It’s a hot topic on the lips of home and business owners these days: Is cable Internet faster and better than DSL? We all require Internet connectivity to accommodate our business and personal lives alike – and we like it fast, and consistent! Cable Internet and DSL both deliver high-speed connectivity, and both have their pros and cons. So which is faster, DSL or cable Internet? Which is better suited for your unique situation? Let’s take a comparative look and see:
What is DSL?
DSL is an anagram for “Digital Subscriber Line”. This term is used to denote an array of “high-speed” Internet services. This type of Internet connectivity is called “broadband”, a term you have certainly heard of. This is one modern service offered via what’s known as the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). DSL Internet is driven to your computer, or modem, via a common telephone line. In general, having DSL Internet is less expensive than having cable Internet, but many times that’s because subscribers get carried away with ordering too many of the possible extras from the cable company, making their bills skyrocket. You can do a broadband speed test with iiNets new tool and see how your connection measures up today.
There are various DSL providers in competition, each offering different speeds and prices. DSL takes data in more quickly than it can send it out. There are still some remote areas where DSL is not available. Many DSL service providers have issues with consistent connectivity. This is normally the chief complaint from DSL subscribers: they can’t count on 100% uptime service – and sometimes, in some locations, it can be happen a lot and become very frustrating indeed. Also, the farther away from the modem your computer or device is, the less strength the ranged DSL signal has.
What is cable Internet?
While DSL arrives to your devices via a telephone line, normally ran into a modem, and then sent out wirelessly to your devices, cable Internet arrives through, you guessed it: the coaxial cable lines. Modern advances in DSL technologies are changing this, but, in most cases cable Internet speeds are superior to DSL speeds. However, there are millions of DSL subscribers that are completely happy with the speeds (and connectivity) they experience.
One drawback to cable Internet is that, if you are on a cable line that feeds multiple housing units, then your speeds will probably decrease whenever a lot of your neighbors are online. And like DSL, cable Internet may still not be available in more rural areas. In general, wherever there’s cable these days, there’s also a selection of the more popular DSL providers, like Dish Network, for instance.
The bottom line about the cable vs DSL Internet debate is that bandwidth basically translates into surfing speed for the subscriber. In most cases, cable will deliver superior bandwidth over DSL – but it will probably cost more too. If money is not an object, you’re probably better off with the cable Internet. That’s mainly because cable companies, like Time Warner, for instance, are huge entities that have more resources for pleasing customers than do most DSL providers.
http://www.geeksquad.com/do-it-yourself/tech-tip/comparing-cable-and-dsl.aspx
http://compnetworking.about.com/od/dslvscablemodem/a/speedcompare.htm
