Do these numbers sound correct to you?

wrote

You have to pay attention to the UNITS of measure. LINK speeds are usually quoted in BITS per second (1.5M/768K). Download speeds are usually quoted in BYTES per second (160K/70K). If that is true in your case, multiply your download numbers by 10 to get both measures into BITS and you are right in the ballpark.

Don't you mean multiply by 8? Not to rant on the subject, but why would anyone purchase DSL, then? When I was on cable at a former residence, I was pulling 550k down and paying less.

snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net (Vincent) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

All network protocols introduce some overhead. Taking the raw bit rate of a DSL or cable connection and dividing by 10 to get an expected byte rate gets you in the ballpark.

Your choice, based on your market. Around here, that's not the case.

"Vincent" wrote

No, I meant exactly what I said. 10 is easier and I did say "ballpark".

1) It's the only thing available (no cable service) 2) In some markets, it is cheaper. 3) It is not (generally) prone to overload by having too many customers assigned in a neighborhood node. 4) In many markets, the service is better as the Phone Techs. actually know what data transmission IS, as opposed to the cable companies who haven't quite figured it out yet.

Well, there you go. Crabbing at me for not being precise in my bytes-to-bits conversion and THEN quoting a download speed without specifying the unit of measure!

At my former residence with cable service, my speed would drop to half or less from 4pm to midnight.

In theory, but this is the real world.

550k what? Do you mean kbits/second? kbytes/second? Or what?

DS

I realize that all this varies by markets, but in many major cities, you'll find phone techs are about as clueless as they come. When I first moved to NYC, it took Verizon 2 separate trips to correctly install POTS service in my former apartment. If you can't get that right, it's pretty sad.

I've also found in many cases cable companies are using more advanced diagnostic equipment, although that varies depending on the company.

Lastly, I've found the "too many neighbors on one node" argument to be just something taken hook, line and sinker from DSL marketing material. Most anywhere you go, cable will always perform faster and for less.

Then you had one sorry cable company.

The US is a BIG place. Verizon in NYC isn't Verison in Durham NC. Mergers and historical practices make all of these generalizations untrue for various areas.

Here in Raleigh NC, DSL has been better than cable and worse. And has swung twice now as best I can tell. TWC has their act together here at this time and from what I hear plan to stay on top of technology. But it wasn't always so. Currently Bellsouth isn't very easy to work with at any level, but that may change or get worse with the merger with SBC, err AT&T, err oh whatever.

And ever here the question of what's better DSL or cable leads to do you have Verizon, Bellsouth, or Sprint service for your phone company? All three exist within 15 miles of my house.

The too many neighbors on a node does exist in spots and not others. Bellsouth DSL performance is almost dial up slow in spots and blazing in others.

It just depends.

Try discussing it with these folks. Or trying the tweaks:

snipped-for-privacy@raleighthings.com (DLR) wrote in news:GOCdne3SKeQ2loXZnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@portbridge.com:

It might be. All calls to Qwest tech support, from any of the states they serve, are routed to the same call centers. I always ask where the rep I'm talking to is, and they're usually somewhere in Colorado.

But the "feet on the ground" have very different attitudes. Plus Verizon in Durham was GTE and Verizon in NYC was NY Bell, then NyNex, then Verizon with maybe another step in between. These operations have very different institutional histories, installed plants, etc...

Well, then you haven't gone to northeastern Massachusetts, as it's completely the opposite in this area.

"All generalities are wrong!"

Which is why I said most. Look, the marketplace has spoken and cable has clearly won. All the telcos know to do is substantially discount their product by offering low-speed connections in an effort to get the last few remaining people on dial-up.

Whatever you may think about the various technologies and which one's better, genius marketing, that's not. Phone companies basked in the glow of local monopolies that had insane pricing for years and still haven't wised up. It still, to this day, costs more than $150 for a Verizon tech to come out and install new phone service in a residence when a cable tech does it for nothing.

The only way the standard phone companies are going to survive is through mergers, which is what we're seeing now in a rapid clip. Because they have absolutely no idea about how to compete in a modern environment.

Cyrus Afzali wrote in part:

No. What is clear is that you dislike the RBOCs. As such, your posting in c.d.xdsl is at least mildly trollish:

[snip]

Then why not let them die in peace? Your advocacy betrays your fears.

