DSL Rising 402
Steve wrote to us with an
article about the rise of DSL throughout the world. What I find most interesting is the discussion about cable vs. DSL; in the United States cable is winning, but globally, DSL holds the cake.
Fast, cheap, good: pick two.
US vs other Nations (Score:5, Informative)
I fell into this category, as even though DSL was availible in my town (a suburb outside of NYC), I was wayyyy too far from the central office to get DSL. Only just recently did my local cable supplier begin offering broadband.
In smaller countries with more concentrated populations, more people live within the appropriate distance from the central office. Hence the larger amount of people with DSL service.
I chose DSL because... (Score:5, Informative)
With DSL, in Portland, OR at least, I get to choose from a number of different speeds and ISP's.
For me this is the difference between a *real* connection to the Internet, and a download only one.
(Shameless plug --If you do not live here, skip!)
www.spiretech.com
- Shell account on server via SSH or (gasp!) telnet.
- Some level of free web site hosting.
- Good connectivity
- Only real user restriction is that you do not abuse the connection. So running a commercial site is out, but all the hobby level stuff is ok.
- IP address by username in dns. Not static, but very useful. eg: user_name@dsl.spiretech.com
These things matter a lot to me. I use my home connection for many different activities. Many are related to my job, but some are just for learning.
So, you basically trade choice and connectivity for speed. For me that's fine. Maybe others see the same?
Interesting stats.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:cable IS better (Score:5, Informative)
just my experience and $.02
Cable is Better in YOUR area (Score:5, Informative)
My DSL has DHCP, an accessible IP, has a small cable I plug into the phone socket which isn't exactly much.
Oh and Cable isn't in my area. In most of Europe Satellite TV rules the roost, except for major cities and even there Sat tends to have an edge. Europe didn't spend the 50s,60s and 70s installing a cable TV network, it went straight from terrestrial to Satellite. This means that the only network that is EVERYWHERE is the Phone network hence DSL.
So you'd want DSL if you were in a place where the investment in the Phone infrastructure has been going for the 40 years that cable investment has been going in the US.
This is why no-one is suprised (except the Slashdot editor) that Cable is big in the US and DSL big everywhere else. Its sort of like saying "Hey look CDMA is big in the US but GSM is big everywhere else".
Re:DSL and Cable are great... (Score:3, Informative)
All the local ISPs in my area are selling DSL. I guess they are just re-selling Pac Bell's DSL...is that your point?
Yes. Local ISPs (like the one I work for) make little to no profit on resold DSL. If they make any profit per connection at all, it's because they charge more than the phone company does for the same service.
Ironically, that usually means they still make no profit.
reasons (Score:5, Informative)
Two main reasons
1) Network topology. Cable is a ring, so all the consumers are sharing the bandwidth, the local connection forms the bottle neck. xDSL is star, each customer has exclusive use until the backbone. It suffers less contention. This benefits the consumer.
2) Cost. Cable expensive to install, you need to install a new cable ring and new run to each subscriber. XDSL operate of the existing twisted copper pair of the local loop. This benefits the ISP.
AIH, We are rolling out a broadband Interactive DTV using IP over ADSL because of these advantage.
Re:cable IS better (Score:2, Informative)
Now, I suppose it's Speakeasy or nothing. That is, if you can get Speakeasy in your area. I personally can't.
As for Cable, in my area, Cable ISN'T faster. It's horribly slow. They won't give a static IP. The upstream is only 128k (though you won't ever even send THAT much because their network sucks). As if that weren't bad enough, it's nearly impossible to keep connections to servers active for long. They know about the problems, and they don't care. Gaming? Don't even try it. File sharing? It'll take you forever. Forget about streaming unless you don't mind serious lag.
As if all that wasn't enough, they offer three packages (silver, gold, and platinum) and from what I've been told by people who work there, anyone who gets gold or platinum is wasting their money as the network is too slow to give them even what silver promises.
I realize of course that not all cable providers are like this. What makes you think all DSL providers are as bad as the one you had?
Telocity/DirectTvDSL kicked ass. But Bellsouth in my area sucks. They suck the same way it sounds like your DSL provider sucks. In the end it comes down to who you use. In my case, I have nobody reliable left to use.
I vote against shitty service by not spending my money on it. I guess I'll be offline for a while.
Re:cable IS better (Score:2, Informative)
The only companies i've seen using PPPoE (via WinPoET) recently, are AOLDSL. Are you admitting to using AOLDSL?
Latency vs. Bandwidth (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Cable is Better in YOUR area (Score:3, Informative)
Sad, but true.
Umm.. (Score:2, Informative)
Wake up and smell the coffee.. You've been throttled back to 120K/sec just like me and many other cable customers over the past year or two.
Re:The reason why DSL beats Cable outside of the U (Score:3, Informative)
"is because the U.S is NOT densly populated. For example, Europe is extremely dense in population thus make DSL an easy choice with many people close to the relay stations (within 3 miles). Where as in the U.S. you have mountains, deserts, artic tundra where lower population live so they must use cable."
Population density in Finland is lower than in US, still ADSL is pretty popular here. I believe that majority of population in US lives in cities (>100000) cities, thus mountains, deserts and artic tundra won't make big difference.
"Also, much of Europe and Asia use satelite for television so people don't have the option to use the exist co-ax that is running into their homes as almost all have in the U.S (for Internet access)."
At least in Finland this isn't true, Internet connection via cable modem is available in all major cities.
