P1Fanatic

Moving house shortly. Been on NTL 600k cable for about 3.5 years now and not had many problems. Thinking of trying ADSL when I move but not too sure as I hear stuff about dialling up etc.

My Cable is ethernet based and I just turn my PC on and Im online. How does ADSL work in this respect?

Any other reasons to go ADSL over Cable?

Thanks,
Simon.

mannyo

I have NTL 600k and thought about adsl but in the end decided against. adsl modems tend to be usb as opposed to ethernet, and uses a psuedo dialup connection to connect to the network. unlike cable which is there from the moment you bootup your pc.

ChrisB

Somewhat wide of the mark. ADSL can be a USB modem or you can use an Ethernet router with the ADSL modem built in. Then as far as your PC is concerned, it's nothing but Ethernet, so no dialing or faffing about.

ianmiller999

as far as I Know, I may be wrong, but I believe that the principle is the same for both cable and adsl, but you get a quicker upload speed with adsl.

Chris L

Sort of. Cable and ADSL are different types of technology. Cable connections can be thought of as a giant coax Ethernet LAN. Performance problems can occur as the number of people in your street with broadband connections increases.

ADSL uses your standard phone line and employs a different frequency range to create an always-on connection to your local exchange. The connection is terminated on a DSLAM (DSL Access Multiplexor) and the signal is combined with many other connections and usually transported over an ATM backbone to the providers Internet gateway.

ADSL can suffer from poor performance due to excessive contention ratios at the DSLAM.

ADSL = Asymetric DSL in other words, different upload and download speeds. These can be changed by the provider, so it is not necessarily the case that ADSL would have higher upload speeds. What most people want is fast downloads hence the bias towards higher download speeds.

If you want much higher upload speeds then you need to look at SDSL (Symetric DSL), but this is not widely available and is targeted more towards the business market (hence the prices are higher).

Ultimately, both technologies acheive the same thing - a cheap high speed connection that would have been unthinkable or affordable a few years ago (both for home users and businesses).

Personally speaking, I've been using NTLs 512k (now 600k) cable modem service. In over a year, I've only suffered one outage of 3 days and a dodgy modem that was replaced in 24 hours. Performance is very good - on most occassions, you get more than 600K throughput. I might be lucky as I suspect I'm in an area with a fairly low broadband takeup. That said, our local exchange is not enabled for ADSL and there are no other cable providers - so anyone who wants broadband would have to use NTL.

Chris

P1Fanatic

Cheers fellas. So if I dont use a router will I have to dial up, if so how long does this take and is it everytime I want to go online or just when I first boot up?

Im not sure what option are available to me but thought I would try ADSL for comparison sake. I play a lot of CS and Cable has been a bit flakey plus I reckon the extra 128k up will help. However it doesnt help sharing with a housemate who is on bit torrent all the time.

Nice cut & past chris :-)

Thanks,
Simon.

RoadrunnerV2

You only need to dial-up with a USB Modem. Dial-up time is several seconds.

If you are considering cable/ADSL then I suggest you consider an Broadband router instead of an ADSL router. The difference between the to is the latter has a built-in modem while a broadband router deson't, but a broadband router can work on any broadband technology - i.e. cable or xdsl.

If you do decide a broadband router then you will need an Ethernet modem. A Combo worth consider is the D-Link DI-604 Broadband router with a D-Link DSL-300G+ Ethernet ADSL modem. If you then decided to go back to cable you could still use your router and sell the modem.

Another alternative
Go with an ISP that offers 8 public ip addresses free (example zen). That way you could each have a public ip and play on the same online game servers without any problems. Note: to use a pool of public IPs you need a router that performs Non-NAT/Multi-NAT. Routers to consider are the D-Link DSL-504 or the speedtouch 510.

If I have truly confused you then blame the people who developed the technology don't shoot the messenger

P1Fanatic

Cheers dude. Dont really need the 8 addresses. You can share an IP and play on same CS server. We have had 8 players playing over the same NTL 512k link on the same server, no problem at all.

Simon.

darlodge

If you use a router, the connection is always there and active, no need for dialing, etc. Just turn on and browse

I used to have NTL's 600k package and then moved to Nildram. Nildram's service has bene so much better than NTL's, loads quicker, more reliable etc.

Is the area you are moving to already been both Cable and DSL enabled?

Darren

[Edited by darlodge - 8/12/2003 8:54:08 AM]