Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
A little background info:
The reason: I alledgedly had set up some sort of IRC chat room on my own server and offered a dvd movie for download. **THE MOTION PICTURE ASSOC** promptly notified **TIME WARNER** of said violation (or perhaps vice versa). You see the connection here? It makes me wonder if the TW/AOL thing was such a good idea for us little people.
Not to be subdued by a mediocre internet provider I signed up for DSL from Verizon...They'll be here in 17 days. 17 days. I told them if they could lessen that time a little that would probably be good for business.
I have helped a lot of people set up networks for their businesses and I've seen a growing chasm between DSL and Cable.
Dsl seems to have the edge I think because it's run by the phone companies...they already know a lot about networking. Cable on the other hand, although cheaper, is an inferior product that promises but doesn't deliver...especially if you're in a high density population area where there are lots of people on the service.
The point is, as webmasters, we need reliable internet access without retentive admins or companies on the other end of the line monitoring and/or throttling your access and trying to control how many computers you access the internet with.
I for one, am now becoming increasingly concerned about the conglomeration and mergering between communications companies. These monopolies have the potential for great abuse. Time Warner/AOL is an obvious attempt to control the entertainment coming out of your TV..from start to finish.
This is what I think. What do you think about the difference between Cable and DSL?
Neither a phone company or cable company really has much institutional experience with providing computer services (I think they all keep their actual computer systems techs in small, dark basement rooms where they can't scare the receptionists), and despite the fact that they both have extensive experience with operating information delivery networks, neither is 100% sure to have done their homework for the job of ISP.
I think it boils down to specifically which company you're doing business with... unfortunately, there are rarely more than 1 or 2 choices for the primary provider of either service in a given area.
The best solution IMO, would be for telcos and cable providers to get out of the service end of it, and just sell their bandwidth to actual ISPs, who have some idea what's going on in the computer world...
That sounds like the best thing to do but in reality you often end up with a middleman and a another tier of hoops to jump through to get something fixed.
Then again, neither DSL nor cable will be available in my area any time soon (unless the cable co. starts offering wireless internet... seems like it should be do-able, since I can get wireless cable TV), so it's all theoretical to me. In the meantime, 26.4 is about the best I can do.
Only problem is I have to shut it down for 5-15 minutes a few times a week when it gets flooded with requests from who knows where. Just to give those who are requesting a chance to receive a time-out.
I think with both DSL and Cable, you need to choose a provider that offers dynamic IPs with each restart instead of a static one.
In may and june during a test phase, they had mine wide open as fast as the modem would go. I was getting 175-250k CPS (1 to 1.5mbps) regularly. Then they returned it to the old 512 in late July and it was like having an arm and a leg cut off (now maxed at 50-55k cps).
Just be thankful you are in an area where you have more than a single choice for an isp.
It brought down 50,000 users.
They went as far as contact subscribers by phone to correct the problem.
ADSL is superfast compared to dialup. Downloading a 32MB file is a snap - just a few minutes. Nevertheless, I can't wait for an even faster access to come to my area.
I have no experience with cable.
Lawman
At one point, I had one company providing cable service. I was one of the first subscribers and things really flew...for about a year. Then it was terribly slow.
Fortunately I moved at that point and was able to get cable modem under another subsidiary of the same company. For years, it has been excellent -- never a slowdown.
If you have issues with the speed of your cable modem, you should call the company giving service and file a complaint. They know when they are pushing the limits and filling the lines with more traffic than they can handle. If no one complains, they will continue to stretch their resources that way.
Not all providers are going to screw you...if you find one that does, hopefully you have an alternative, and you can vote with your money.
Last year there were widespread complaints about DSL being pushed by several phone companies way faster than their techs could handle citywide, and they were overwhelmed with service calls--actually made front page news.
But, when it came to sucking files off my hard drive, the DSL people were super fast--probably about equal to cable users.
So I concluded, perhaps wrongly, that DSL is slower on the upload than cable, in general. Anybody know what the deal is there?
Brian
>> So I concluded, perhaps wrongly, that DSL is slower on the upload than cable, in general. Anybody know what the deal is there?
You are nearly right. ADSL is an acronym for Assymetric Digital Subscriber Line. The "Assymetric" part refers to the fact that the system has been deliberatly designed to download faster than it uploads, thus the data transfer rates are not symmetric. Essentially, ADSL assumes that information packets will come down OK because of the better quality hardware used in the connection. It therefore doesn't bother checking data integrity so often as a standard dial-up, and it has fewer corrupt packets to re-request anyway.
This makes ADSL most suitable for applications where the host is a net "consumer" of data, bringing more onto your own machine than you put out, which is exactly the pattern you find in a standard surfing session. Of course, if you're on Napster or similar and someone requests a file from you, the bottleneck is your relatively slow upload speed. Vice versa, when you connect to another machine, the file will go like a rocket (assuming they aren't another ADSL connected machine :))
Similarly, if an ADSL machine connects to you, they will have a fast d/load speed, because the traffic is flowing the right way, as it were
By contrast, cable modems just use the same pipe for up and down (I think - bit hazier on cable tech) so if you have lots of upstream bandwidth available (and you aren't attempting to push and pull data simultaneously) it should be faster.
Moved to Oregon got DSL and that was rock solid although slower as I only purchased 512 kbps. Rock solid all the same.
