hi guys iam looking to get rid of comcast but where i live there is not much in terms of good fast internet service.some of the local phone companys offer DSL but is DSL any good for xboxlive and two computers and phone.comcast handles all of these with no problems.now cavalier phone company says i live close to signal.so i would get good speed.iam not really sure so i come to you guys for help on this one.
Well I have cable and I love it. I have my phone and internet through cable. My friend has DSL and I can download stuff 3x faster. I have two computers and four phones and have never had any problems with speed. I am not telling you what to do but I would go with cable.
thank you for the reply its just that comcast is expensive as all hell and the service is just ok.but i think i will stick it out until a better cable company come to my town.its like comcast owns philadelphia.
Are there any wireless providers where you live? Motorola canopy wireless gear is amazing, the bandwith capabilities are astonishing.
Cable internet In most cases you will find that cable is faster. Upload speeds are also faster. The disadvantage is that when a bunch of users are using thier net it will slow you down. Depending on how far you are from the office and how the ISP has their stuff set up will affect how slow it will actually get. The further you are from the office the slower your net can possibly be. They will still offer you thier top speed even if your location cant go that fast. There are many cable ISP that will intentionaly, dramatically, slow down certain internet activities. Now this will not slow down your entire net speed just the programs that use the grey area such as torrent traffic and even sometimes games. Overall normal net browsing and downloading will not be slowed down. Not all ISP pratice this. You will also find that with some cable ISPs you can be cut off if you transfer to much info and they will not tell you how much is to much. DSL Most likely will carry slower net speeds but the speed will remain constant. It will not slow down as 100s of users log in. Your connection is specific to your home. Much the way dial up works. You may have some slight slow down at times but will not be noticeable to you. Most DSL ISPs will not slow down any type of internet activity or cut you off for transfering to much data since your usage will not affect others in any way. DSL has a limit of 3.5 miles from the local office or a repeater. Just like cable the further you are the slower it gets. DSL carriers are good about knowing how fast your location can actually go so they sell you speed based on your location. In other words cable may sell you a certain speed but if you are to far away you wont even come close to the speed they sold you. When DSL sells you a certain speed you will get that speed maybe a few K slower but not much. Overall it all depends where your home is and how both Cable and DSL are set up. Cable would be the better choice for some homes wheras other homes would do better with DSL. Example: Where I live cable only offers 2MBs. When I tried it I was lucky to go above 1MBs. DSL Offers max speed of 6MBs but at my location only 3MBs. Now on DSL I get 2.9MBs. Because of my location and they way Cable and DSL are set up DSL is the better choice for me. -Del
Sometimes this is to your advantage. What I mean is that I pay for 3MBs, but I am getting 5MBs and sometime (but very really) 6MBs when downloading. I usually stay around 4 to 5MBs when just browsing.
@saltynuts ... I live in Philly too and you're sure right about Comcast; they're the only ballgame in town so they do want they want, treat people like crap and charge what they want. That's what happens when you have a monopoly. The phone company use to be like that until the courts forced them to break up because of monopoly laws. I wish they'd do that with comcast! DSL is wierd in the sense that it depends on where in Philly you live. My DSL is pretty damned fast but I live in center city and with all the businesses in CC, Verizon would lose a fortune with those huge DSL accounts. A friend on mine in Mount Airy also has DSL and it's much slower than mine. I'll have one of those comcast "packages" in a couple of weeks; if you have cable, internet and phone, it's a good bit cheaper but I'm leary because comcast are really a bunch of snakes in the grass. I'm nervous that once I have it for a bit, they'll change everything and it will cost me a fortune. I just don't trust them.
gerry1 just make sure when they come out and do your install that they give you a new modem its the one with no standby button as the unit with the button works like cheap shit,and yes comcast is a monopoly but as you know they decided to keep their headquarters here in philly so there is a big tax break from the city .and when there is a tax break in anything watch out.can't wait for verizon fios to come to the city as it is in the burbs.
I have Verizon DSL, and it is supposed to have a speed of 1.5mbit/s. When I check with verizon's speed test they say I have whatever I am supposed to have for download speed, I can't remember what it is right now, but whenever I download something it downloads really fast for the first few seconds, like 1500kb/s, then slowly drops to between 70 and 90kb/s. Any ideas how to fix this? Or if I can fix this? I found this site, one of many I am sure, that says it can optimize my DSL speeds, but I don't think I should trust it. It is http://www.dsl-speed.org/
