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View Full Version : dial-up vs. dsl?



bb64
09-21-2005, 06:45 PM
I've had dial-up since the first day I went online, now Verizon is offering dsl 768/128? for the same price for at least a years trial.
Will I notice a big difference? I'd like to take advantage of the bootleg section but with dial-up it's pathetic!!

fret_buzz_blues
09-21-2005, 07:29 PM
DSL is faster, is it not?

twonabomber
09-21-2005, 07:43 PM
it's like night and day. get it.

thome
09-21-2005, 07:55 PM
There is no question .If the moneys rite.DSL

Kelly_Clark
09-21-2005, 08:07 PM
I use DSL and love it! BUT... after your year is up... they will boot up the price. Then you have to call... and call. I dunno. Maybe Verizon is different than SBC. But for the first year, its amazing. :D

Nitro Express
09-21-2005, 08:13 PM
DSL is almost as fast as a cable modem but cheaper. One thing to be aware of with DSL is it is always on and you have to have very good security software to keep sypware, viruses, and hackers out of your computer. Dial Up still has some advantages. Once the modem drops the call, your computer is secure. If you travel a lot, you can access your account anywhere there's a phone line.

thome
09-21-2005, 08:36 PM
Originally posted by thome
There is no question .If the moneys rite.DSL

I really should take that back you can get rapped up in a year or more contract and have to buy your way out.

Road Runner is high speed internet w many perks phone ,cable tv in the same package the only draw back i see is if the cable goes out in a storm your screwed.

RR is all on one bill. Dsl is a type high speed but its still phone so not as fast
as RR.this is rr second year offering this high speed program and ive been off line several times due to malfunctions and the growing process But it is by far after my research the best offered.And it really works well and i think the way things are going .

If you can get it--- www.rr.com --- . No contract get out any time you want .

If your cable co. doesnt offer RR--- DSL is the way./

Romeo Delight
09-21-2005, 08:47 PM
I can't believe anyone has dial-up anymore...

I would rather have high-speed internet than cable or satellite tv

thome
09-21-2005, 10:15 PM
I wish i could put things that simply.thats what i was trying to say.

If you don't have cable in the country, lets say, is it available any other way than phone ?

I dont even know if internet is offered on Dish or whatever?

Cathedral
09-21-2005, 10:38 PM
I've done them all and DSL was a nightmare for a couple of reasons.
Once you get it you are locked into a year contract that you don't have with cable. and if you try to cancel the trial for any reason you WILL be billed for the remainder of the year, read the fine print before signing anything.
After your trial you will be required to sign that 1 year contract.

Secondly, the download speeds are close between DSL and Cable, but the upload speeds for DSL are much slower than Cable, which is important if you build websites and have to upload the content.

If i were to use a dial-up connection at this point i think i'd lose my temper in the first 5 minutes.

Incidentally, I have never had my Roadrunner go down for more than a few minutes and that was only twice in several years.

ELVIS
09-21-2005, 10:50 PM
I have cable, never had any trouble...

DSL sucked!

Cathedral
09-21-2005, 11:05 PM
And DSL is affected by weather far more than cable being as it is a Digital Satellite Link (DSL).

I remember what they called "Black Spots" or something like that, that happened daily when the sun passed a certain point and i got interference.
Then there was this buzz i heard through my phone because the DSL and that phone shared the same jack.

Damn, a lot of shit is coming back to me now...DSL did suck pretty bad here.

Hardrock69
09-22-2005, 01:29 AM
Uhhh sorry guys your info is kinda warped.

DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line. It has nothing to do with Satellite.

Cable may seem like the way to go, but it is shared bandwidth. They will advertise "speeds up to" whatever the rating is, say 3 Megabits/second. And yes, you may actually get that speed at 5 am on Sunday morning.

But at 7 pm Monday evening, everyone in the fucking neighborhood gets home from work, plonks down on the PC and starts connecting. And everyone uses the same bandwidth, so it will slow down to a fraction of what it is "capable of".

Imagine a 3 inch water pipe feeding 25 houses. If you are the only one watering your lawn, you will have great water pressure. But when everyone goes out at the same time and waters their lawn at the same time, your water pressure drops drastically.

Yes, Satellite can suck ass. It DEFINITELY is shared bandwidth (like cable) as there are only a finite number of satellites in orbit.
And they want to charge you 500 fucking dollars up front for pro installation and PURCHASE of the equipment neccessary to get it.

It is great for peeps who live in the boondocks and have money, but due to the shared bandwidth, when many peeps go online, the speed slows down to almost dialup speeds.

DSL is much better in that there is no shared bandwidth. You are the ONLY person on that line. All the way to the Central Office (the nearest access point for DSL).

One problem with DSL is that of course it shares the line with your phone traffic. I have known many people that have had problems due to this. Also this means your DSL service is using the phone infrastructure, and is subject to the usual weather and temperature-related problems that can affect them.

