Cable vs DSL connection

[[JiF]Uncle Stinky]

My wife want us to switch from Cox cable to Verizon/DirectTV bundled TV/i-net/phone service, which means I'd be going from a cable to a DSL connection. Anybody have experience with both? I'm really reluctant to change because Cox has been decent so far, but DirectTV has some channels my wife likes that Cox doesn't.

Verizon said their DSL is 3 mbps, is there a way I can tell easily what my Cox service is providing?

[Lonewolf-McQuade]

I had DLS through Earthlink which all of them go through Verizon switches anyhow.. (it's a leasee-leasor situation) and it was fine. I did pay to upgrade it to the fastest speed I could afford. I was either at business DSL or one step below. Check out what plans they have for speed, usually they have a few options. BE SURE to check your up and down ability! If you do that you should be fine!

[[JiF][AARP]Tissueman]

Verizon said their DSL is 3 mbps, is there a way I can tell easily what my Cox service is providing?

Try this:

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

[[JiF]Lt Gav]

Verizon said their DSL is 3 mbps, is there a way I can tell easily what my Cox service is providing?

Or try this 1 which I find pretty useful as you can select which location to ping.

http://www.speedtest.net/

[[JiF][AARP]Jimbo]

Also if you look closely at what they say it's Up To 3 meg (or whatever speed) that's because the further away you are from their hub the slower your connection will be.

[[JiF]Sgt. hUTCHIE]

I' m on cable so I'm biased.

I have clients on both Cable and ADSL (UK Aysynchronous DSL) and as far as providers go there are some gooduns and baduns in both camps so it seems to depend which company you are with rather than the media. Over here when NTL had the cable market they had pockets of poor service as do some ADSL providers Tiscali, etc so I would check out your proposed new provider - is there a forum for compaints independent of the company eg. ntlhell.com (now lapsed since it got taken over).

Over here with ADSL the distance to your local exchange is a major factor in the quality and bandwidth you get but I'm not sure that's the case in the USA.

My own experience of cable is that it is pretty reliable (1 call out and 4 outages of 1 hour or so in 7 years) and we don't suffer contention at all, i.e the speed tests always report the speed we pay for. However out in the sticks Fran the fox and mildred the cow aren't online yet

hUTCHIE

[[JiF]Uncle Stinky]

Thanks all. Turns out my download speed with Cox is 13 mbps. Time to fight back against a drop down to 3!

[[JiF]corn]

I tested my DSL and it said 1327 kbps = 1.3mbp.

[[JiF]Lt Gav]

I pay for an 8 MB line.
At around 9.00pm I can gets speeds down as low as under 1 mbps. I tested it last night/early morning 1.30am & it was flying at 6.8 mbps. That's about as good as it gets on ADSL over here.

[[JiF]corn]

Wow!
I guess this means my DSL really sux!