I just recently switched to AT&T Uverse for TV, Phone, and Internet after having had cable internet for many years. I have had nothing but problems with the service so far. Actually I guess it's techincally called VDSL (whatever that is). Anyway are most at home traders here using cable? Is there a disadvantage to DSL? For some reason the data seems to come in spurts (almost like a bottleneck). I guess I may have to go back to cable.. I do like all the HD Uverse offers though... -Guru
I don't live in-town, so the broadband pickins are slim. Cable is all we have out here, but on a 15dwn/7.5up connection, I have no complaints. I have lost out on maybe a dozen trades in a year's time due to signal issues, but it's not something to fume over because nothing can be done about it. One of my rules. Been on cable here for ten years. Tried DSL just to compare them side-by-side. Negligible differences in latency, so just stuck with what has already worked. I am on the West coast so only use it for trading during morning hours when most people are at work, so no major problems with speed.
Cable has higher bandwidth DSL has lower latency The problem sounds like your own setup. The problem could be a defective dsl modem, wireless card or router. You can try to see if you can reproduce it on multiple computers so you know if it's computer specific or the router/dsl modem. I had a cheap wireless card a long time ago that would cause my data to pause every x seconds then spurt. I tried using an ethernet cable and it was consistent so I knew it was the wireless card.
While I'm no real fan of the phone companies, I've had better luck w/ Embarq DSL than cable. In addition to the periodic outages, cable was almost unusable after 6pm when kids & 9-5'ers got home and fired up. While my cable experience was a few years ago, Comcast purchased the local cable company 6-12 months ago and I've not heard good things about them. Other than possible redundancy, I've had no reason to consider cable. R
EMBARQ is far superior to Time Warner cable here in Raleigh because time warner is unreliable. been thinking of switching to dish network for tv reception.
VDSL is Very High Bitrate DSL and is not the same as the regular ADSL (Asymmetric DSL). Consumer installation of VDSL by AT&T hasn't been going on for very long and AT&T might not have all the problems worked out yet. I have 1.5 mbps ADSL from Verizon and have a constant solid connection. I'll upgrade to FIOS when it is available. In my area Comcast cable provides a not so solid internet connection.
In MY experience cable is USUALLY faster than DSL. Having said that the Bellsouth DSL in my office is SLIGHTLY more reliable than the Comcast cable I have at home. But then it's my understanding that Comcast does dot have a very good reputation in my area.
I have been using Comcast High Speed Cable with pretty good success. From my experience, if you suffer from a lot of drops, it is most likely your cable modem that is on its way out. They are refurbished units from Motorola and RCA and are literal throw-aways after a year or so . . . just like routers and vcr's. If you are using a ROUTER, I would highly advise that you go out and buy the LATEST one that you can find. The same model number ROUTER might be on its 4th Version . . . which means that it can be quite a bit faster. It was Version-1, and they were on Version-4 after a few years. I found this out the hard way using a Belkin Router. Didn't matter if I updated the Firmware or not, it was "capped" at roughly 7mb on the download. Routers, like VCR's and modems have become "disposable" in my book after about a year, year and a half.
Yeah it's strange in that my tests seem to indicate that my latency with this VDSL line is fine but something just seems off. I'm going to call tech support (again) and go from there I guess. I'll give it a few more days and then it's back to cable for me... -Guru