I used to have Comcast cable and it was very unreliable... I had an outage of some sort every few weeks. I spent years working with both Time Warner and Comcast to try resolve the issues, but the problems continued. I switched to DSL almost a year ago and haven't had a single problem. The DSL is more expensive and it has slightly less bandwith but not enough to make a difference; you don't need that much bandwith to trade, even if you're scalping (although I don't trade that way). The most important factor to me is reliability, and for me the answer is DSL.
This is a very interesting thread guys a lot of stuff most of us non techs wouldnt know about. I just use a simple DSL line and never had a prob with it after I put a line filter on but will check into running both on the load thing Cheers
Cable is seldom 5-8 times faster then DSL, in fact there is DSL available that is faster then some cable implementations, especially if you look at real-world perofrmance numbers and not just the numbers that cable companies advertise but rarely deliver. Yes, DSL has distance limitations and you have to be closer in to get the best speeds - but if you are close enough then the performance beats cable. DSL gives you a dedicated connection back to central office whereas with most cable systems you are sharing bandwidth with your neighbors back to the CO which gives less deterministic performance (bandwidth and latency) which is made for scalping. Another thing that you neglected to mention is that cable upload speeds are often very poor whereas DSL offers much better upload speeds - in some cases fully symmetric connections. While most data is sent to the user, acknowledgments must be sent back and a slow upload speed can reduce the overall performance quite a bit - especially if you are focusing on tcp latency and not just how fast you can download a big file. OP, you should investigate what the speed options are at your specific location and see what makes sense. It is impossible to give generic advice since ISP implementations vary widely. Check out http://www.broadbandreports.com/ And of course if you can get a fiber connection you should go that route, it destroys either cable or DSL in all respects.
i forgot to mention - each cable provider is different. i know that comcast has throttled speeds, and there's at least one canadian provider which has done the same.
Since you mention the potential bottleneck at the curb, associated with Cable, it's only fair to mention the potential bottleneck at the DSLAM, which may or may not be in your neighborhood, associated with DSL. Just a mention for completeness, not argument. Osorico
The difference is that both cable and DSL can suffer from bottlenecks from the CO to the internet - that's a given for any ISP technology (fiber included) Only cable suffers the additional potential issue of congestion from the premise back to the CO - technologies that give a dedicated pipe (DSL or fiber) do not have this issue. So its not like one or the other problem, when you choose between DSL or cable, its the chioce between two potential problems for cable vs one potential problem for DSL, in terms of bottlenecks.
True. But you are forgetting that DSLAMs are no longer solely located at the CO. This is what allowed DSL to "workaround" the distance issue and to expand. In reality, in practice, bottlenecks are relative to the providers network topology IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD. Osorico
Fair enough. However the vast majority of DSL users are connected to DSLAMs in CO's not remote pedestals. But that is something that you can (and should) find out before you signup for DSL (where your copper connection terminates). It goes back to my point that the OP needs to figure out what is available for his specific location. Asking for advice for something like this tends to result in location-specific anecdotal evidence and false generalizations based on the false assumption that the implementations of cable and DSL are the same everywhere which is far from the truth.
Thanks everyone! Although I am even more confused now lol I am going to be renting a place right downtown in Belleville. I won't actually see it though until I move out there so I can't do a ping test until then and would like to get my net set up so I can start trading out there right away. I know that I can get high speed enterprise package from cogeco that is 16 Mb up and 1.5 Mb down with unlimited bandwidth for $209/month . Probably overkill but I like the fact that it has requirements for how fast they have to get it back up if it goes down at all. Dsl is also available (not sure about speeds but since I am right downtown it should be ok) and I *think* fibre is also available but costs an arm and a leg . I have talked to a few of my trading collegues who trade similarly to me, and they all seem to use basic cable without a problem. They said that they don't notice any difference at all between being at home or in the office, as the difference is so minute, and that I might even find it better as I am going to be a lot further out east. I was just worried after reading a few older posts on here about people's experiences with cable.