[Tfug] why not cable?

[Steven Bowers]

It has been several years since I looked at cable but these are the points that turned me away at the time. I suspect some of them are still a reality.

* You are strictly prohibited from running any type of a server. Even something as innocuous as an SSH or RDP server.

* Some people I knew at the time had their bill automatically changed from residential to commercial rates because Cox detected VPN usage on their line. At the time Cox felt that using a VPN back to your office constituted commercial usage and not residential. If you did not like it your only option at that time was to drop service.

* A co-worker of mine lived in the west university neighborhood. When the UofA was in session he could barely get dialup speeds off of his cable connection. After repeated complaints a Cox cable tech came out and found that some student on the same node was running a porn and MP3 server off of his connection. The tech did something and my co-worker got his bandwidth back. Sadly that lasted about a week before it degraded again.

Sure a 12M downstream connection is great. But how many sites have the server capacity and the bandwidth to support multiple, simultaneous 12M connections? Even MS which has massive amounts of bandwidth (mostly through Akamai) to support their user base are throttling speeds for things like service packs and such.

----- Original Message -----
From: Brian Masur
Sent: 9/11/2006 11:46:04 PM
To: tfug at tfug.org
Subject: [Tfug] why not cable?

> 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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