Internet opinions needed!!

[Patience]

We have Charter, which includes the cable for the TVs, our High-speed Internet, and our phone. Charter has been nothing but a headache!! :doh! We lose Internet at least once a day and over this last weekend we lost it for hours at a time.

We are investigating the idea of DSL through BellSouth.

Who here has DSL and what do you think about it? We have heard our download time will slower, but we are willing to put up with that if it means having more reliable service.

Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated. :)

[Mike]

We have Charter, which includes the cable for the TVs, our High-speed Internet, and our phone. Charter has been nothing but a headache!! :doh! We lose Internet at least once a day and over this last weekend we lost it for hours at a time.

We are investigating the idea of DSL through BellSouth.

Who here has DSL and what do you think about it? We have heard our download time will slower, but we are willing to put up with that if it means having more reliable service.

Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated. :)
I have SBC DSL and it is fine and a little bit cheaper than cable. The best way to put it is that DSL is not as fast as cable. But calling it slow is incorrect. It is plenty fast for almost everyone. The only people who would need faster would be people who are downloading very huge files on a regular basis.

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[BloodoftheLamb]

Its really a tossup as to how service will be, look at dslreports.com to check reviews specific to your area.

DSL is typically 768/128 service but can be higher up to 3.0 meg if quite close to CO.

For browsing the web this is quite adequate but you will have longer dls on large files such as windows upgrades and or game demos and whatnot.....

[FranklinNoble]

DSL will be noticeably slower if you are downloading a lot of music and video - otherwise, you won't see much difference.

When I had cable, I had to keep asking them to send a technician out to tune the signal and clean up the line. After a while, I finally got someone competent, and it worked great. You might want to explore that option. Be chummy with your cable repair tech - you might get someone that can really take care of you.

[Enoch]

I have had/have both services you mentioned. DSL thru Bellsouth and currently 10MB cable with Charter. I've only experienced 1 outage with Charter for about 30 mins. It's pretty sweet on the DL times as I'm a nightowl.

BUT - overall DSL is faster if you are downloading large files, especially during peak times. Cable is shared bandwidth to your area which means, when everyone's watching the news at 6pm or American Idol or the Super Bowl, your connection will get bogged down with other users sucking the available bandwidth. DSL is dedicated to your house and not shared, unless you are on a party line of course - they still have those in America?? - I know they have them in other countries.

Anyways, Cable is ok and I have gotten the fastest times ever on this 10MB line, got 800k on a download not too long ago and a 900k download of a 1GB file 2 days ago.

But, DSL is more consistant and I liked not having to worry about what time it was.

Example - Im downloading a 10GB file that is currently coming at 80-90k now but was coming down at 130-150k in the middle of the night. Reason is simple, my neighbors are awake and watching TV, the more TVs they have on the more bandwidth I loose.

Hope that helps,
Enoch

[Patience]

Thanks so much everyone. Charter came out to fix what was some broken thingy, so we are going to sit and wait to see what happens. I still think we might switch.

Thanks for that site, BloodoftheLamb; very helpful! :thumbup