What ISP do you use and why?

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skitty4gzus · #1 Post by **skitty4gzus** » Wed May 30, 2007 8:04 pm

I have always wondered what truly is the best and most affordable High Speed Internet. I had 3 meg Cable and it was ok, and now I have 3 meg Dsl, also ok but not really impressed. I upgraded to 6 meg, but what im wondering is, is there a difference between Dsl, Cable, Sat., etc... all rated at the same bandwith? I know its 6 meg, but is it as "fast" as 6 meg Cable? I play my 360 online too so i know that sucks up alot of bandwith, so which is better for this? Also, on a side note, does anybody else play Xbox 360 online and if they do through what router? I have an SMC and a Netgear router here at the house that will not work correctly with the 360. It always comes back NAT issues and I have trouble opening up enough ports on the router to make this work correctly?

Website · #2 Post by **tfflivemb2** » Wed May 30, 2007 8:27 pm

It is my understanding that DSL can be better than cable, depending on where you live. The denser the population that you live in, the slower your cable will run. DSL uses dedicated bandwidth, whereas cable shares the bandwidth with every user.

Where I live, most people have DSL.....I have 5MB cable service...recently upgraded from 3mb which had a MUCH better DL rate than my 3MB DSL ever had. I tested my DL rates through dslreports.com, and saw that my 3MB cable was coming in at 2.8MB, where as my 3MB DSL was 768kps-1.3MB.

I explain to others that DSL is like a nice 6 lane highway....even when it is busy, you can still do the speed limit and not have to worry about anyone getting in your lane. Cable is like the AutoBahn, where when it gets busy you have to drive slow and carefully...BUT when it is empty....the sky is the limit....(ok, cheesy analogy)

Tholek · #3 Post by **Tholek** » Wed May 30, 2007 9:04 pm

It may be a whole other ball of wax if Fiber Optic is available where you live. If you can afford that, get it.

dsigma6 · #4 Post by **dsigma6** » Thu May 31, 2007 7:29 am

Tholek wrote:It may be a whole other ball of wax if Fiber Optic is available where you live. If you can afford that, get it.

It's $20 a month for a year!! But that's probably with a 18 year agreement @ $89/month.

I play the 360 through a Linksys WRT54G router, as I did with the original Xbox. I have never experienced any NAT issues with 360, though a reset on the router was necessary once on the original Xbox.

#5 Post by **ryengineer** » Thu May 31, 2007 2:19 pm

I don't know any details about my ISP, we are being provided with a high speed LAN connection the place I live. Since it does everything for me so I never looked into the details.

#6 Post by **Kyocera** » Thu May 31, 2007 5:29 pm

Here is a place where you can test your speed
http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/results.php
I'm on dsl through windstream and got the 3MB download (allegedly) my test came back "not bad"

works for me, upload speed is a whole different deal though.

Click the personal test tab.

#7 Post by **bill bolton** » Thu May 31, 2007 6:22 pm

I'm on a 17 Mbps HFC cable connection through BigPond in Australia. It really flies on local connections, but on international hauls I get performance in the 4 Mbps to 5 Mbps range (as monitored by TCP/IQ) because of external network bandwidth contention beyond my ISP's direct network.

Cheers,

Bill B.

#8 Post by **rkawakami** » Thu May 31, 2007 6:41 pm

Recently got re-re-rated on Pacific Bell/SBC-Yahoo!/AT&T-Yahoo! DSL. Originally had 1.5Mbps download speed but recently it has degraded to about 1.1Mbps. Upload is still around 320Kbps (rated at 384). All speeds as measured by dslreports.com. I'm at the end of a 15,000' connection so I'm lucky to be even getting 1M. Was paying $50/mo for several years until I asked about service in Los Angeles for my daughter. At the time they were offering basic service for $15/mo. for new accounts. Towards the end of our conversation, the agent asked if there was anything else I needed. I said that as a long-time subscriber I wish I could get those rates. He said if I added a couple of phone services (caller ID and call waiting; about another $6 or so) then I could. Rate would be for one year, after which it would go back up (it did). A month after the rate increase I called back and asked to be re-rated again. Currently paying $20/mo for their Express service (1.5Mbps) so I'll be calling them again to see if they can work on the connection across the street (which has a tendency to flood and degrade my speed).

