cable vs dsl - Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating

mrmacey · 11-03-2003, 04:31 PM

what are the main pros and cons if your just useing dsl for emails and checking sites no downloading or file transfers and how hard is it to connect to computer do you still need a modem or is it just phone lines thank you.

fishweewee · 11-09-2003, 08:08 AM

I ain't no expert Mike but here's how I see the differences...

DSL cheaper than cable

Cable somewhat faster than DSL

Need a dedicated phone line for DSL if your home has an alarm system

striperjerk1 · 11-09-2003, 08:32 AM

i have cable and it works well for downloading. i upgraded the memory, i had 128k put in 512k, and wow what a difference. seems a lot faster now. either way i think if you upgrade youre memory it should run even better.

Newboater · 11-12-2003, 10:57 AM

Had a friend ask me to come look at their new e-machine computer because it was running slow.

1. Son had 8 programs running in system tray ie., Kazaa, Porn site etc.

2. Hard drive hadn't been defragged since Moses found the tablets.

3. System only has 96 Megs of memory and running Windows XP. Like having a Hummer with volkwagon 4 cyc engine to power it.-

After turning off auto run programs and cleaning hard drive the machine ran 5 times faster.

Recommended that 96Meg of RAM be turned into 256MB minimum or 512 MB maximum for even faster XP operation.

Sarge

scoobe · 11-17-2003, 08:18 PM

Both DSL and cable are broadband. So, they are both much, much faster than ordinary dialup connections, though in general cable is faster.

Both require the use of an external modem. In the case of DSL, an ordinary phone line is plugged into the modem, and then a cat-5 cable goes from the modem into your pc's ethernet card (NIC). In the case of cable, a cable cord comes into the house and into the cable modem, then a cat-5 cable goes to your pc's NIC once again.

To sum that up... both require an external modem and NIC's for your pc. If you are not doing anything bandwidth intensive, like downloading large files, I would go with the cheaper which is usually DSL.

beachwalker · 11-21-2003, 09:07 AM

Upgrade to 512.

Light speed...........

JohnR · 11-21-2003, 09:10 AM

Avoid dial up modems if you can.

For business, technically they want more money for DSL or Cable.

They are comparable with cheap dsl being sometimes cheaper than cable but comparable speed plans have business class dsl much more than cable.

Both require "modems" that are specific to the flavor of broadband. A dial up modem won't work.

TheSpecialist · 11-23-2003, 08:49 PM

One notable difference is that DSL is on a dedicated line. On a cable connection you share the same line as everyone in the neighborhood. If a crapload of people in the hood have the cable , and are online it slows down the connection...

179 · 11-27-2003, 10:16 AM

Well I can tell you that I just upgraded to cable internet at home, and I have DSL at work. The cable here at the house seems to be quicker than my DSL at work...

mrmacey · 11-27-2003, 10:26 AM

Fiber optic its being installed tommorro Ill let you know how it works.

macojoe · 11-29-2003, 06:21 PM

Well I have comcast cable and it works fine. I am running a
Dell 4400 1.6 gig machine.
I just to day upgraded the ram from 256 to 512 mb and I can say it made a big difference!!
How is that fiber Optic working?? And who do you get that thur??

crashfromamesbury · 12-05-2003, 10:54 PM

well, i have had both, and i work currently selling business dsl,
wont say for who (but they are a very large local telephone co)

cable, fast, can be very fast, however on the same pipe that all your neighbors are on, downfall, the more people on the slower your connection.

pro. not really distance sensative..

dsl. con, distance sensative, and sometimes even if you are with in distance (18000 linear feet of central office) there are still things that can prevent you from getting it, such as line quality, and other things on lines ..

pro. direct connection over direct line to central office, and that means you dont' lose line speed when all your neighbors are on.

by all means neither are perfect, but i currently run on home based dsl, which is ok, but if i had my options, i'd bite the bullet spend a little more and have a business line installed, not a lot more and download speeds are far faster.. also options are greater, like webhosting and managed mail .. (domain name e mail)

but i sound like a salesman,

i have a question.. how do you defrag a hard drive???

i work on these silly machines all day, and have no idea how to do that...