Reason for ADSL success is it's stability:
With cable modem you will get fluctuating 50-500ms ping in Online games with 10-60% packet loss. This is totally unplayble.
With ADSL you will get stable 90% of Finland's land area (and >95% of population) was covered by GSM network by 1998. As I pointed earlier Finland has lower population density compared to US.
The actual ranking... (Score:5, Informative)
Top five for those who are too lazy to click:
(country, DSL-lines in 1000, lines per 100 population)
Look out for China, it'll lead this ranking soon, just because of being HUGE.
Re:Cable is Better in YOUR area (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know where you're from, but here in the Netherlands, cable-tv has a coverage of 98% or more in all homes.
Still, DSL is getting more and more popular, because the cable providers (like Casema and UPC) are simply offering a godawful excuse for service.
After using both, I prefer cable. (Score:2, Informative)
My story:
1 year of DSL on the Ryhthms (now defunct) network on a 128k link, then a year of Cable (ATT Broadband), now I'm back to DSL (last 10 months or so) with a Covad 144k link.
3 different services because I've lived in 3 different places in the last ~3 years.
My first bought with DSL occured because Cable wasn't available in my area, nor was Verizon DSL. The only thing I could get at home was a business DSL line from Ryhtms (128 up and down) for $100.00 a month. Install went smooth (1 month after ordering) and I had 5 static IPs. I didn't have the bandwidth to run much in the way of servers, but I was able to host my own DNS for some other projects. Service went down probably 2 full days a month. Not too bad, but it wasn't great.
Then I moved to the next town over. They had ATT Broadband. $49.00 a month. I must have been the only one on my segment using the broadband feature, because I could have 3 or 4 downloads going at once at speeds up to 700k. I also had a static DHCP host name, and had no trouble SSH'ing into my boxes remotely (I used a netgear 311 router/gateway and had 4 machines behind it).
Well, the girlfriend didn't like where we were living, so we moved after a year back to the town that had no cable broadband.Rhythms had just gone out of business, and I was back in 56k land.
After a month of research for a faster connection, the best I found was a Covad business connection (144 up and down) for $149.00 a month for 5 static IPs.(again, not really the bandwidth for runny and kind of a server, but static IPs can be useful) Install happened a week after I ordered and went fairly smoothly.
In the ~10 months I've had Covad, they have been back no less than 6 times to fix the connection. I'd say it was down 4 full days a month, especially if we have any major rainstorms.
With cable, I never had a problem, it was up 100% of the time, was much cheaper, and a lot faster. Of course, if I lived closer to a Central Office, I could get better DSL service at a cheaper price, but I don't...
However, my prayers were recently ordered and they just finished upgrading my part of town with the new digital cable lines. We have digital cable TV, and as soon as the year contract expires on the DSL, I'll be switching over to ATT Broadband once again.
Surprises and...more surprises! (Score:2, Informative)
Filters all over your house? (Score:3, Informative)
All your outlets should be wired to your second line.
Your DSL modem is connected to your primary line.
(or vice versa).
At least that's how I did it.
Then get a Linksys router and don't use the PPPOE software.
Do those things, and DSL is better than cable, AND most DSL companies aren't nearly as restrictive as far as ports and quotas and such. AND you're not sharing your connection with every other joker in your neighborhood, (and they're not sniffing your line, or hacking into your system).
All in all, DSL is way better than cable in every way.
Cable vs. DSL (Score:2, Informative)
I have cable and it rocks. I get about 4.2 to 5.7 megabits per second downstream from my ISP which is on an internet backbone and it never dips below that. My ping times are also rock bottom - I play Battlefield 1942 on EA's servers and get ping times of low 60's. My cable provider is Cable America. The time from when I requested service to the time I actually had service was probably 30 hours. It cost me nothing (no install fees) and I pay monthly (no forced yearly agreement). So to sum up: I have static ip, 4.0+ mbps downstream, 512 kbps upstream, all for $35 a month.
DSL? I can't even get it, and even if I could, I'd be paying a hell of a lot more for the same speeds.
Re:cable IS better (Score:2, Informative)
DSL is much better in my area... (Score:2, Informative)
It was much easier to install than Cable was, for me anyway; I don't know about most people, but I have only one cable outlet in my house (nowhere near my computers), but many phone outlets. Makes it much easier for installing the modem where I want it. And I have a nice 10bT modem, as I recall SBC offerred a choice between that and a USB one.
And who was complaining about the little line filters? Dude, it takes like two minutes total to put one in every phone jack in the house, and they don't cause any problems whatsoever - faxes, phones, even regular modems work fine through them.
Cable would be nice if I wanted to do some hosting, but it isn't available in my area (the cable co. claims they would need to install all new equipment, which they are apparently unwilling to do, never mind the fact that I live in a college town of about 60,000 that would probably have a rather high demand for this sort of thing) so I am more than happy with my DSL. It is certainly enough to download things at high speeds, play games, and do work on the internet, and since this is 99% of what I want to do, it is perfect for me. Sure, it goes down for a couple hours every other month or so, but that really isn't too much of a problem.
Re:reasons (Score:4, Informative)
1. Cable isn't a ring, it's a tree-and-branch.
2. xDSL has contention at the DSLAM, not the backbone.
3. It's only expensive to install cable in an area where it doesn't already exist (as many others have said, it's extremely extensive in the US and some parts of Europe, much less extensive in others).
4. You're probably rolling out video over DSL because who in the hell would want thin-pipe IP video over a cable connection that was designed to deliver TV-quality video in the first place?