If high availability is your concern you may be better off keeping comcast and adding DSL as a second ISP connection and then buying a dual-WAN router that will automatically load-balance between the two. Then if either connection fails (and they will from time to time) you wont be out of luck.
hmmm... I've had Comcast in Philly and in Berkeley and I've been 100% totally satisfied. In fact, I have fewer connection problems trading from home through Comcast than I've had trading in various offices. (in fact, I've never really had a problem). Also, everyone I know that uses Comcast in Philadelphia is very happy (I don't know anyone else using comcast here in the bay area). Maybe the quality of Comcast internet varies in different markets.
Ric, where are you located? I'm using Comcast too, since the beginning of this month (May), and until 2 days ago it was just fine. Yesterday I lost connection at about 11:30 am and it's been crappy ever since. Customer service told me that there's a maintenance issue in my area, and they don't have an ETA on it yet. I am in the Los Angeles/Orange County area.
If it makes sense for the amt. of capital you trade, use two computers, one cable, one DSL. For me, it's a pretty cheap "insurance policy".
I'm in the Chicago suburbs. Ever since they upped the commercials and the trucks came around the neighborhood more my connection goes off constantly. They can't handle their own expansion. I'm going to get something else and tell them where they can shove their overpriced service.
i have comcast and dsl and i fin d comcast much faster than my dsl and the bandwith is greater. in 6 months my cable modem has never been down. in 5 years with dsl it was down maybe 3 times. but i needed a cable modem to trade thru a vpn as dsl didn't work good for me
I have had intermittent cable outages since December. Finally got disgusted enough to get a 1/2 T1. $250/month. Had a couple bugs at first but now it's rock solid. The best part? After the technician set it up he turns to me and says, "I ran a speed test, looks like it's running at the full T1 bandwidth." And last I checked it still is. If they figured it out and ratcheted me down to 1/2 speed I haven't noticed. For a week I had both services so i ran a tracert to my broker. Surprisingly, the cable was as fast or slightly faster by a couple mS. But I live across the country from my broker, so I guess that's not too surprising.