(ps, be careful how many computers you link into a single broadband connection (either dsl or cable) the more you link in the slower each machine runs..

later

this is how i spend many a day at my computer..

and by all means, the more ram you have the faster the computer works, i have 512 but want a gig..

Newboater · 12-08-2003, 07:10 AM

Well Defrag is just the finish of the procedure.

Always make sure ALL applications are closed before you do maintenance on your hard drive.

1. Do a ScanDisk or Chkdsk of your computer hard drive with the Scan Disk feature of windows under Accessories/System Tools.

2. After, again insure no other application is running, all the way down to Screen Savers. Why? Any process that starts up will be recognized by the hard drive and the defrag will start all over again because 'Drive Contents Have Changed'

Scan Disk will find any file mismatch errors and fix them automatically. ( A disk with file errors will not defrag )

Depending on usage of your machine the above should be done at a minimum once a month. If you see the fragmented report is always light, make it every two months. Heavy defragmenting, do it every two weeks.

Also, 2 free utilities to insure you rid yourself of ad-ware are Ad-Aware ( free version ) and Spy-Bot ( Free Version). These work very well and remove spy-ware and ad-ware from your machine.

The Ole Sarge

JohnR · 12-08-2003, 11:24 AM

Also first DISCONNECT COMPUTER FROM NETWORK or DSL/Cable. Then temporarily disable virus scan software. Then start with the items mentioned above. Will make it more likely to make it thu the scan...

I've had 384K SDSL (8K from CO) and it ran like a champ, ran this site out of my living room for the first year on it. But it was more of a fun thing than a business decision. Too many things to go wrong in a home hosting environment. SDSL is better than ADSL. Cable can be pretty good too but there can be oversell issures there too.

Hmmm, maybe I need a T3

Jonny Bolt · 12-13-2003, 09:49 AM

T3, mmmm yummy. Fiber Optics is big bucks. I used to be a Structural Cabling Engineer, and installed many a feet of Fiber lol.

I currently have Comcast Cable, and its pretty good. I have seen DSL speeds faster, but its currently unavailable in my area. We were the last to have digital lines installed. Hell, Epping, NH had broadband years before we did lol. I remember we were the last to get Caller IDD too! Damnit! lol

With a little registry tweaking, you can speed up your broadband connection

Jonny Bolt · 12-18-2003, 09:53 AM

Well I just found out DSL is available here now.

I also found out that Comcast just doubled the download speeds for broadband cable customers, free of charge.

I did a bandwith speed test on my cable connection after resetting my cable modem, and i scored a 5.5MB a second download speed

woohoohoo

macojoe · 12-18-2003, 11:57 AM

how do you do that test?? I have comcast and was thinking of going with DSL?? But would like to do that test.
Thanks

Jonny Bolt · 12-18-2003, 12:39 PM

HI. Just go here....

http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/

You can get a free test there.

If you havent already, make sure to unplug your cable modem for about 1 minute to reset the connection.

You can also go to PCpitstop.com and do some free tests. Very good site.

If you know how to "tweak", and feel comfortable doing so, you can also go to broadbandreports.com, and download some tools that will make it easier to do Windows Registry tweaks, like set your own TCP receive window, which will eek out a little more performance from your connection. It teaches you how to use tools right on the site, pretty straightforward.

In most instances, cable is going to be faster than ADSL. I have seen 5MB per second download speeds (reported) with DSL, but that was not in New England. Every area is different. Granted, you get a dedicated line with DSL, but the farther away you are from the Central Office switch, the more performance you lose.

If you go here....

http://www22.verizon.com/forhomedsl/...l+vs+cable.asp

Verizon lists some pretty stupid comparisons in order to sell DSL.