Look: cable is good. DSL is good. Both at once are even better (competition). In almost all places, cable can burst at 5 Mbit/s download, 3x DSL. I've used both, but don't notice much difference on WWW. In some places, cable is congested. As for marketting and business practices, both cable and RBOCs are mostly good, but can occasionally be horrible. No clear winner, except by area.

-- Robert

That is ridiculous.

Cable is fine for many consumers at this point, but not folks that require more functionality than simple web browsing. Land line is still the far preferred technology for running servers for email, web, game hosting, VPN, remote computing, etc. Granted, a lot of the reason is due to IP addressing sales and services sales, such as DNS. But still, at this time, cable is not good for much of anything in most places in this country except for web browsing and collecting your email from a land-line connected server.

-Frank

So show me how what I said isn't true. Don't just dispute it with no facts. Are phone companies growing by adding customers? NO. That answer is clear.

There is empirical evidence to suggest a winner. Compare the number of cable connections with DSL connections. There are some situations where telco-based selections are a better bet, for example in a business environment where you're covered by a service-level agreement.

Cable cos are still hard to deal with if you want service in many business buildings because those haven't yet been wired to connect with the cable companies' fiber optic networks, even though the fiber may run right by them. But that's a business choice cable is making, for some reason. I think that's nuts too.

And unfortunately, both cable and telco providers have bad service. For both cable and phone companies, there have been several times when multiple truck rolls have been required to solve a problem or to complete an installation. There's really no excuse for that.

And I'm not suggesting every cable company is great. I'd MUCH rather be able to go back to Time Warner instead of Cablevision, which has the franchise for my new home area. But after years of dealing with Verizon, there's no way I'd go back.

Which is exactly what the vast majority of America does. I have a business that has hosted Web and e-mail servers, but I'm not doing it on my own machines. It's much easier to pay for hosted services unless you get scads of traffic. Then, at that point, you need a dedicated solution with SLA guarantees. The discussion then goes away from DSL, because you're purchasing a different grade of service if you go with a telco solution.

That's exactly the biggest problem with cable. It doesn't offer (or rarely offers) a server solution. Oh, and BTW, there is "business class" DSL - No need for dedicated T-1 or better in many cases.

Americans DO want servers. And it is apparent.

How many times do you hear...

-How can I connect to my home computer from the Internet?

-How can I set up a connection between my girl friends computer and mine over the Internet?

-How can I host a game on my computer?

-How can I run my own website on my computer?

-I have made a website on my computer but how can my friends see it?

-Etc. etc. etc...

Americans DO want servers. Even though they don't always know it.

-Frank

Neither the telcos nor the cablecos are adding totally new customers. Both are upselling broadband into their existing customer base. Cable started earlier (DSL held up by regs?), so has greater market share overall. DSL is growing faster. The ultimate winner is far from clear, and advocating cable in a DSL forum _is_ trollish.

Certainly this can be used. But like all statistics, it must be understood lest it mislead. There really is no reason to believe cable's early lead will guarantee market dominance. I suspect the low DSL price will attract many of the ~60% who still use dial-up. The cablecos appear to be unwilling or unable to compete on price.

And then there is the new initiative from the US Democrat Party: Broadband for all! I suspect this will lead to BB being a regulated telecom service for both telcos and cablecos. The cablecos recently escaped via a court ruling. That won't help them if the law changes.

-- Robert

I don't see how it's trollish at all. I've provided real statistics that are relevant to a debate that's very much timely. And as far as adding new customers, while everybody's competing fiercely for that, the fact that only cable can offer the vaunted "triple play" of voice, video and data does give it an advantage. Why do you think RBOCs worked so hard to forge all these deals with DirecTV and the like so they could offer a sort of "shadow" triple play? Right now, Verizon, BellSouth and others will be happy to help you get a DirecTV connection.

The fact that the triple play is so valuable is why Verizon's literally risking the bank to bring FIOS to a majority of its customers. There's no clear indiction this will be a worthy investment, but they really have no other choice.

Cable companies have chosen to compete on speed rather than price. And the fact that many are offering "triple play" solutions that bring discounts to new customers shows it's not really true that they're not competing on price. They're just not going for the bargain basement oriented customer that's attracted by $15 a month entry-level DSL.

Neither DSL nor cable Internet is classified as anything but an information service. Both are free to entirely charge whatever they want, and that's the way it should be. Certainly, there's a lot of noise over "net neutrality," but it's way too early to know how that's going to play out.