only dsl offers true static IP in my area :/

That's called a bridged connection, and they don't offer those anymore.

If you have DSL for years.. like mid 90's, yes you can retain the bridge (static IP). otherwise, you can't get NEW service with a static IP, unless you pay extra for S-DSL, which is close to 80 - 100 bucks a month.

Besides, you can get dydns.org. They monitor your IP address, whenever it changes (on cable, in 2 years my IP address has NEVER changed) they will update the Internic rec to change your registered domain to match, and the change only takes seconds to complete, so essentially, you get a static IP.

and what are you using a static IP for anyway? Are we hosting a website? FTP site? or allow people to grab software and music from your machine at home? uh huh.. yeah, you may pretend to use it for "personal" reasons, but like the ISP, they are not stupid, there is a reason they won't give you a static IP, but there are ways around it.

BIG POINT HERE: DSL requires you to purchase land line phone service. You cannot have DSL unless you have their phone service also. This is like cable forcing me to get VOIP. Cable only charges $5 if you do not want cable TV. It costs $30 a month, just to have a land line, dial tone, and not have my number listed in the phone book, and information. I am one of those people who is rarely home, and only have a cell phone. When the power goes out in my area, so does the land phone line, even with a phone line powered phone, not a cordless. My area has SBC, or now its AT&T. So, DSL costing an average of $32, and 30 a month for phone service, comes out to about the same as cable broadband, but way slower. DSL is an ancient technology in the communications world. In a country that can 2 way someone in Miami, from Seattle, why should it matter how far I am away from the DSL companies main switch box. Come on!

I just switched from cable to DSL a few weeks ago. I'm starting to wonder why I didn't switch earlier.

I had been paying $50/month for 3Mbps/256kbps at Charter. Now I am getting 3Mbps/768kbps with Verizon for about $30 a month.

Not only am I getting the same download speed for cheaper, but I am getting faster upload, which is critical. The upload speed is what really prompted me to switch, not the price. I can't wait until Verizon gets a FiOS pipe to my place!

Yeah, what is your ENTIRE phone bill? You aren't giving us the complete picture.

Yes, its 30 dollars for DSL. PLUS!?!?!? Your land line phone.. which is?!?!? 20 bucks.

You are STILL paying 50 bucks!

I pay 60 dollars for cable, 8 meg down/768 up. TOTAL. There isn't that much price difference.

you are ONLY looking at the price of the services, but you can't have DSL without ANALOG lines...

but you can't have DSL without ANALOG lines...

Naked DSL is definately available in some areas. Just not the one's we happen to live in. ;)

Argh, you are right on this one. I forgot to include the land line, because I am being billed seperately for the DSL; somebody else pays for the phone.

I am still getting better upload speeds for the same price though.

have dsl myself
pay $40 month (minus discount)
5-10 Mb/down 768 kb/up (just un-capped the down, thats why it fluctuates) :-)
cheaper and more dependable than cable here
most people i know use dsl tv too, better picture than cable, and programing like a dish. plus i get a discount for having tv, internet, cell phone, telephone, and long distance, all on one bill.
but, if the cable companies knew what they were doing, we'd all have 10 megs going both ways. i used to get that about 6 years ago, when cable internet first came to my area ($50/Mo.), dsl wasn't even in the ballpark.
mmmmm...10 meg steady...those were the days

5 to 10 meg down? Come on man!

I contest that. Sorry, nope. I don't believe it.

Which company is this?

I don't care WHAT ISP you have, you will NEVER see bi-directional speeds in equal. They PURPOSELY limit your uploads for a reason, its not a technology limitation.

ALL cable is, essentially is ethernet running on a cable line. that's it. They can make it 100 meg right now if they wanted to, but DSL isn't even close to competiting, so why do it?

You will NOT see 10 meg up. I will venture to say 2.5 meg will be the limit.. ALL the providers don't want to be held liable or have business customers using residential lines for hosting.. which is what the upload speeds infringe on, that's why the upload cap. Its not a limit of the technology, I ASSURE you.

