The town I live in just recently up graded our phone lines to fiber optics. There are poles in the ground, where they buried them, that has the words "fiber optic" on them. So if I get a T3 connection like PhillipSVT said how much faster will that be than DSL. I don't think my area is set up for cable.

 

Not always true, DSL works on what is called a `Bell Curve`, and the fastest speeds are in the exact middle of the distance from the CO (central office). The people closest won't get the best speeds, and neither will the farthest away, but in the sweet spot of the bell curve, you will do well. Cable is awesome, unless it's shared by a ton of people, then it starts getting a little slow, but it's still good. You'll usually get better pings with Cable than with DSL, but DSL rocks. The upside to DSL is that it's consistant, unlike cable. I work for SBC, and right now we are offering speeds of 384k-1.55m download for $29.99 per month. As far as the filters go for dsl, they're just plug in and forget about them. Anything other than the DSL modem will need a filter, though. DSL can be sensitive, but if you just make sure that your modem is on a hard flat surface and not within a foot of anything electronic, it should be ok.

 

I've had cable for years, first with Roadrunner and then with Charter. Both were sporatic with speed flucuating often. My son works for a business phone company... Lucent... and keeps me abreast of all this kind of stuff and when a switching station went in about 1000 ft from his and my home, we both switched to DSL with Bellsouth...... much faster (1.3meg vrs whatever) and cheaper than what we were paying for cable in our area.

I've been on DSL for two months now and I must say there defintely is a difference in speed with DSL and a lot more consistancy....... I was at my brothers this weekend and he too has DSL but his speed is only 675 meg but he is on the fringe of his area.

You can go to bandwidthplace.com and find out just what you are getting in speed.........

 

Unless one downlaods a lot of data, like peer ot peer stuff, then which medium you use doesn't matter as much as the quality of service. How much down time and how good is the customer service. If you have many options, go with the cheapest, which typically seems to be DSL for promotions.

Also, contracts. Cable typically doesn't have them but most DSL providers do.

 

PhillipSVT was messin' with you a little bit.

A true T3 delivers 45mb per second and would cost you a lot more than $50 a month.

As long as we're shopping big time, skip the T3 and go straight for an OC12...

 

Optimum Online Cable always at 900K U/L 3.5 mb's D/L

 

I've been working with digital telecom technology for quite a while and I've never heard of any "Bell Curve"...

There are many types of "DSL" available, but most public uses will be of the "ADSL" variety.

ADSL: Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line

1.544 to 6.1 Mbps downstream
16 to 640 Kbps upstream

1.544 Mbps at 18,000 feet
2.048 Mbps at 16,000 feet
6.312 Mbps at 12,000 feet
8.448 Mbps at 9,000 feet

As you can see, the closer you are to the switch, the faster - up to the limit of the DSLAM installed at the switch.

The curve would not be "Bell" shaped, it would be more like a flat line that sloped downward at the end...

Of course, if the DSLAM is connected to the backbone by a limited bandwidth connection, you will only get as much throughput as the weakest link...

There are several new xDSL technologies that will deliver even higher speeds, in the not too distant future.

As cable providers continue to add "Video On Demand" features to their standard offering and more and more houses start using their IP services, you can expect cable modem speeds to continue to slow down.

 

People have been saying that over and over. Yet cable speeds keep going up, weird.

 

Not around here...

 

College = T3

it is good!

 

Regarding cable being "shared bandwidth" and DSL being guaranteed bandwidth .... nothing is guaranteed, and everyone is sharing regardless of what type connection you have. As far as hardware, cable shares at the neighborhood node. DSL shares at the hardware in the CO. Plus, it's called "the Internet" - everyone that has access uses it. Hence, everyone shares.

Another point ... ever heard the phrase "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link"? Same goes for 'net connections. If I download from a site that's hosted on a T3, it will haul a$$. Connect to a site hosted on a 56K modem (not likely, but I have seen a few), and your download will only go as fast as that 56K modem.

I'm on Road Runner cable, and it's awesome. Recently in my area, they increased the speed by 50%. Went from 250 KBytes/sec (yes, bytes) to 375 KBytes/sec. It's still throttled to that maximum speed, but I'll take any speed increase I can get. For me, that's plenty fast for general use like surfing web sites. I don't play online games, so I don't need fast ping times.

 

Around here it's more of a BellSouth curve...

 

Cable is generally considered the best because I have it jk

no I think Cable is better than DSL anyday. (except every Tuesday night from 1:00 AM -1:01 AM)

 

SBC works on a `Bell Curve`, I promise. I don't know what the exact speeds are for each distance, but I know that the mid-range from the CO gets the highest speeds, at least with SBCYahoo! DSL.

 

Video on Demand (VOD) is not even on the same frequency as the carrier for the forward data. As to using the same IP pool, ummm not to my knowledge. The bandwidth is separate for VOD, Voice over IP and the High speed Internet. More bandwidth is on the way. I know that we are not using our system to its full capacity in Mhz's yet. (Currently built to 860mhz)