Cable vs DSL
Category Fairpoint Metrocast
Living in the middle of nowhere I am fairly limited with my internet connection options. For the last year or so I have been using Metrocast Business Cable for my internet. It runs about $100 a month and gives me 7Mb down and 768k up. But I've had issues, very rarely I can I play a youtube video without it stopping every couple of seconds, and if I use the Netflix instant play I get a message like this, saying it will start playing in about 9 hours, sometimes even as high as 15 hours. The Flickr website was always hideously slow. I really only noticed the issues hitting servers in the West Coast too.
Obviously this isn't what I expected, so I try out things like the speed test at www.speakeasy.net and I will get mixed results, sometimes I get the 7mb/768k then 10 seconds later I will get 440k/768k testing against the same server. At first I assumed a bad router my end, so I changed that to two different models, no difference. I changed my cables, no difference, then for fun I loaded up a VPN client and tried out a connection via a VPN server at a friends office, the connections that way had no issues, no variable speed results, I always got the expected results. This to me indicated that my Cable company had an issue, and that the issue happened somewhere between. When I called the Cable company they decided to give me a lesson in how the internet works, explaining that the problem must be someone else's, so I explained that the VPN connection was fine to be told that didn't prove anything, and the problem isn't there's and that I should live with it. Sadly for them I didn't like that response and it made me look at alternatives, for me I don't have many alternatives, I can get DSL and that's it, unless I want wireless, which won't really give me the speeds I want. So today I fitted a telephone jack to my office and the engineer from Fairpoint came along and connected me to their service.
With the DSL, I now get consistent, yet slower results from the test pages, and my Netflix account can start playing in about 9 seconds
The DSL is half the price, and half the speed for download, which leads me to a few questions.
Does anyone have any experience with running two DSL lines into one of the Dual WAN router models? Good bad experiences? Interested in any feedback with regards to this approach.
Would you take reliability over performance? I am thinking yes to this answer myself.
How would you go about proving that the problem is or isn't with the cable company? In my mind I did that with the VPN, but have now done it conclusively with the DSL line.
Living in the middle of nowhere I am fairly limited with my internet connection options. For the last year or so I have been using Metrocast Business Cable for my internet. It runs about $100 a month and gives me 7Mb down and 768k up. But I've had issues, very rarely I can I play a youtube video without it stopping every couple of seconds, and if I use the Netflix instant play I get a message like this, saying it will start playing in about 9 hours, sometimes even as high as 15 hours. The Flickr website was always hideously slow. I really only noticed the issues hitting servers in the West Coast too.
Obviously this isn't what I expected, so I try out things like the speed test at www.speakeasy.net and I will get mixed results, sometimes I get the 7mb/768k then 10 seconds later I will get 440k/768k testing against the same server. At first I assumed a bad router my end, so I changed that to two different models, no difference. I changed my cables, no difference, then for fun I loaded up a VPN client and tried out a connection via a VPN server at a friends office, the connections that way had no issues, no variable speed results, I always got the expected results. This to me indicated that my Cable company had an issue, and that the issue happened somewhere between. When I called the Cable company they decided to give me a lesson in how the internet works, explaining that the problem must be someone else's, so I explained that the VPN connection was fine to be told that didn't prove anything, and the problem isn't there's and that I should live with it. Sadly for them I didn't like that response and it made me look at alternatives, for me I don't have many alternatives, I can get DSL and that's it, unless I want wireless, which won't really give me the speeds I want. So today I fitted a telephone jack to my office and the engineer from Fairpoint came along and connected me to their service.
With the DSL, I now get consistent, yet slower results from the test pages, and my Netflix account can start playing in about 9 seconds
The DSL is half the price, and half the speed for download, which leads me to a few questions.
Does anyone have any experience with running two DSL lines into one of the Dual WAN router models? Good bad experiences? Interested in any feedback with regards to this approach.
Would you take reliability over performance? I am thinking yes to this answer myself.
How would you go about proving that the problem is or isn't with the cable company? In my mind I did that with the VPN, but have now done it conclusively with the DSL line.
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Comments
Posted by Mike Rice At 04:54:17 AM On 12/05/2008 | - Website - |
And the providers don't care, they'll just take your money and tell you it's your equipment.
If one doesn't work, usually switching will (either way).
Posted by Craig Wiseman At 10:34:13 AM On 12/05/2008 | - Website - |
Pairing DSL modems should theoretically give you double speed, providing the mux works the way it should. But remember that DSL's speed is often just a matter of programming, so maybe you could just call and charm them into giving you more throughput, provided you're close enough to the switch to support that. And anyway, if you wait they'll probably boost it anyway -- mine's been upped two or three times since I subscribed, and the price has actually dipped a bit in that time.
Posted by Arthur Fontaine At 06:27:33 PM On 12/05/2008 | - Website - |