"5 to 10 meg down? Come on man!
I contest that. Sorry, nope. I don't believe it."
don't care if you believe me, but i'm serious, my download speeds range between 650 kB/s and 1.2 MB/s (bytes not bits if you do the math it works out to 5 - 10 Mb/s) from large company servers, steady too (doesn't drop while d/l).
i pay $40/mo for the internet, i don't have to have a phone number to get service, but i do and it's another $20/mo. the dsl tv (2 boxes)is $75/mo for about 200 channels (i think they get their programming from dishnet), and my cell is $40/mo, think my long distance package is another $10-$20/mo. totals up to a whopping $200/mo, but i'm getting 5 services.
i have two phone lines coming into my house, and two dsl 10meg modems they plug into. my telephone and internet are on one line, and the dsl tv is on the other. hook up was no charge.
and like i said, they uncapped my d/l speed not too long ago. we have fiber optic lines going to boxes in residential areas, so no one is more than a block or two from a fiber cable. a person i know who works for the local telephone company tells me they're running fiber cable to all the houses soon so they can offer HDTV through dsl on multiple boxes. i'm told my internet speeds will increase again when it happens. supposed to be this year some time.

" that's why the upload cap. Its not a limit of the technology, I ASSURE you. "
um, yah, i realize why they cap the upload, i just don't like it.

Dude,

Where the *hell* do you live?

How's the Job-Market for Network Admins?

Plenty of housing available?

Care for a new neighbor or several?

DSL sucks next to Optimum Online cable. YES its cheaper but its much slower. If you are not close to the "dslam" you are going to get 700 DL / 128 UP. Cable im getting clost to 4000 DL / 900 UP. They also stopped capping modems around here... Verizon is going to wire fiber to everyone's house in my location soon, when that goes live i may switch. Direct fiber will be crazy speeds. Cables days are numbered, but for now cable is much much faster.

just dont upload too much.. optimum online throttles your connection SEVERELY if you upload for a certain amount of time nonstop and I'm not talking about days, a couple hours of uploading, even if it's not heavy (e.g. online video conferencing, online gaming, RDP, file transfers, webpage publishing, etc) will trigger a throttle. Of course they dont inform you that a throttle has been placed; you must be technical enough to suspect that something is wrong with your internet connection, dial optimum online and request full service to be restored.. they'll acknowledge if a throttle has been triggered but dont actually fix it immediately, they require some super secret agent to call you back within 24 hours (more like 84) who will require you to agree to the TOS and explain to you how any little thing you do online may get you throttled again.

I wonder how many novice users are paying full price for optimum online (44.95/mo) who are throttled and getting 1/10th the service they paid for and since they dont know any better, and OOL doesn't inform the subscriber when a throttle has been placed, OOL gets paid full price for 1/10th the service that was agreed to.

dslreports.com under optimum online has 7 threads going with approx 100 pages worth of posts in each thread of very angry subscribers.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/ool

This sounds like the way satellite internet used to be back when it was still one way. Basically if you downloaded too much your internet connection got throttled down to near 56K dial up speeds for downloading.

That is just bad business. Even if they spell it all out in the TOS, that just doesn't seem right to me.

If the company advertizes a certain speed and the customer agrees to pay for the advertized speed, the customer should be able to enjoy the full benefit of the purchase.

How can this, or any other, company get away with this? Is there a list of known companies that participate in this sort of practice?

Depends on your location. I'm right next tot he dslam. 3Mb/sec, same as cable, but more realiable, and *much* cheaper.

Of course, one of our facilities in Kansas City, MO, is about as far from the dslam as you can get nad still get service. They are limited to 768 asynch, which is horrid, and the prices are much higher. Cable isn't in the are yet (commercial district), and Sat. isn't an option.

Happy as hell I don't live there.

OK, everything is good, except reliable.

It depends on the phone company. DSL is considered low priority, and therefore it doesn't get the same service as even a regular phone would. The order is something like this.

T1's/DS3/OC48 because those trunks carry the info to the outlying areas (including analog phone service). So if something catastrophic happens, and the phone lines go down, DSL will be the LAST in the order of services to come back up.

Cable, uses some type of high speed phone (T3/DS3/OC48) so Cable is actually more reliable than DSL, because CABLE companies are a much larger client than individuals that use DSL.

Cable therefore is MORE reliable than DSL. Maybe the service providers that have cable, suck, but Comcast is one of the best. Charter and Time warner have issues.. and so do some other cable companies. They simply connect to their router, and maybe their equipment has problems, maybe there is construction, it depends.. but Cable is FASTER (more expensive, yes).