Another problem is DISTANCE. With recent technology, this may be a moot point soon, but right now if you are farther than about 15,000 feet from your Central Office, you generally cannot have DSL. The farther you are away from your CO, the more trouble you will have and the slower your speed will be.

Now....as for raw speed. Cable and the phone companies are trying to beat the shit out of each other to get the customers to sign up.

Comcast bumped up it's standard home connection speed last year from 1.5MB/sec to 3MB/Sec with NO increase in price. Then this year they doubled THAT to 6MB/sec.

Here in Gnashville, I just spoke with a BellSouth technician yesterday. Right now their max DSL speed around here is 3MB/sec, but within a few months they are going to upgrade to 6MB/sec.
He said by the end of next year they are going to be rolling out 12MB/sec speeds, and by 2007 they will be offering 24Mb/sec.

That is their plan anyway.

Now, even though cable has shared bandwidth, if you are closer to the access point that hooks directly into the trunk line, you may have less problems no matter how many peeps are on line.


So you see, it is impossible in some ways to say that Cable or DSL is better than the other, as there are many factors to be considered.

You may live in an area with not much population, and have better cable speed due to the low number of people sharing the line, while your DSL may suck because the CO is so far away.

The CO, by the way, is not necessarily some kind of office building. It can be just a fucking switchbox by the side of the road that has a main trunk line running to it.

On the other hand, you might live in town and be close to a CO, and have blazing fast DSL, but your cable speed may suck because you live in a densely populated area where there are shitloads of people all downloading stuff like a muffukker.

See whut I mean?

I had cable 3 years ago. They had just installed it in the small town I lived in outside of Gnashville. I was 2 blocks from the access point, and was the 13th person in the entire county to sign up for cable internet access.

I loved it!

But as time went on, and more and more people signed up for it, I noticed it got slower and slower, and yes, I noticed a big difference in speed depending upon the time of day.

Now I sit in the middle of the forest, too far away from any CO to have DSL, with a cable system that is 28 years old that the cable company refuses to upgrade.

So I have to live with shitty 56k.

I was told yesterday that within a year or two, BellSouth plans to have DSL available to ALL of it's existing customers.

So the end is in sight.

I hope the above info will be useful to you peeps for understanding this stuff.

I just want broadband. Any broadband will do.
:mad:

Cathedral
09-22-2005, 01:48 AM
That may be true now, or where you live, broham.
But when I had DSL it was captioned as a Sat Link as i typed it above. (Digital Satellite Link)
That is what Zoomtown called it anyway, and the service sucked as far as uploads went.

DavidLeeNatra
09-22-2005, 08:59 AM
Originally posted by ELVIS
I have cable, never had any trouble...

DSL sucked!

hey E. ... try to download VH's US-festival performance and then come back and say that again :D

thome
09-22-2005, 09:17 AM
I have been w computers for about two years never a bit since 88
so im playing catch up as fast as i can It is all consuming and
some times hard to grasp but.

6 months ago i wanted to hook up a lap top also to my same cable RR connection and i tried and tried finally figuring out the lap top had to be into the same hole in the cable modem box at the same time as my desk top( i tried the phone line) ok so then i get a splitter and

Find out from RR that because the lap top has a diff IP address than the desk top and RR doesnt have that technology yetYou cannot run 2 diff IP addresses on the same cable line
They said they were working on this scenario I wonder if they have
got that working?

Hardrock69
09-22-2005, 11:05 AM
Heh...Zoomtown were a pack of fucking morons then...no wonder your DSL service sucked fucking ass....

If they are so stupid as to not know the meaning of the acronym DSL, then god hel anyone who actually wants Internet access....


Here. FAQ about DSL:

http://www.uia.net/dslfaqs.htm

Hardrock69
09-22-2005, 11:09 AM
Thome, if you want your laptop and your pC to work on the same line, you will have to network them together.
Used to be 1 cable line = 1 IP addy, but check the link above:

I see several different speeds and prices on your web page... which is best for me? If you will be using a single PC from your home and doing general Internet browsing we recommend the GP-6 package. It has plenty of performance for the price. If you have a business then we would recommend one of the Verizon business plans; the GB-6, at 1.5Mbps down and 384 kbps up, with 40 email addresses and 32 static IP addresses, is a very good value. Call us to review your requirements and we'll help you select the appropriate plan.

thome
09-22-2005, 03:57 PM
Thanks Hardrock, as you know i disagree w you in some front line action

But feel i can learn something new somewere else. thanks again.

Hardrock69
09-22-2005, 08:11 PM
I tend to keep my subjects seperate.

Front line opinions are not my complete personality, just a small part.

No worries.
:cool:

bb64
09-23-2005, 06:56 PM
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I haven't had any online for 2 days because they were in transition from one to the other. Now I have dsl and I do notice a huge speed improvement! Now....on to the download forum :)