While DSL is captive to how many feet you are away from your local telephone switching office. Unless their is an RT ( relay terminal ) in your neighborhood that is carrying fiber-optic up from the local switching office, SBC and Pac-Bell are only going to offer DSL to those customers that are not more than 14,000 feet away from the switching office. And even at that distance, you aren't going to get the 1.5mbs speed that is advertised. What you will get is a shot at 768kbs. As a result, Cable is much faster and usually a bit cheaper. It can get loaded down with users, depending on how many homes are connected to the neighborhood "node". For more info on DSL and Cable, check out the following site: www.dslreports.com
In the past, I've read articles that implied that cable is less secure than DSL. Not sure what they meant, but I'm assuming that they were talking about being hacked. I seem to remember that this was particularly true/easy for people in your neighborhood since you were on the same loop or something. Can anyone knowledgeable about this stuff comment on this issue? Have these issues been cleared up? Thanks
It is true that you are on the same loop, and by default if you don't setup your computer correctly for to stop them, the neiborghood could access at your computer, but similar problem will be meet with DSL if you don't setup correctly a firewall and port. In any case, when your are on the Internet, you have to know how to control the others if you don't want problems, not more easy with DSL then Cable, just keep in your mind that you will have to put a securities rightly before to start!
With Cable or DSL you can track more information (symbol, graphics, L2) at the same time. It could be usefull if you have a trading style that required these data.
IMO, you cannot daytrade seriously without cable/dsl solution, pro software required a lot of bandwidth for to transmit the data and modem is too limited for this purpose in modern days of daytrading. Modem should be use only for special case and backup solution if you have a trouble. The best setup is to have the both (three with modem) for backup solution. Now if you check only a symbol (as QQQ) in Level 2 and a tape or a graph, modem solution could be acceptable, but usually the traders have a basket of symbols to follow and the modem will be a problem. Also cable/dsl are more reliable and time response than modem usually.