DSL is distance dependent technology, the further you are from the SWITCH, the slower the speed. Less than like 5% of the country can even qualify for DSL, let alone get good speeds. The DSLAM is a propagator for the signal, and if that gets full, or needs repair your whole neighborhood is affected by DSL service.

CABLE uses a router and its not subject to frequent tampering (people get new phone service everyday, or change service which requires a truck roll - regulate phone service tech - to be dispatched and work on the phone trunk). They move wires, manipulate the connections..

Cable is already in place. When you get cable, all they need to do is provision the line, and you are set. They don't touch the router.

I know all of this because I did phone work for 2 years, ADSL installs for Bellsouth, and they totally suck. So maybe I am jaded, but Bellsouth is the worst phone company on the planet. I wouldn't recommend them for the taliban to use. I hate bellsouth.

I realize you don't have bellsouth, but phone companies in general are poor service providers.. they are among the lowest in customer service, wireless, DSL, Land line.. anytime you deal with a phone company, customer service is about ZERO.

You have had good luck with DSL. I can gurantee you are in the minority. DSL and phone companies are NOT as responsive as cable, and even though cable is more expensive, I would rather spend 60 bucks for 8 meg download/768 up (no downtime in 2 years - zero, not even 1 minute) and have reliable speed transfer, than to be dependent on above ground cables that are subject to sun spots, weather, heat, and distance.. to send/receive the signal... even if it as cheap as 15 dollars.

Its worth the price difference to me.

Its not bad business. The upload speeds are limited for a reason. for one thing, you can host a website for your neighborhood to trade pirated software and music.

You can do that now, except it takes too long to download stuff (upload from the neighbor slows your connection - your link is only as fast as the fastest uplink - and if they are limited to 256 UP, you can only get 256 DOWN from them).

If you want faster, you have to PAY like a business. If you think about it for a half a second, why would you get residential service for upload speeds for a fraction of the cost that businesses pay, they pay for that upload speed, so why should you get what they get cheaper?

You complain about uploads limited and whine about being screwed, but you don't look at the big picture.

They don't want you to host websites, share files, or get same service as regular customers. You are surfing the net and getting news, not running a host. You want hosted service, pay for it.

That's BS. No ISP limits your download.

They wouldn't throttle you anyway, your service just wouldn't work.. Satellite is sucky technology for downloads.. and the ONLY way to send a signal is via analog lines, so that's not a good example.

also fiber is VERY expensive. Check the prices on that fiber.. you think you pay a lot for cable? HA!

Just wait, it will be like a car payment..

Fast yes, worth it, no!

Plus fiber will be very, very limited.. you must live in New York or Los Angeles.. those the are the only 2 places I know of that are even testing it, and even in those areas its only like 200k customers.

My experience indicates the exact opposite.

My latencies are lower (which is a must for gaming)

My connection speeds are more stable (when on cable, they advertised 3MB/sec, but we oculd only reliably get that mid-afternoon, and we were rarely home at that time. With DSL, it's amazingly consistant.)

My prices are lower.

What else is there?

Oh, and the cable company I sued was Comcast. They averaged about 2-3 outages a month when we lived in savage. Their DNS servers were absolute crap.

Bah! There are plenty of reasons why a person may need a higher upload speed, and it isn't all about pirating music either. The reason I needed a higher upload speed was for a videophone my sister uses. See here:
http://www.sorensonvrs.com

When a person agrees to pay for an advertised speed, they should be able to utilize their connection up to the advertised speed.

If the ISP doesn't want you to use your connection up to the advertised speed, they shouldn't be promoting it. They should lower the maximum upload speed they advertise instead, so the customer knows what speeds they might actually expect to receive.

Not telling your customers when they are being penalized or even giving the customer a firm figure as to what may trigger a throttle, and still taking the customers' money for full services that are not being rendered is bad business.

I've got a full round table pizza I've sold to you. You can only eat a few slices a day that I determine. If you eat more than I think you should, I'm going to have to take that pizza away from you. You still owe me the 20 bucks.

i agree
my dsl service kicks the crap out of the cable provider in my area
but i realize it's not so everywhere, the cable internet i mentioned i had 6 years ago was in another area and had MUCH better services than cable provider where i am now.

lol
had that problem when i had cable internet, they advertized "unlimited downloading". sent me an email after my first month, threatening to disconnect my service if i didn't limit my d/l to 2gig a month.
don't really understand it though.
the telephone company doesn't charge me more if i talk on the phone 24/7, the cable company doesn't charge more to have my tv on 24/7. so, why does the internet service provider care how much i use my inernet?
seems a little intrusive
haven't had an issue where i am now with dsl, better customer service too. :-)

EXACTLY.. they claim that their TOS states upload speed may be used in 'bursts' anything more than that may trigger a throttle.

