Hello
We have DSL at home and dial up here at the shop, but my son hogs the computer at home.
Mike which is faster DSL or Cable In your opinion?
That's a million dollar question
It depends entirely on the area, technology installed, and policies of the provider. Cable is technologically superior and faster, and will travel further distances - but ISP's have bandwidth caps/restrictions on all accounts. They limit how fast you can receive as well as how fast you can send.
When we got our COX (home) cable about 4 years ago, it was considerably faster than Verizon DSL. Cox has lowered my limits twice in that period, and it's now 60% slower. I can now send at 35 and receive at 600.
The trend lately has been for ISP's to lower prices and loosen the bandwith caps, but that trend hasn't hit our area yet unfortunately.
If you're on a business account, the matter worsens. Business Cox customers pay more than double that of residential, and are severely speed restricted to about 3x as fast as a dialup modem. (of course for $20/month more they'll bump it up a bit, and for $50/month more you can have the same speed as residential).
Around here, DSL has been a constant speed all along - with the price hovering higher than residential cable and lower than business cable.
I tried Verizon DSL at one of my businesses and found it to be quirky and unreliable. (dns issues, mail issues, downtime, etc) I didn't appreciate the special sign on procedures(pppoe), but that was quickly remedied by installing a router. This was a few years ago ... I bet they've improved by now. I have a Verizon T1 line for one of my computer clients, and they haven't had any complaints so far.
For info about trends and policies, check out
www.dslreports.com
Mike