Upgrading from dial-up to dsl or cable?

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Oh, and stay the heck away from satellite Internet if you are are gamer. The latency for the signal from your transciever to the satellite back to your ISPs transceiver on earth (and then on to the recipient) and from the recipient to your ISP and from the ISP's transceiver up to the satellite and down to your transceiver is on the order of 500 ms all by iteself. Once data starts flowing in one direction, the satellite can pump a decent amount through. A half a second is nothing if you're browsing Amazon.com, which downloads a bunch of images and text in response to a mouse click. In games, however, you need a quick turn around from clicking the mouse pointing at someone to fire at them and finding out if you hit anything. A 500 ms round trip time between clicking the mouse and getting the response means you pretty much spend your time always dead in Counterstrike.
 
Ah, very good point, I have often thought about how cool it would be to get a satellite connection, and one of my friends was highly considering getting it for mostly the sole purpose of gaming. With this knowledge of a 500ms ping however, I'm sure he won't be too fond of the idea anymore. Thanks for the info :)
 
ReverseFluxx said:
Ah, very good point, I have often thought about how cool it would be to get a satellite connection, and one of my friends was highly considering getting it for mostly the sole purpose of gaming. With this knowledge of a 500ms ping however, I'm sure he won't be too fond of the idea anymore. Thanks for the info :)

Satellite is a "last resort" option for people like me who cant get cable or DSL. Also, the satellite I will be looking into is not out yet, and uses a new technology different from that of StarBand or DirecWay. It is supposed to have lower latencies, as well as much higher speeds and be much cheaper. 1.5mbps/256kbps for $49.99. Compared to DSL and cable, this sucks, but for areas without DSL and cable access, this is a dream come true. I hope this system actually becomes all it is supposed to become.
 
I did have DSL, and now i have Comcast Cable.

IMO, Cable is better, but it also depends on the carrier. Like, Comcast is one of the best Cable Carriers, and you sometimes see commericals about companies where you can upgrade to Cable, but the carriers that arent made soloely for cable might be slower.

I say go with cable.
 
Capricorn, that article you read about favoring dsl, you still have that? I haven't spoken with anyone who would rather have dsl over cable.. and since we used to run our own rvs and as servers I used to talk to a bunch of people.. when i was making the switch from dsl to cable.. everyone was badmouthing dsl.. just curious to see the article..
 
Demalii said:
Capricorn, that article you read about favoring dsl, you still have that? I haven't spoken with anyone who would rather have dsl over cable.. and since we used to run our own rvs and as servers I used to talk to a bunch of people.. when i was making the switch from dsl to cable.. everyone was badmouthing dsl.. just curious to see the article..
I think people's perceptions are different based on their potential providers. You obviously don't live where I live (northern Virginia). We have Adelphia cable and up until about a year or two ago, they had uni-directional cable with cable link down and telephone modem back. Now, they have bi-directional cable. They limit uploads to 128 Kbps. I know people who's cable network connection will just fail for a week at a time. Aldephia doesn't seem to feel any pressing need to fix it, either. They charge $59/month for it, too. But it is darn fast when it's up .. for downloading. Their ping times to servers still suck. About 5-10 x worse than Verizon DSL.

On the flip side, my father-in-law has Roadrunner cable in Ohio, and his cable is almost never down (a several years as a customer) and their ping times are decent. (Where he's at in Ohio, I don't think he's geographically close to any servers I care about, so latency is going to be worse :) ) I know people who have had a nightmare getting Verizon Online DSL installed. For me, I had a working DSL connection 5 days after I submitted the order (which includes a weekend). I've had it for a few months now, and it was down once -- the day my old DSL provider disconnected it when they were supposed to stop their service. Still, Comcast services counties next to mine, and a couple people I know that have it really like it. I'd consider them if it was avaliable here.

Anyway, some links:

http://jamesthornton.com/writing/cable-vs-dsl-latency.html - informal comparison with DSL having lower latency for this particular person.

http://www.shortfamilyonline.com/tech/networking/cable-versus-dsl.php - generally prefers Cable over DSL, but mentions Cable latency could be worse.

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/129 - Some FAQ on DSL Reports.

Just try a Google search like http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=network+latency+cable+versus+dsl and see what you think.

I didn't think any of these were conclusive either way. Basically, I think if the ISP - cable or DSL - wants to make latency an issue and address it and reduce it, they can. Some just don't care.
 
go with cable it is the only way to go in richmond Va cable is twice as fast as dsl
 
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