Advice on internet conncetion

[weekapaug19]

Just wondering on some advice for updating to a faster internet connection.  Right now I\'m in the stone age with dial up modem, but was wondering which is better to get for the different price ranges.  cable, dsl, whatever else is out there.  I\'m kinda lost when it comes to this stuff, and advice would be great, thanks!!

[Spacey]

Best advice I can give you, is to get anything faster then dial up. I can\'t believe that some people still use that.

There are differences in between cable and dsl but I don\'t know the exact details.

[FrankZappa]

There are differences in between cable and dsl but I don\'t know the exact details.

a cable line and a phone line

[kindm's]

Where are you located ?

If you have specific questions feel free to ask. I work at an ISP.

The big differences are gonna be as mentioned above. Phone line vs. cable

If u already have cable TV sometimes if you get internet they will give u a break on price etc.

DSL comes over your phone line. You can still sue the phone/ fax etc when you are on the internet. So you dont tie up the line like u do with dial up. If you had a dedicated phone line for dial up you could cancel the line to save money and just have 1 phone line for both.

I would say the biggest things to consider are who the cable and DSL providers are. Some companies really suck. http://www.dslreports.com is a good place to start.

[boombox]

I have just upgraded from a 512k dsl to a 2MB line, which is just about the best the average joe in the UK can get. Sounds great? Well, one bit of advice: if you do a lot of torrenting, check what the upload limits are. Most in the UK are capped at 30kb - I don\'t know about the US, but I have come unstuck this week with that. I started uploading a Country Joe Band DVD to dimeadozen and am still not quite finished yet.

Another thing to consider in the cable/dsl debate is how it\'s routed - have heard many horror stories of difficulty configuring cable routers to prevent being firewalled. However, I know there\'s a lot of guys here with experience of this sort of stuff to help, so it shouldn\'t be a problem.

[Mark]

For speed and reliability, cable can\'t be beat, IMO. DSL may be cheaper however.
Cox in Ct has a package where if you have cable TV, internet, and phone they knock  $20 off the bill.

[SlimPickens]

Straight up cable.  No question.

[Spacey]

I have comcast and I believe it is cable, and it has never failed me and it does everything I need it to. I am sure that you can get a faster connections if you need to do something specifically, but coming out of dial-up era, cable/dsl is fine.

[kindm's]

Cable companies tend to cap their upstreams and are usually very restrictive of what you can do with on their networks when u have cable u share speed with everybody else on the network.

I have had DSL for years and I think it may have gone down 1x and that was at my last Apt not since i moved.

I have 3.0Mbps/768Kbps. With DSl u dont share bandwidth with other people on the network your bandwitdh is yours to command

[weekapaug19]

thanks for the advice, i\'m thinking about looking into a cable package with comcast.  hopefully soon i\'ll be able to download shows and not bug people to bring them to shows for me.(thanks again all who have done so thus far!)

[Spacey]

thanks for the advice, i\'m thinking about looking into a cable package with comcast.  hopefully soon i\'ll be able to download shows and not bug people to bring them to shows for me.(thanks again all who have done so thus far!)

It is quite a feelinf when you download your first show and burn it to disc. I could, I mean will never go back to dial up again. Once you go high speed, you\'ll never go back. I know from experience.

[weekapaug19]

just check a bunch of companies, and all I can get is comcast cable line, but i don\'t have 34 a month to pay for it....looks like i\'m still in dail up land  back to good old fashion B&P\'s