Cable vs DSL vs U-verse internet

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friendly_jacek

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It sounds like no brainer since cable should be faster and I have cable indeed. No problems with speed except for some rare slowdowns on weekends. My son is a gamer and gets good pings in his games.

The problem is I started Netflix basic and most programming stops a few times in the middle for buffering. Too many Netflix users in my subdivision?

Here is the thing. My friend had DSL lite that is inferior on paper, but no problems with Netflix when I tried. He also pays 2-3x less.

I'm itching to switch over. U-verse is another alternative. Any gamers or Netflix users on DSL or U-verse?
 
We've got the absolute cheapest dry loop DSL that the deathstar sells in Chicago - 3/1 Mbps. It always worked flawlessly with Netflix except on the PS3. The Blu-ray player, Roku, Wii & computers? Never a problem and the picture looked great, better than most DVDs. The PS3 would drop out and rebuffer again and again and again, completely unwatchable.

We had similar problems with cable service - very fast speeds on paper but unable to keep up with our VOIP (which also works fine on DSL).
 
I don't have netflix, but it may not be your connection. Streaming video slows/stutters can be caused by several things, such as your router or computer prioritizing data, i think it's refered to as quality of service (QoS), or it may be the buffer settings is small and perhaps you need to increase the buffer size (if that's possible, again I don't have netflix so I don't know what kind of player or software it uses), or you may be viewing higher resolution/bit rate video that requires alot of bandwidth that the connection can't keep up the download. So changing internet service may not solve your buffering problem. Try checking your computer and router settings (if you are using a router) to see if you can bypass or prioritize the streaming video from netflix.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
What is your advertized cable speed? What is your advertized U-verse speed?


U-verse goes up to 6Mb/s and Comcast cable is also the same figure IIRC. U-verse would be cheaper x3 for the first 12 months and after that also cheaper, but not a whole lot.
 
Originally Posted By: wkcars
I don't have netflix, but it may not be your connection. Streaming video slows/stutters can be caused by several things, such as your router or computer prioritizing data, i think it's refered to as quality of service (QoS), or it may be the buffer settings is small and perhaps you need to increase the buffer size (if that's possible, again I don't have netflix so I don't know what kind of player or software it uses), or you may be viewing higher resolution/bit rate video that requires alot of bandwidth that the connection can't keep up the download. So changing internet service may not solve your buffering problem. Try checking your computer and router settings (if you are using a router) to see if you can bypass or prioritize the streaming video from netflix.


I watch programming on HD tivo, so not much to tweak. It starts in HD quality first, but the quality adaptively goes down when buffering problems. I will compare to PC to see if there is a difference.
 
Originally Posted By: friendly_jacek
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
What is your advertized cable speed? What is your advertized U-verse speed?


U-verse goes up to 6Mb/s and Comcast cable is also the same figure IIRC. U-verse would be cheaper x3 for the first 12 months and after that also cheaper, but not a whole lot.


My bad, DSL goes up to 6Mb/s, U-verse goes up to 24MB/s. The pricing for 6Mb/s is almost the same.
 
Cable companies have some dispute with whether they should be paid to allow dedicated connection between content delivery companies (i.e. Level 3, where Netflix have its content sent from) and the backbone of its internal network. Your network speed on paper for cable is faster but it is shared between multiple users in the neighborhood, whereas DSL and U-verse (VDSL/ADSL2) is dedicated.

So don't be surprised to see hiccups when real time traffic like video streaming is involved on cable or DSL, it is more than likely it is their backbone.
 
Residential internet is massively overpriced. Boycott them all and help bring prices down.
 
Originally Posted By: PandaBear
Your network speed on paper for cable is faster but it is shared between multiple users in the neighborhood, whereas DSL and U-verse (VDSL/ADSL2) is dedicated.


This is the biggest myth ever. DSL backhaul is most certainly shared, just as cable is.

As for the OPs question, I am using the 3G internet from my cell phone at home and I use it with Netflix on my PS3. I am grandfathered into a truly unlimited data plan on Verizon. It does buffer sometimes, maybe once or twice on an hourlong program. I accept it for what it is.

Might end up getting a Grande cable modem though, my gf does not like sharing bandwidth with me when she's doing her homework for grad school
laugh.gif
 
Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Residential internet is massively overpriced. Boycott them all and help bring prices down.


that is very true. I just checked and Comcast charges less for cable internet for "new customers" (I didn't see anything about limited time offer) than what I pay them as "old customer". I cancelled their overpriced cable a few months ago and I'm going to cancel their internet too.

After reading online about increased ping in gaming issues with U-verse, I'm leaning DSL now.
 
Originally Posted By: Brons2
Originally Posted By: PandaBear
Your network speed on paper for cable is faster but it is shared between multiple users in the neighborhood, whereas DSL and U-verse (VDSL/ADSL2) is dedicated.


This is the biggest myth ever. DSL backhaul is most certainly shared, just as cable is.


Please educate me how my college kids neighbors can hog the whole 100MB/S backhaul with only 6MB/S of DSL each? and how they could hog the same backhaul with 35MB/S shared among them and the casual web surfers?
 
I have cable internet only through Cableone and back a few months ago, they had problems so I decided to go U-verse which is the only other service I can get here...other than satellite.

U-verse claimed 6mb speed and the tech that installed the service showed me where he was getting 13mb maximum with his instruments. Pretty good being that I was at the end of the "loop" as he stated. But...I never even got the 6mb speed that I was paying for. In fact, it was slower than my 5mb speed I was getting through cable.