Moved to Redmond... and waited 3 MONTHS for Verizon / Earthlink to hook me up. One week after I cancelled the order I plugged in one of the 2 ?? dsl modems they sent me only to see that they had finally wired me up. Too bad I was moving the next month and that they required a 6 month contract (typical with dsl for some reason). Over the course of the 3 months I had 6 !! activation dates... I'll let you draw your own conclusions..
I work from Europe now and have cable which is a bit slow but fairly reliable. My guess is that half the city is on the same network hehe.
Today, I would prefer DSL because bandwidth is not shared throughtout the networks and for the most part people seem to be more satisfied with the results (a good site for info and tweaks is speedguide.net). A friend of mine who still lives in BC says the cable has slowed so much.. that there is an 8 month waiting period for dsl !?!
Also, anybody with cable or dsl surely needs the most important tool of all... a cable/dsl router. I have one from Linksys which has been amazing..! Five PCs sharing a fast connection.. all behind a firewall. The hardware is cheap and it acts as a switch as well... it's great!
I went with cable. Other than the email and some startup problems - the techs they sent out were a little fuzzy on the setup procedure - I am very satisfied with the service. Coming from dialup to cable is like removing a ball and chain from your foot. So far it's been fast all along, but just like bmcgee says, if it does slow down, I can just complain and they should make more room for me. We're lucky because the competition is so fierce right now.
TallTroll:
I'm not sure exactly how the cable system channels its data back and forth either, but I can tell you this about the cost. Our co. charges extra for downloads of more than 5g of data per month, but charges extra for uploads of more than 500megs per month. I suppose they allow more space for one way than for the other.
When I first purchased the house, the service was not installed. Two days after calling, a crew of technicians arrived and they spent six hours running a new line from the main juncture on a nearby telephone pole right to the back of my home. Since I maxed out my number of cable connections; 4 for TV and 1 for Internet, I have a direct connection to the source with an RJ11 adapter (according to the techs).
I see average upload and download times in the 1.2 to 1.7 range! Yes, the techs even find it hard to believe and who am I to complain. My service was originally through Media One which was gobbled up by AT&T a little while back.
You have to be careful running a cable modem because it acts as a part of a network and if you do not properly protect yourself, some unusual things can happen. I purchased and installed Zone Alarm Pro and since that day have had no issues. The ZAP keeps other users on the network from tapping into my space and minimizes any security issues. According to recent tests, my system is in stealth mode.
I haven't really used DSL yet but have heard the horror stories from clients who have. I'm getting ready to purchase another home and believe it or not, cable modem service is the prerequisite for buying. Without it I'll have major withdrawals!
DSL has been pretty reliable, but is not nearly as fast. Theoretically, we can get 768KBPS, but the actual speed usually seems quite a bit slower. This is a business DSL connection, and it is more expensive, too. The biggest problem with DSL seems to be the distance limitation (the farther from the telephone CO the lower the max speed), the price that increases with each higher speed level, and the fact that DSL providers go belly-up at an alarming rate. We've already on our second provider, and know of some firms on their third.
If this happens to you, you rarely get enough warning to be able to get new service in time to avoid an interruption. If you do business on the web, you can't afford to be down.
Having been screwed this way myself, allow me to pass on a tip. If you need broadband ASAP, often the fastest way to get a new connection is through a wireless point-to-point provider. I got one in 4 working days. My DSL was costing $300 a month, the wireless costs $500 a month, is faster, and very reliable.
I ended up ordering a redundant DSL connection, so if the wireless guys go out of business (unlikely), I won't have a problem. That $3600 a year is cheap insurance when your business lives and dies on the net.
Even better, the wireless guys, being linux geeks, are working on getting the router they installed (which is a linux box actually) configured so that it can use the DSL line as additional bandwidth / failover. Just something we're playing with.
For home, cable is usually the way to go. Unless you're in a very popular neighborhood, the speed is good, the cost isn't bad, the installation time is usually "tomorrow", and what's the odds your cable company is going out of business? Sure, most of them don't want you running servers, but with a high-speed link, you can work at home and have the servers hosted anywhere.
I just downloaded the 80+ meg Mac OS 9.2.1 update in under 5 minutes. 250 kBytes a second, with overhead I'm getting 2.5mbps over my cable modem. I tell everyone in the neighborhood it sucks bigtime, and hope they don't get it!
Best,R
Did have an adminstrative problem when my DSL marketeer, Flashcom, went belly-up. Covad, the DSL ISP running in the background, stepped in and saved the day, but it was all a hassle, and an increase in rates. Now Covad is on the brink themselves. Hope they can hang in there because the DSL service is tremendous.
Trebor, what a great plan! I'm going to put a 4' x 8' sign in my yard to tell my neighbors how bad service is!
Cable modem = shared connection.
DSL, on the other hand, is a dedicated connection. I've got Verizon in my area and have gone with their own ISP as the Internet provider as well. I'm very pleased to report that I've not had one single problem whatsoever. In fact, I was so happy with the "Silver" service (768 down/128 up) that I recently upgraded to a 1.5 megabit connection. I've now got practically a full T1 to my house for less than $80 a month.
It's fantastic, and there's no way I'd do be interested in the cable modem service, not after enjoying this dedicated and unstrained connection I have with DSL.
We've pretty well taped out the 'propeller-head market.' There are about eight million geeks in the country now -- including DSL and cable modem technology -- for whom the speed was enough. But we need something more than that to draw in the mass market and to really keep the broadband market growing...
