In article , G.R. Patterson III wrote:
Yes, the cable is cheaper and faster than DSL.

Comcast cable is $70/month here. Verizon DSL is $40. I haven't noticed any
difference in speed, but then I'm not uploading much. Supposedly that's where
cable is greatly superior to ADSL.

I think it mainly depends on the provider as to which is superior. ADSL
(at least the flavour we have here) is IIRC, if you're within a suitable
distance limit of the phone exchange, is capable of up to 8Mbit/sec down
and at least 1Mbit/sec up. Of course, the telco only provides us with a
fraction of that!

Cable is also asymmetric, and I think the bandwidth you get depends
again on the provider.

However, once you get to the DSLAM or cable head-end, you've got
contention to worry about - a certain number of users will share a
certain amount of bandwidth. For here, if you pay extra for a business
account, you get backhaul shared with fewer users.

Then there's RADSL (rate adaptive ADSL), which is probably what they are
really using. I think in the DMT (discrete multi tone) linecode scheme,
the download part of your ADSL link uses the lower frequencies, and the
upload part uses the higher frequencies (the copper loop to the phone
exchange IIRC has about 1.1MHz or so of usable bandwidth, but don't
quote me on that!) The higher frequencies attenuate more than the lower
ones - so if you're a long way from the phone exchange, RADSL will tend
to lower your download speed if there's lots of signal degradation,
since that's what'll start to go first.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"