could use some advice on the best high speed option

[pimp tyranny]

fiiinally moving out of my parents' house, and one of the biggest advantages is access to high speed internet (we live in the country, where they won't work it out here because it's not profitable enough, bastards). so i was wondering what my best option was. my cousins, who lived with each other for a while, would sign on to road runner i think for the extent of the limited time sign on discount, then end it. then the other brother would sign on for the same thing, thereby always having a discount. is this a good idea? i'm not really picky about the brand, just that it fucking stomps the shit out of dial-up. thanks for any help.

[thagoat]

cable is fast.

[Beana Blasta]

Dont get Dsl!!!

[pimp tyranny]

thanks guys, but i'm going more for the most bang for my buck.

[Ender]

I'm not sure what you are asking for here.....broadband ISPs are usually relevant to your area, so it would be almost impossible for us to tell you what the best deal would be for your area. In my area, comcast is the only option, cable-wise. I like it, altho it isn't the cheapest.

[Graystone]

http://www.dslreports.com/


is a great site check it out and do your research.

[skulls dont fade]

seriously, no dsl. there is so much that can go wrong during a dsl order.

[pimp tyranny]

thanks for that link, it's useful, although i'm not seeing what's so bad about DSL besides it's not as fast as cable. i'm gonna check prices now.

[apokalipze2]

dsl is fine. I've been using SBC for 5 years now without a serious problem. Anyhow if you want to save go with dsl.

[AFStealth]

What I love about DSL is that your speed never goes down, but of course this also means it doesn't go faster than what you pay for. Basically, you get stability.

Cable on the other hand can go way faster than DSL, but you also have the chance that somedays it'll come to a crawl because everyone in your area shares the connection.

[thagoat]

you ever tried dial up? its the wave of the fututre.

[skulls dont fade]

dsl is factored by your distance from the central office. plus, with certain carriers (that will remain nameless), if you lose phone service (due to any situation - late payment, bad weather, etc) you have to reorder, completely. causing you to be without service for a week to 2 weeks. it's very seriously a bad situation. i don't know how all companies work of course...just the one that i work for.

[pimp tyranny]

do i need a phone service for DSL? i'd rather not since my roommate and i'll both have cell phones.

[Kyo]

I think so - I have SBC Yahoo DSL and I think you need SBC phone service for it to work. From what I can see, they put DSL on a phone line as if it was an extra service, kinda like adding Caller ID or Call waiting on a line.

Sides, DSL prices have dropped greatly these days, nearly matching dial up in some cases.

[greendj27]

do i need a phone service for DSL? i'd rather not since my roommate and i'll both have cell phones.

Nope, you can get it as a stand alone option.

[Kayden]

DSL is cheaper, however, its slower and limited by range- 5000 feet from a station IIRC. The best DSL is typically 1.5mbps. Thats top DL speeds of 150KBps (if you're lucky, probably 100-125KBps). DSL is typically $15-30.

Cable is generally 3-10 mbps or 300KBps-1000KBps. Its not affected by distance, however, you do 'share' the connection. DSL really like to play up the sharing, but its not that bad 99% of the time. You don't share a 5mb connection with your block-- you share access to a 10-100 GIGABIT trunkline. Cable is like driving down a highway. You share the road with everyone near you, only this highway has a few thousand lanes. You're only going to notice a lot of slowdown in dense metropolitain areas. In which case, you should get DSL. However, if you're in a suburb/small town cable is going to be the best option. Although, it does cost $30-60.


You also have to factor in usage habbits. Are you going to just check CAG and email? Thats DSL territory. MP3s? DSL is still plenty. Gaming? Good for the most part with DSL. However, if you download a lot of large files or want a connection to brag about... go with cable.

[chosen1s]

I have had both DSL and Cable. My experience has been that the service is better with Cable. Also, I think DSL services generally require a commitment, and of course it's slower. If you enjoy the feeling of having something that never quite satisfies you, get DSL. If you'd rather pay a couple of extra bucks to not have hassles and worries, just go with Cable. You can split the difference with the roomies and it's what, an extra $5 or $10 per person?

As for deal switching - I find it doubtful that a cable company will allow different people in the same house to switch service back and forth between them. They have addresses and you also have to consider legality issues. The one thing you might be able to do, if there are competing cable companies, would be to jump back and forth between companies...

[Hunter55]

i had cable for 5 years............it was awesome but expensive, especially since not that many people in the area had it. Now i have verizon fios. I bought the middle package, and i must say it is much faster than my cable connection. Downloads typically reack 1500kbps, and thats while i have aim running, and im surfing the net. Its a bit pricey though, at $50, but there is also a cheaper version you can get. You can check it out at verizon.com/fios

[m0dem]

It really depends on your isp I have dsl at my house and cable at my shore house. Verizon is my dsl never really had any problems except when I first got it there was something messed up with the outside line but they fixed that the next day. Comcast is the cable it is faster for downloads but if your really only browsing the internet and not downloading a lot you should stick with dsl because it has less downtime. My comcast has gone down quite sometimes for about a 6 hour period and cable is $15 more a month than what my verizon is.