[Tfug] why not cable?

[Shawn Nock]

Chad Woolley wrote:
> Thanks for mentioning this Peter, I hadn't thought of this (or how
> important it was).  I'm a work-at-home employee, so I live by remote
> control software.  I now know I can never go to cable and expect the
> same performance as DSL.
>   

I wouldn't sound as sure as you do about the benefits of DSL vs. 
cable... Often times you can go to cable and expect better performance. 
See below.
> On 9/12/06, Peter Collins <pcollinsca47 at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> My 2 cents on dsl vs cable for home use.
>>
>> The bigger pain is the lower upload speeds which impacts remote access via VNC
>> or Remote Desktop 
There should definitely be a YMMV inserted somewhere in here. I am 
looking at Qwest Residential and they don't offer as high an upload as 
Cox... Comcast offers pretty much the same upload speed. I run multiple 
RDP and VNC connections over IPSEC to work on 9down/1up cable and it is 
pretty much flawless. I must say that I don't notice a significant 
improvement in VNC or RDP since I upgraded from 6down/512up. It has 
always worked very well...

I guess what I am saying is that Peter's statement is quite 
authoritative sounding, but really... There are a lot of people doing 
exactly what you are doing on cable and it's working great. Plus, "when 
you buy now" you get to receive large files at six to nine Mbit... 
compare to residential DSL @ 1.5 to 5Mbit.

In general the shared bandwidth slowdown is probably over-rated. I've 
been a Cox Customer in 3 different neighborhoods near the U (densely 
populate with eager pirates) and have never experienced any significant 
latency or "slowdown".
>> - these are much better when connecting to a DSL site. 
Obviously, from the comment above this is a point of differing opinion.
>> Comcast
>> (out of town) has even slower upload speeds than Cox. Transferring
>> large files like
>> my folk's latest photos from their cable site is like reverting to dialup.
>>     
>
>   
Dialup upload is 33.6Kbit/s max (53.3 down/33.6 up) without bonding 
hassles... Slowest cable in town is 384Kbit/s. If by reverting to dialup 
you mean an order of magnitude faster than dialup then you are correct.

Look, there are compelling reasons to choose DSL over cable and vice 
versa; Hype and superfluous stretches to hyperbole bordering on 
misinformation are not among them.

DSL is in general:
    cheaper
    constant speed

Cable is in general:
    faster
    available in more areas

Analyze your situation, read the material readily available and make and 
informed decision based on your needs. Take subjective experiences from 
Internet know-it-alls like me with a grain of salt because: YMMV.

Peace,
Shawn

---
Shawn Nock (OpenPGP: 0xB64200E1)
Broadcast Engineer; KUAT Communications Group
University of Arizona
nock 'at ' arizona 'dot' edu
--
"Despair leads to boredom, electronic games, computer hacking, poetry, 
and other bad habits."  -Edward Abbey