I've also read several reports on-line about asking for a lower rate. If you're a long-time subscriber and the provider is offering low introductory rates for new accounts, call them up and ask to get re-rated. If the agent says they can't do it, ask for the "Retention Department".

Comcast provides cable modem service in my area but I'm leery about calling them out to work on my line. Television service was supposed to have been disconnected about three years ago but the work order was probably overlooked when they came around to install the fiber optic cable at about the same time

.

JHEM · #9 Post by **JHEM** » Thu May 31, 2007 8:09 pm

I'm on 5Mbps FIOS while my wife is on Comcast cable. Why two? Simple, my access is deductible for me while my wife's cable access is paid for by her employer.

FIOS costs me approx. $30 a month while cable costs $62 a month. The FIOS is much more reliable than the cable, which is down at least once a week.

James

k2jsv · #10 Post by **k2jsv** » Thu May 31, 2007 10:17 pm

That's because you have Comcast. Time Warner is not much better either, but the fiber backbone around here is pretty solid. I honestly have no idea what we have for bandwidth here. I am proud to say that my wife takes care of the cable stuff (she's in the industry, I'll stick to the emergency services), so I have no idea if we pay anything and how much we get. That being said I have had all of about 12 hours of downtime in the year and a half that we've lived here. This is with average DL speeds of about 400-500 kb/sec. Much better than when we had Direcway which is overpriced and under powered.

dsigma6 · #11 Post by **dsigma6** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 7:30 am

I'm not going to pretend I've never had problems with Comcast, but at my current residence it hasn't failed me more than once in 6 months. That's fine as far as I'm concerned.

skitty4gzus · #12 Post by **skitty4gzus** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 5:28 pm

I guess im just funny about high volume's of bandwidth passing through a single 2 pair cat3. I just got my sbc transferred over and "supposedly" upgraded to the 6 meg but guess what? it aint no 6 meg, it tested at 1! i cant wait to call sbc about this, they will have some poor excuse im sure.

dsigma6 · #13 Post by **dsigma6** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 10:17 am

I don't know what's classified as "good" speed, but here's what I get from speakeasy.net/speedtest:

10,564 kbps download
1,848 kbps upload

And that's on wireless...I imagine a wired connection would be even faster.

skitty4gzus · #14 Post by **skitty4gzus** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 1:14 pm

your upload speed isnt bad, but 1.5mbps isnt all that hot. when i installed for speednet i ran into ALOT of unhappy customers who were getting rid of comcast. i mean speednet is for rural folks out in the middle of nowhere, and it wasn't that great at all, but comcast is flat out m153rabl3!

Manarius · #15 Post by **Manarius** » Sun Jun 03, 2007 10:51 pm

Verizon DSL here. It's extremely reliable for being out in the boon docks. It's also cheaper than cable at $30 a month.

#16 Post by **RealBlackStuff** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 11:20 am

I use the wireless ClearWire service. Taking my wireless modem with me, I have coverage throughout most of Dublin town, all I need is a power outlet. Average D/L speed is 1'045 kbps

leoblob · #17 Post by **leoblob** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 11:55 am

Waited & waited for DSL, but is still not available in my neighborhood. Went with Wide Open West (a midwest ISP) and service has been very good. Am paying for 4Mbps and I always get between 4.2 and 4.4. Speed doesn't seem to be influenced by how much traffic there is... morning, noon, night, always about the same.

... and it's been very reliable. One problem in 6 months, the service rep was able to re-set something and I was back in business in 15 minutes.

I think quality depends on where you live. A friend of mine a couple miles away has DSL, he cannot get any higher than 768Kbps. Others I know have great results with DSL. I know DSL is a lot cheaper, but since I can't get it here anyway...

#18 Post by **rkawakami** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 12:33 pm

leoblob wrote:I think quality depends on where you live.

ADSL (asymetrical DSL; typically what most people have) is distance dependent. The farther you are away from the telephone company's central office (CO), the slower data speed is. Generally, 18,000' is about the maximum that current ADSL works at, and at that distance you can expect about 384Kbps downloads.

