The article "Compare Cable vs. DSL" is about broadband internet, it was written by Bradley James.
Okay, so you're finally tired of those slow dial-up inetrnet connections, and you want to go broadband. Good deal. But first, you may be wondering which type of broadband connection is best- DSL or Cable? Or, at least, which of the two gives you more speed for the cost?
Here we take a look at these two popular broadband connections and try to determine which one is better: DSL vs. Cable.Cable Speed vs.
DSLThe most common question that comes up is which type of connection is faster, DSL or Cable?
To answer this, it is important to compare both upload and download speeds. Now, so you have something to compare these speeds to, your average dial-up connection is about 28 - 56 Kbps. Most often, however, you won't be able to get 56k through dial up, as most services can not handle this speed.The average speed of a DSL download is 1.0 - 1.5Mbps.
That's megabytes per second - about 20 times as fast as the fastest dial-up connection. This is fast, but cnosider Cable, which can give you up to 2 - 3Mbps. Thus, at least for downloading, cable can give you almost twice the speed of DSL - that's impressive.
On the upload side, however, cable and DSL are pretty evenly matched. They both porvide about 100Kbps - 400Kbps. It seems that cable has won this battle.What about Prcie and Quality of Service? There is more to discuss here besides the speed of the connections. Take cost for one.
Cable and DSL connections are both going to be more pricy than dial-up.
But, DSL seems to be the cehaper of the two at the moment. You can get a good DSL internet connection for abuot $35 - $45 per month. Cable modem will cost you about $45 or $50 (this cost may be included in a cable TV package). These prices, however, are really close and they change almost from month to month.DSL is nice cuase you can talk on the phone and be online at the same time. In addition, business-level DSL service provides guaranteed data rates, so your connection speed is never a surprise. On the other hand, DSL speed tends to decrease the further you're away from the data center, and it is typically not as widely available as Cable.
Cable speeds are not depenednt on distance from the data center, and is occasionally cheaper than DSL when included in a cable TV rate. A cable modem, however, may require costly professional installation, and there may exists limittaions on downloads and uploads. All of these factors should be taken into consideration when choosing eitehr broadband service.Bradley James is a senior editor at SciNet.Cc, a website containing many helpful consumer electronics review articles. For more information on DSL and Cable technology, please visit our DSL vs Cable webpage.
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