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Subject: Re: dsl vs. cable

Author: Jeroen van Dorp

Date: 01:48:53 03/30/01

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On March 30, 2001 at 00:03:57, K. Burcham wrote:

>if you have cable----can you tell me some of your pros and cons.
>if you have dsl------can you tell me some of your pros and cons.
>which is faster and more dependable for online gaming?
>i have heard that cable gets slow in the evening and on weekends when the
>traffic is higher? how much slower? is this true for you?


There's for me much confusion over the naming of DSL, and in the US some
companies even call cable "DSL".

For me "cable" is using the connection of your cable tv for Internet as well.
(A)DSL is using your own, private telephone line.

The variant I have is ADSL, which stands for Asynchronous Digital Subscriber
line; it means download bandwidth is bigger than upload bandwidth. Chosen
because obviously as a regular user you download more than you upload.

DSL here uses the regular phone line - the higher frequencies- so you'll keep
your phone connection for voice calls.


The experience here with cable is bad. My brother has a cable connection.
Connection almost never surpasses ISDN speed (single), and speed changes very
often. Basically this is caused by the fact that you share a connection with
others in your vicinity. As almost all Dutch have cable (some 98%) chances are
big that at evening when everybody is using his computer connection will become
slow.
But most of the time Cable wiring is more up-to-date, fibre, and I think able to
surpass a lot of Mbits in the second. However here it really doesn't.


The (A)DSL connections for the common people here is mostly cut off to 1Mbit,
but relatively cheap. (to keep data traffic withing limits and be sure for the
ISP things always work at *that* top speed)
I had (and still have) some problems with my ISP about service and delivery, but
basically my ADSL connection is very fast and very stable, and about 15-20 times
the speed of ISDN (64k) or some 25 times the speed of a regular analogue 56k
modem (which is less stable than an ISDN-connection.
If it were not for Win98 :(( 24h/7d online time is possible without cutoffs. In
the last 6 months I only had maybe two involuntary cutoffs, and maybe once or
twice because of maintenance.
Because it is an exclusive, non-shared line, it won't "wobble" and is not
dependent on how many people are calling


My ADSL connection downloads a megabyte in about 8-10 seconds, but remember: if
everyone decides to download Internet Explorer 6 beta at the same time you
really won't get that top speed. The connection maybe faster, the server at
Microsoft at the other end however not.....

Good luck with the choice however.



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