I Kissed DSL Goodbye

Problems with DSL? Strange... I use DSL from EarthLink. Internet is super-fast, and I never have problems.

The problem with ADSL is that it's very unreliable if you're too far away from the exchange. Some campanies will sell you an uber-fast connection, but because of the distance involved it's just not possible to sustain a stable connection for a long period of time. It would be more appropriate to sell a slower connection that is stable, but of course, the way to attract customers is not to offer slower connections...

I recently got upgraded from 1 to 10meg cable. Only problems i've had is when they are doing scheduled maintenance. You and cable should get along great :)

I've suffered the same problems, Ryan. I used to have DSL and it was a major step up from dial-up, but it would constantly (well, at least twice a day while I was working, for more than 10 minutes on average) disconnect for no apparent reason, so we upgraded to cable. Unfortunately, the Cable service, while much faster and suffering from fewer connection problems, is still not up to par. I think it's just where I live, though.

Thanks for the suggestion, Ryan. I'll double-check, but I'm pretty sure that the firmware is up-to-date. One of the things that sometimes causes our Cable to go out in some areas of the house is that we have so many splitters, so that's probably the biggest problem.

I had cable and it was a mess. Horrible customer support and the cable connection was down for hours at a time, constantly. I also notice no speed difference between either DSL or cable. But good luck, anyway.

All I know is since I've had cable, I don't recall an outtage (knock on wood). ever. And it's so freakin fast.

My measure of satisfactory speed goes something like this:
select a quicktime movie trailer.
choose LARGE
watch the movie as it's downloading.
if it downloads faster than I can watch it (w/o pauses, bad syncing, etc) then it's good.

DSL doesn't come close. not in my area at least.
enjoy the new lady....

I did the same thing. My DSL carrier would go down and/or have a billing error and cut the service which of course would take 2 weeks to get back up. I called the cable co and they had me up and running by noon the next day for half the $$.

lol you'll be happy you did. I'm still mad that I HAVE to have DSL in my current apt building because the landlord has some kind of nonsense where hes getting paid by SBC not to allow the Cable internet companeis to provide service or install lines here... just in these two buildings. CAble is 10 times better.

I'll see your 5 Mbit and raise it 10Mbit! I'm getting FiOS (15Mbit) installed for the same price as my DSL on Nov. 30. Yes, that's blips of light traveling 299,792,458 m/s. Whahooo!

Sorry to have to inform you that while light always travels at the same speed, since it's travelling through a medium, the photons will collide with atoms, will be absorbed, and then re-emitted. That will obviously slow the photons down somewhat, therefore the actual overall speed will be greatly reduced.

The actual speed can be calculated if you know the refractive index of the cable, for example, if the refractive index is 1.5, then the speed will be closer to 2 * 10^8 m/s.

Here's a good introduction to how light travels through a medium:
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/Class/refrn/u14l1d.html

Wow, I don't think it's possible to rate on any scale how not interested you are in this post. :p

Well have fun with the new cable line, I am on a 5mbit cable line right now and its amazing!

It is nice for downloading large files like Linux ISOs and stuff...

Interesting comments. Here, DSL is cheaper AND more reliable. I guess it's where you live.

[i]Interesting comments. Here, DSL is cheaper AND more reliable. I guess it's where you live.[i]-Briiiiiiian

Lol I think its just where you live, here DSL is cheaper but not nearly as reliable, and you dont get a real IP, just those crappy ones where you can't host games!

How is an IP not real? Do you just mean an IP that isn't static?

At home I've got uncapped 2Mbps ADSL with a static IP, it's very reliable and always on. Not had a single problem with it.

[i]

How is an IP not real? Do you just mean an IP that isn't static?

At home I've got uncapped 2Mbps ADSL with a static IP, it's very reliable and always on. Not had a single problem with it.[/i]-David Harrison

Well it is when its like an internal IP like you are behind a router, but you really arent, my friend has the problem and he is straight using his DSL modem!

Ryan, I think you're being victimised by spammers.

David Brent:

Yes very much so but oddly enough only in the XBOX 360 topic, lol i think its time to close comments for it ;)

>DSL is cheaper but not nearly as reliable, and you dont get a real IP, just those crappy ones where you can't host games!

You can host games on DSL just the same as you can on cable. You do keep your IP address for less time on DSL, but you can run a dynamic DNS domain (like <a href="http://www.tzo.com">TZO.COM</a>) and have a nice 'static domain address' (who cares if the IP changes?)