To make a long story short, Cableone came out to check my service and I was told I could upgrade to their 2.0 service and pay less. Their 2.0 service offers speeds up to 50mb. I average anywhere from 25 to 45....just depends.

But, it took almost an hour on the phone to convince the customer service guy at AT&T that I wanted the service stopped! He offered all kinds of deals...even the max 13mb...but would hardly take "no" for an answer. I should have known better than to mess with AT&T in the first place..but that's another story.
But AT&T service may be better in your location.

(Climbing down off my soap box...end of rant.)
 
not to quibble but MB is megabyte and mb is megabit which is what they are usually rated in.

I have cable 30down/5up service. and I get the rated speed.

aprox 3.4MB/s down and .6MB/sec up
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: PandaBear

Please educate me how my college kids neighbors can hog the whole 100MB/S backhaul with only 6MB/S of DSL each?


How many of these 6Mb/S DSL users on that 100Mb/S backhaul?

(I assume you didn't mean to capitalize the b, as that indicates that you are talking about megabytes. I know of no DSL installations that deliver 6 megabytes/sec throughput)

Quote:
and how they could hog the same backhaul with 35MB/S shared among them and the casual web surfers?


A single cable downstream channel is 38mb/s -- there are usually more than one. I have a DOCSIS 3.0 modem that can tune (and does tune) 4 such channels at once. I never have any issues with slowdowns. Depending upon the architecture of the network, each of these channels may only be shared with a single node, which may serve up to 1000 homes.

The bottom line is that how the bandwidth is shared depends on the network architecture, which is as true for DSL as it is for cable.

I know someone who has DSL and it slows down when his neighbor is using it. His DSL is served out of a small (15x15 feet square, single story, former GTE now Verizon) remote which probably doesn't have a very fast backhaul.
 
I was also guilty mixing MB/s with Mb/s.
To clarify:
AT&T DSL 0.768-6 Mb/s
AT&T U-verse 3-24 Mb/s
Comcast Cable 1.5-105 Mb/s (I have 6 Mb/s)

I decided to try 6Mb/s DSL.
 
My bad, I should have used Mb instead of MB (lazy typing), and you guys are right that DSL and cable both are limited somewhat by the backhaul capacity. What I do found that seems to be a problem with our local cable is that they are more limited by the shared local coax in addition to the backhaul limit, and while DSL are also limited by the backhaul, they are much less severe than the limit of coax.

One more thing, the DSL here do not use traffic shaping to limit your torrent traffic.
 
My $.02.

I've experienced U-Verse from a gamer's perspective. My ping was unpredictable and often very poor. 100+ ms bad. Lag city in games. Then, just as fast, it'd be back down under 25 ms. This was all using pingtest to the same server.

Drove me nuts. Dropped the service for cable. I've had consistent ~15 ms ping to the same server on pingtest.
 
I found a potential explanation of slowdowns in my comcast internet:

according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_throttling

Quote:
in 2008 Comcast amended their Acceptable Usage Policy and placed a specific 250 GB monthly cap in an attempt to constrain excessive bandwidth users. Comcast has also announced a new bandwidth-throttling plan. The scheme includes a two-class system of Priority-best-effort and best-effort where “sustained use of 70% of your up or downstream throughput triggers the BE state, at which point you'll find your traffic priority lowered until your usage drops to 50% of your provisioned upstream or downstream bandwidth for "a period of approximately 15 minutes." A throttled Comcast user being placed in a BE state "may or may not result in the user's traffic being delayed or, in extreme cases, dropped before PBE traffic is dropped." Comcast explained to the FCC that “If there is no congestion, packets from a user in a BE state should have little trouble getting on the bus when they arrive at the bus stop. If, on the other hand, there is congestion in a particular instance, the bus may become filled by packets in a PBE state before any BE packets can get on. In that situation, the BE packets would have to wait for the next bus that is not filled by PBE packets. “


I could have easily trigger the 70% while streaming Netflix, wife calling by skype, and kids downloading and/or playing online at the same time.

I hope AT&T's DSL has no bandwidth throttling.
 
Update: I installed the DSL modem and I'm getting DSL internet from AT&T. It is much slower on the speedtest and only a fraction of the promised speed of 6Mb/s. Ping also almost doubled. Need to troubleshoot it more.

However, all youtube videos i tried run very smoothly with no buffering. That was NOT the case with comcast cable when the videos would play jerky and stop for buffering in the middle quite often. Mind you comcast was well over 12 Mb/s on speedtest. I've heard that ISPs cheat when you test your internet speed and they artificially boost the test data to please inquiring custumers. I'm pretty sure comcast did that trick with me.

A cursory google search reveals this:
Quote:
It is important to note that Comcast cheats like crazy on the speedtest reports, regardless of which one you use. They even have a marketing term for their cheat… SpeedBoost. Basically, Comcast will give you excellent bandwidth (in my case, 20Mbps) for the first 10 seconds or so of any download. After that 10 seconds of bliss, however, you are knocked back down to a more modest 6-8Mbps. This makes Comcast look great on speed and bandwidth reports, but has little bearing on what you can get sustained. Sure, this will make web pages load quicker, but won’t help you with any data transfer.

http://www.jimgoings.com/2008/03/fios-vs-comcast-a-real-world-comparison-and-review/
 
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