"Use the same phone line for phone/fax and high-speed Internet."

Yeah, but cable is all one wire too, a coaxial cable. Phone, TV, internet.

"Pay for high-speed Internet access on your monthly Verizon phone bill. "

Yeah, and all my stuff is on one bill too. Phone, TV, internet.

"Access your DSL from any room in your home with a phone jack."

Yeah, and I can access my cable connection from any room with a coaxial jack. Thats includes phone, internet and TV.

As you can see, there arent really any advantages of one over the other. Companies just try to make up things that "sound good" to the unsuspecting consumer. Cable & DSL can both suffer loss of performance. Like mentioned earlier, DSL suffers the farther away you are from the Central Office, and Cable suffers when you live in a densely populated area, and every single neighbor has a Cable modem.

Good luck. Speeding up your broadband connection is fairly simple.

And lets give props to Comcast for actually GIVING us something lol. I heard they were gonna double the download speed, but I didnt think it would be done so fast

macojoe · 12-18-2003, 01:26 PM

I went to the first address you said to and I got 3.5 mb so I am slower then you are buy alot!
I don't no anything about tweaking the system so I will have to stay here for awhile.
I could not get a MB speed out of pc pit stop?? But they say it is 3029 kb/s for download and 214 kb/s for upload
Not sure what that means as far as MB from the first test I did??

Thanks!!

Jonny Bolt · 12-18-2003, 02:02 PM

3.5MB/s is damn good. Thats higher than advertised. They doubled download speeds from 1.5MB/s to 3MB/s, so your getting pretty good down speeds.

With my tweaked Registry, bandwithplace.com wont even allow the test for me anymore lol. It says the speed is too high.

I score about 4150KB/s (a little over 4MB/s) on PCPitstop.com.

Your 3029KB/s from PCpitstop.com means 3 Megabytes, or a tad more actually. So thats right on

They promised to double, so anything 3MB/s or over is great.

1000 KB's = 1Megabyte

If you really want to test, and "tweak", go here and read. It really isnt that hard if take your time to read up 'bout it.

http://www.broadbandreports.com/stest

You may have to join the site in order to use the East Coast test server, but this test server is located where it can reach major backbones via a DS3 connection (DS3 is 45MB/s). Make sure you have Java installed too if you wanna use this site. If you dont, they have a link to it.

Actually, just go here....

http://www.broadbandreports.com/drtcp

Download DRTCP, open it, and in the TCP Received Window box, put 36956. then go back to PCPitstop and retest. You should get 4000KB/s for download speeds, maybe a little more.

macojoe · 12-18-2003, 02:16 PM

I did as you said and went up to 3370 from 3029 so it is better.

I have no problems but always looking to go faster!

I forgot to say that I have a single Cable Modem going thur a router and I have a total of 3 computers hooked up.

I have a Dell 1.6 gig
Son has a 333 Compaq
Daughter Has a 200 IBM Laptop

Well now that I no Iam doing my best I am Happy!
Thanks again!!

Jonny Bolt · 12-18-2003, 02:49 PM

No problem. Glad I could help.

SInce you got the hang of fooling with the TCP Received Window, you can try something different instead of 36956, step up to 40,000, retest, and see what you get. If you score higher, try 50000, if its lower, then step back down to 40000, etc. There is actually a formula to figure out your TCP Received Window number. If you do the Tweak Test on broadbandreports.com, you will be able to get the formula, then you can download DR Ping, and use it to get your ping time, then use the formula to come up with a TCP Received Window value, and try it in DRTCP.

My head is spinning lol.

Merry Christmas.

Raven · 04-01-2004, 01:27 PM

768 download speeds for my network and i actually have two ip addys with charter (tv) via cable...(it was a package deal) soon
i'll have a mail server running and Set up my company website.
then i'll be off and running plus i'll be creating a 3d world we can all go play in.... heh heh heh