The only reason to not use DSL, is because in the USA/CND and other "developed" countries there is an underdevelopment of DSL. In Germany we rarely have cable internet offered, and it's usually more expensive and not as reliable as DSL.
Cable doesn't have much of a future. At some point you'll be switching over to ADSL2 as well, and whatever else comes.

posted by Nick
>My measure of satisfactory speed goes something like this:
>select a quicktime movie trailer.
>choose LARGE
>watch the movie as it's downloading.
>if it downloads faster than I can watch it (w/o pauses, bad syncing, >etc) then it's good.
>
>DSL doesn't come close. not in my area at least.
>enjoy the new lady....

I can do that on my ADSL connection. it is also faster and cheaper than any available Cable connection in this State (Australia)
Although I do have a good line and live fairly close to the exchange - I get between 18 and 21Mbps sync speed. The slight variance is because I switch off and unplug the modem when I am not at home. (nasty afternoon storms here from time to time). In the 9 months I ahve had the connection it has dropped out or been unavailable 3 times. Two of those were screw ups in the exchange when they were upgrading.

You lucky man, I would be jumping 5m high if I had even the DSL you are leaving... I live in the Czech republic and I must say, the Internet connectivity is quite expensive for an ordinary student. Me and about four people from the nearest neighbourhood have a 2mbit DSL and we're sharing it over WiFi. Well, sometimes it goes these 2m but it's very rare (and when it is bad weather, it's getting even worse).

I've been using DSL for years now. no problems at all. the downloads are also preety fast

Of course no single server is going to be able to let you download at 5Mbit. I have a T1 here, and we rarely can fill it when downloading from a single server. But the nice thing about 5Mbit is that you can fit 5 1Mbit pipes from 5 different servers down it. And bit torrents....aaahhhhh.... ;-)

Well, you would be correct if no server is connected with anything faster than a T1, but that's hardly the case. Many data centers would have an OC-3, which speeds away at 155Mbs. Even if they only have a T3, they have close to 45 Mbit upload... Spanks our 5 Mbit Cable pretty bad. ;)

Fastest connection in use that I'm aware of? The U.S. cross-country backbone runs at a sizzling 10Gbs. In perspective, it would take less than 3 seconds to transfer a full-size DVD.

The fastest connection every made? Faster than 100 petabit/s or 100,000 terabit or 100,000,000 gigabit. Mind you this data was only going one meter, but it's still very impressive. To put petabit into perspective, all of Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo's data combined is thouhgt to be under 20 peta-bit. Now where do I signup for one of those? :D

Our Cable isn't quite as impressive anymore... :(

HEY. did u used to live in kingsport?

Adam, I'm afraid that's not entirely accurate.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/55041

"1831 Gigabytes of data in an hour", that works out to be 0.509 Gigabytes per second (GB/s) which is 4.07 Gigabits per second (Gbps).

The units that the article uses are Petabit metres per second and the data was transfered over a much greater distance than a metre. In fact it's possible to work out the distance.

(124.9359 * 1024 * 1024) Gbmps / 4.07 Gbps ~= 32,200,000 m

Which is 32,200 Km (or just over 20,000 miles), which is a huge distance, the distance from the north pole to the equator is 10,000Km.

Also check out this page.

The team ... transferred 859 gigabytes of data in less than 17 minutes. It did so at a rate of 6.63 gigabits per second between the CERN facility in Geneva, Switzerland, and Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., a distance of more than 15,766 kilometers, or approximately 9,800 miles.

So if you work it out that's approximately 104,500,000 Gbmps, or 104.5 Pbmps (the actual value is 99.69 Pbmps if you take the correct value of 1024 bits in a Kilobit, as opposed to 1000). Later in the article it goes on to say.

The performance also is the first record to break the 100-petabit meter per second mark.

You are correct. Still very impressive, though. Actually, it's almost more impressive. ;)

Thanks for the correction. I was in a hurry when I posted... :D

Yeah, very impressive, especially when you consider that the transfers are not just between countries, but between continents!

I Bellsouth extreme dsl or 3.megabits per second works well here.
We are only a few blocks from the local switch..which helps too...
DSL home networking is great with super local support
no one comes close with service and support...special phone number for home networking customers...
re consider your drink...obey your thirst for great support.!!!!
walter