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Cable Vs ADSL

This information would be useful for people who don't have either cable or dsl, so why do you need to vote to see the results ?
 
i agree...i'd like to see the results, cos i have neither...unfortunately the poll can't be editted...so we may never know
 
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It would be useful to be able to see the results without voting, but if we add comments that'd make it easier.

I voted for ADSL, 'cos I've got that. If I was in a cabled area (like across the street), I would have gone the other way though.
 
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by pss:
<strong>Which is best and why? Cable Vs ADSL :confused: </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Since most people, if they're lucky to have a broadband connection at all, have only tried one or the other, they are in no way able to give a balanced viewpoint. This poll is therefore worthless, but I vote for cable because it's better (although I've never tried adsl). <img border="0" alt="[Laugh]" title="" src="graemlins/laugh.gif" />
 
i vote for 56k dial-up narrowband...as it's available everywhere there is a phone line <img border="0" alt="[Laugh]" title="" src="graemlins/laugh.gif" />
 
Cable is technically superior to ADSL. A coaxial cable has about 10,000 times the Bandwidth of a twisted pair and most of the Cable Network is Fibre from the street Cabinets. With NTL the 512K service is capped at 600K or there abouts so in general you get about 512K on downloads. In the upload direction you only get 128K so if uploading is important to you Cable is not for you. Generally Cable gives better gaming pings but like ADSL it varies and a few people do complain about pings. Customer service is poor but many ADSL ISP's are no better on that front. NTL appear to be improving on Customer SErvice but very very slowly. Cable has 1M available at a reasonable price

Cable really wins as Bandwidth goes up. ADSL is really limited on that front and as the Bandwidth goes up the closer you need to be to the exchange and with the typical route most BT lines take a lot of people will never be able to get more then 512K from ADSL unless they start putting the kit in the street cabinets which is not very likely due to costs & technical reasons.
 
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one of my mates has adsl and i have cable and he admits to me that cable is far better than adsl i keep having to burn games etc that i downloaded for him so i think that says it all
 
I have to agree. Cable rules.

I have got Cable (NTL) and a few of my mates have aDSL, BT & PIPEX. They achieve download speeds of around 45Kbps, I've had 70Kbps, both are supposed to offer 512K. Also cable doesn't seem to vary much between busy times of day etc... As you all know aDSL does!

As stated in a post above, cable is far more future proofed than aDSL. aDSL is not far off it's maximum speed already, (2-4Mb, not much more) whereas cable can go well beyond 50Mb due to the much wider nature of coaxial cable.

There's no real debate, cable is the future! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

<small>[ 31-05-2002, 11:55 AM: Message edited by: Rob MacD ]</small>
 
DSL can reach much higer speeds. Ok its a different implementation of it.

Max Speed i've hit with ADSL in the last day has been 62.1kb/s which isn't too bad to say I've hardly been trying to max the connection out.

One advantage of DSL is the fact you only share the pipe from the exchange, where as with cable you sharing as soon as you hit the system. While this isn't a problem at the moment, it could well be in the future.
 
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> One advantage of DSL is the fact you only share the pipe from the exchange </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">That would imply that the ISP allows you 100% of your bandwidth 100% of the time. That would be prohibitively expensive, which is why the ISPs use a contention ratio to allow them to purchase lower speed connections to the net and share them between several hundred customers at a ratio of between 20 and 50 to 1. Cable by design has a contention ratio between you and the UBR of about 22:1 maximum, which is what you get on a high-cost premium ADSL service.
 
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</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> aDSL is not far off it's maximum speed already, (2-4Mb, not much more) </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">ADSL: downstream rate up to 8mb/s :rolleyes:

and VDSL: downstream rate up to 52mb/s
 
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Rob MacD:

As stated in a post above, cable is far more future proofed than aDSL. aDSL is not far off it's maximum speed already, (2-4Mb, not much more) whereas cable can go well beyond 50Mb due to the much wider nature of coaxial cable.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">From what i know ADSL can acheive 8mb
 
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by DFDS:
<strong>
Cable by design has a contention ratio between you and the UBR of about 22:1 maximum, which is what you get on a high-cost premium ADSL service.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Sorry but Cable has a much higher contention than that. You share your connection with everyone that is hooked up on your Cable box at the end of the road, and then it gets greater and greater with every Junction is comes accross. So Cable suffers a contention the same as xDSL. I have not testes Cable or ADSL i am just going on hear say. Although if i had the option of both ADSL and Cable i would choose ADSL for it's stability compared to cable :cool:
 
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Rambo:
<strong> </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Rob MacD:

As stated in a post above, cable is far more future proofed than aDSL. aDSL is not far off it's maximum speed already, (2-4Mb, not much more) whereas cable can go well beyond 50Mb due to the much wider nature of coaxial cable.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">From what i know ADSL can acheive 8mb</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">8M is about the current therotical maximum, in practise for al sorts of reasons this is unlikely to be achieved 4M seem to be the upper limited & even with that you would need to be within 1 or 2 KM of the exchange. Line quality also becomes much more critial. Its already a problem for many at 512K.
 
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> I have not testes Cable or ADSL i am just going on hear say </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I'm going on working in the industry for getting on for three years. The contention isn't in the box at the end of the road, it's at the hubsite or head end where the entire segment is funnelled through a single uBR card. Design capacity on that is about 18:1 if everyone's on 512k. With higher speed services being launched this creeps up a bit, so I said 22:1 to be conservative. It's likely to be a lot lower than this in practice, but contention ratio is actually an expression of how the ISP sees the maximum capacity of an area, not how it runs all the time.
 
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first i must say that i have not tried either cable or adsl.

i would personaly say that cable is better purly on cost as cable offer 1mb for £35 and the cheapest i have seen for a 1mb asdl connection is £95 and some only offer that service if you are within a certian distance from the exchange.
 
Still though with ADSL you can get very low contention ratio (for a price that is) and it will stay that way. But like you said before... the faster Cable gets the higher it's contention. With ADSL it will always stay the same thus giving you a more stable line. Cables 1MB does not even acheive 1MB, it clocks in at around 800kb/s, this is was told from NTL eginneer himself. It's a given fact that cable is cheaper and ADSL is way out there with high prices, still though if i had the choice it would be ADSL :cool:
 
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Rambo:
<strong>Cables 1MB does not even acheive 1MB, it clocks in at around 800kb/s, this is was told from NTL eginneer himself.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">seen 1 mb download speed on cable :) never gone less tan 948Kbps (down), 237Kbps (up) :cool:
 
In general at least with NTL you will nearly always get the full 1M. It is capped above 1M and the effective contention on Cable is about 15 1 . A lot better then ADSL. The only real downside is the upling is only 256K on the 1M service. For the vast majority of people though this would not be an issue. If the upload bandwidth is importent ADSL is a bit better on that but worse in most other respects.
 
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