[Tfug] why not cable?

[Garrett Hoxie]

I recently switched from DSL to Cox Premier and I haven't looked back.
 From my experiences cable is available in more areas than DSL.  My
best guess at the reason why is the distance requirements for DSL
between the user and the CO/RT.  Anyway, our cable service is
advertised at 9Mbps/1Mbps, but we are able to sustain speeds higher
than that often (i.e. from http://mirror.espri.arizona.edu/gentoo/
... thanks to whomever runs that).  We get stable 1.1 MBps downloads
from there.  We also got a letter from Cox a couple days ago saying
the service is being bumped to 12 Mbps down soon and the price is
being dropped $5 to $60/month now (only about $8 more than we were
paying for DSL on a dry line).  Unfortunately they didn't mention
anything about the upstream bandwidth being increased, but we have our
fingers crossed.  Cox also still forces you to use their SMTP servers
and blocks a few ports.  One of the reasons DSL used to be attractive
to me was the fact that the upstream was so much better than cable's.
My parent's Comcast connection still has a painfully slow upload (384
Kbps I believe).  The Cox upstream is pretty nice though.  I still
wish the up and down speeds were closer together, but to my knowledge
this is the best we can do here.

-Garrett

On 9/12/06, Judy Hayes <judylynn at tomatothyme.com> wrote:
> Also cable isnt available everywhere DSL is... I just moved but I was living
> in Vail, my choices (exit 281 south) were DSL or satellite... no cable at
> all much to my dismay, so gaming sucked... although I hate living in the
> city I can game again, so it was a fair trade moving back I suppose ;p
>
> The satellite for me sucked, 1.5 second relay, so vpn, gaming etc was
> impossible, might as well dial up. As for the DSL the latency kicked my ass
> too... not NEARLY as awful, but not great. Cable from my experience provides
> the best gaming solution... again, only my personal experience.
>
> Judy Lynn
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Chad Woolley" <thewoolleyman at gmail.com>
> To: "Tucson Free Unix Group" <tfug at tfug.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 12:13 AM
> Subject: Re: [Tfug] why not cable?
>
>
> >I always heard cable had more latency, thus contributing to higher
> > pings (or more deaths in first person shooters).  I've always wondered
> > if this was true, or only true in some cases...
> >
> > On 9/11/06, Brian Masur <bcmasur at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> Hey everyone.  I'm always seeing articles about DSL on tfug.org.  Why
> >> don't
> >> you want cable?  I see DSL, at roughly the cheapest of $25/month like
> >> qwest.
> >>   Cox and Comcast is roughly $40 per  month and 4 times faster or even
> >> more
> >> faster.  $50 per month if you do not have cable TV, which would likely be
> >> my
> >> situation if I wasn't getting a neighbor's wifi-g link for free.
> >>
> >> Even then, many parts of the inner city businesses of Tucson, (you might
> >> think Qwest would care of them) can't even get 256kbps (may as well use
> >> dial-up)...
> >> 1.5mbps is SLOW.  I often get faster on comcast cable than DSL's physical
> >> limit of 7mbps.  Cable's physical limit is roughly 40+ X faster than DSL.
> >>
> >> I ask again, why pay for DSL in tucson when cable is at least four times
> >> faster for only twice the cost or less?  Same for everywhere else in USA
> >> I
> >> have ever lived.  And cable is available wherever DSL is, and further.
> >> Cable has a longer range as a standard from CO, by about 3x.
> >>
> >> Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm probably right for everyone I've lived in
> >> USA.  Cable is better than DSL short of being free.
> >>
> >> Interested in seeing your responses!
> >> Brian
>
>
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