it appears.

kyle · Post by **kyle** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 3:31 am

by the way how can you live without JAVA. thats fun to code in; its so differnt from all other languages.

Post by **Lucifer** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 3:51 am

-ct-kyle wrote:by the way how can you live without JAVA. thats fun to code in; its so differnt from all other languages.

Java = bastardized C++ that never really runs right on any platform.

I'm of the opinion that java's only worthwhile contribution to the world is robocode.

kyle · Post by **kyle** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 3:55 am

if you want to know the truth i agree it doesn't work that great with many OS's

it works really good on Vista though; one think Microsoft got right on Vista

it really is fun to program though; I'm learning it just to make applets.

Jonathan · Post by **Jonathan** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 4:15 am

I'm now at the point where I think it's mostly for limited fairly portable program-like in-browser stuff, and indeed, perhaps Robocode.