(ref: http://www.vicomsoft.com/knowledge/reference/xdsl1.html)

ronbo613 · #19 Post by **ronbo613** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 12:43 pm

I had PacBell/SBC/AT&T DSL since it came out and I would rate the service itself as average at best and the customer service as horrible, perhaps the worst I have ever encountered. I stayed with it because it was the cheapest broadband service I could get at my office(even with one computer, because of the address in a commercial zone, everybody else wanted to charge me $200-300/mo business rates). Even though I was a customer for five or six years, they would cap my connection lower and lower, then offer to increase the speed if I would sign a two year contract. Lame.
I've moved to a smaller community that has a local ISP, prices are about the same as AT&T, I'm hoping they will do a better job.

skitty4gzus · #20 Post by **skitty4gzus** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 7:53 pm

i just found out Im at like 12,000 something feet from sbc yahoo's closest tower and all i can get is 1.5mbps. i made them very aware that in july when my contract is over i will be going elsewhere. sad part is im almost square in the middle of the city here and thats the closest tower? pretty sad

#21 Post by **rkawakami** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 8:25 pm

There's no "tower" involved, unless you are using something like Sprint Broadband's over-the-air microwave signals. DSL originates from the telephone company's bank of equipment in your normal "exchange"; your neighborhood's phone office. I remember reading something about the phone company installing what amounts to "repeaters" so that they can provision customers outside the normal 3.5 miles or so with a useful DSL connection, but I don't know if this is in common use yet.

They may be purposely capping your speed (as per ronbo613's experience), but if you're 12,000' out, then I wouldn't expect anything better than 2Mbps. The internal wiring of your phone lines can have much to do with the quality of your DSL connection. Simply having wires connected to unused extensions can degrade your signal. This happened to me when I first had PacBell DSL turned on at a previous house. The techs found a pair of wires going off to who-knows-where and when removed, the DSL modem sync'ed right up.

You can use these tools at dslreports.com to get more information about your broadband performance and choices:

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest?java=1
http://www.dslreports.com/prequal
http://www.dslreports.com/search

ajkula66 · #22 Post by **ajkula66** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 12:02 am

I use the only service available in this area, PTD's cable, theoretically 7Mbps, more like 5 in reality, and the upload rarely above 1.2, although it should be about 3 on paper...

Two main issues with most common broadband connections (DSL vs. cable) are reliability and bandwidth. DSL wins in bandwidth, cable-at least for the most part-in reliability...

FiOS (and not because I work for Verizon-most of Verizon's union workforce is pretty upset with the way that whole thing is being run, at least in NY) beats all of the above. If you can get it, do so. Trust me, you will notice the difference and then some.

The limitation of DSL, as Ray stated, is distance. And, unlike regular phone line or T-1 circuit, the current technology does not allow repeaters (in T-1 terminology) or "load coils" used on normal dialtone lines...however, you can get (at least in NYC) an HDSL (or a "baby T-1" as we call them) that will run at about 2Mbps in both upload and download even at close to 20,000 feet, which is more than enough for everyday use. And the bandwidth is very, very nice-beats cable on any given day. Unfortunately, most of these lines are designed to carry anywhere between 135-185 volts, so they burn copper pretty quickly, initially resulting in decreased speed, loss of packets and finally in a call to your local phone company to replace the burned copper pair...the bottom line is, condition of the copper in your neighbourhood combined with distance from CO rules how well your DSL is going to function. SHDSL rules, giving symmetrical upload and download, but is fairly expensive and not too many providers offer it. HDSL is second best, followed by SDSL and ADSL. But for $14.99 a month, ADSL sounds good...

Cable is easier to maintain, gives great download speeds and generally works better in areas where it's NOT the only choice. I can tell-all jokes aside-when majority of my development (81 houses, mostly on cable) sits on the Internet because my speed and bandwidth go down tremendously. When we lived in Brooklyn, the service was much more reliable, although speeds were not as high at the time, because not everyone and their grandmother were using the cable connection...but beggars can't be choosers. There is no choice when you have only one option...it's called monopoly, whether it bills you as Comcast, Time Warner or Verizon or Qwest...

Until FiOS arrives to all of your houses and apartments, my fellow ThinkPadders...

Cuda · #23 Post by **Cuda** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 11:03 am

I wish I had a choice, the local phone company/ISP has a monopoly on service, as in ZERO competition, but service isn't bad, and I can't get cable. They have been promising 8MP DSL service for years but all I get is about 1400 kb/s, I was getting 768 kb/s untill I needed service and the friendly repair guy tweaked the settings to double the speed.

img]http://www.speedtest.net/result/181614047.png[/img]

EDIT: Cool little speedtest pic I started out with got edited out, never seen a forum where you can't even post a little 35k picture!!!

What ISP do you use and why?

What ISP do you use and why?

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