OT: Cable vs. DSL

[Hal]

That's like asking who has the cuter belly button, Shania Twain (anti gun petition signer) or the girl in the Browning Buckmark ads. ( <--clever, but feeble attempt to link gun content to the thread)

Cable has one area where it is better than DSL. If you need to download massive amounts of data, Cable is the only way to go. For web surfing, it's an even match. In any given week at work, I will run across everything from a 28.8 dial up to T1. I run cable at home, and many of my customers run DSL, so I get to see just about everything there is to offer.

My advice is use whatever is the cheapest of the two. Most of the time you won't notice a difference. One thing to remember though is that DSL uses copper. Most areas are moving to fiber. DSL is destined to have a short, but fast, lifespan.

[This message has been edited by RAE (edited September 14, 2000).]

 

[oberkommando]

I say go with frame relay.

 

[KaMaKaZe]

Well thank-you Ron Ankeny, but I was referring to just regular FTP.

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God, Guns and Guts made this country a great country!

oberkommando sez:
"We lost the first and third and now they are after the Second!(no pun intended)"

 

[Incursion]

One thing to remember is that DSL is distance dependent. My home in Houston is on the outer edges of the box, so my speeds aren't that fast.

 

[Ron Ankeny]

KMKZ:

Hypertext Transfer Protocol and File Transfer Protocol are both application layer protocols and are transported using Transmission Control Protocol. I was just jerking your chain. Thought you might be thinking that streaming audio or video actually traveled along faster because it uses Trivial File Transport Protocol at the application layer and is transported using User Datagram Protocol giving the false appearance of transporting data faster, like music. The fact of the matter is that bandwidth has nothing to do with protocols at all.

As for the talk of transport media, distance and so on, the majority of bottleneck problems on the "backbone" of the Internet, where we are dealing with high speed connections, don't have much to do with the physical media that the data packet encounters along the way. More often than not the problem is with routing such as loops and DNS troubles.

I probably am not any smarter than the rest of you folks but I do teach Internetworking through a CISCO Networking Academy for a living and it is best to speak in general terms rather than try to get too involved. The guys who contend that the decision should be based on service vs. cost are correct.