Here is some old news I just found. I wouldn't call it BS.

http://news.com.com/2100-1034_3-5079624.html

You obviously don't know what you're talking about. Check out Hughes Network System's fair access policy. It specifically states, for example, that on the Home satellite internet service your internet download speed will be throttled after you continuously download 169-175 MB of information from the internet.

This means if you are downloading a Linux DVD image your internet connection will be throttled before you even get halfway through downloading it.

Still expensive.

It doesnt matter if verizon hasnt lowered them.

In my area is $35 for Verizon and $45 for Comcast (if you have cable service thru them...$50 without). The speeds arent even comparable (6mbps/384kbps Comcast vs 768kbps/384kbps Verizon), but for users like my AUNT for example, 768kbps is enough to browse the internet.

Yeah, your Aunt isn't a high speed user like we are : ). good enough for her, I am not going back to those days...

Is this a good time to tell Verizon: "Can you hear us now?" They haven't lowered their rates at all. But I guess that is a perk of being a monopoly.

You must not live in the south then! Verizon DSL is non-existant out here, WoW, and even COMCAST are unheard of here. SBC Yahoo! (or whatever they're called this week) holds the 'monopoly' down here, along with AOL/Time Warner.

The south is weird though. We shop at Market Basket and H-E-B for groceries, and never buy Dreyers ice cream--Blue Bell rules! (if you haven't heard of these, you are not alone. Only in the South--and Colorado :-)

Where are you? I am in the south.. You must be living in LA someplace.. if you are in the south, and haven't heard of these..

No walmart, Publix, Super Target? Blue Belle? Bah, give me haagen das

I'm from Jersey and if it weren't for my friends in Texas, I would have never heard of Blue Bell...the first time I heard of that was like 2 years ago lol...

Even I've heard of Haagen Das. Global brand, I guess. :P

Blue Bell is overrated. I'd stick with Hagen Daas or Ben & Jerry's.

Cool! another vote for Hagen Daas!!

yeah 14.99 / mo. access, for crappy ass, limited availability, distance dependent technology, still sucks.

It still beats dialup though!!! Some people are crunched enough as it is--no way in !@$% I can afford cable internet these days, heck we even had to consider scratching the DSL...

cut out the beer, quit subscribing to "jugs" magazine, reduce the eating out, cut down on the games subscriptions..

*ANYTHING* is better than Dial-up! I would rather walk naked, in gasoline soaked underwear, through HELL than to revert back to dial-up.

"cut out the beer, quit subscribing to "jugs" magazine, reduce the eating out, cut down on the games subscriptions.."

Don't have any of those--except the food of course. Who said I was planning to use dialup though? DSL is as cheap as most dialup now, if I cut it, I would have nothing at home. I can survive off of dialup though, as I did for many years.

By the way--in case you ask, no, I do not smoke either. That would be a friggin' expense.

I am messing with you man....

I know you don't use dial-up, I was saying that I don't want to go back to dial-up.

You don't smoke, drink, read girly magazines.. and you don't have games subscriptions? Are you sure you are a tech?

Compared to what?

DSL out here:

$29/month, 3Mb/sec, always on. (Had one server outage in the last 2 years)

Cable out here:

$60/month, 3MB/sec, always on. (Averaged 1 a month during the contractual 6 months I was forced to use it.)

It certainly doesn't suck compared to cable. At least, not up here. The pricing /speeds down south must be a hell of a lot different.

OK! I give! I did recently subscribe to WorldofWarcraft :)

Compare to Australia, "the lucky country":
DSL:
$29.95/month, 256Kb/s, always on, 200MB download limit. Excess usage charged at $0.15 per MB. 2 year contract.

Even your cable looks like a bargain compared to our rubbish!

You (and your family) have my condolences.

I use SBC Yahoo! DSL, upgraded to the 384kbps upstream package and pay $19.95/mo. It's wonderful service and they have plans to upgrade the lines locally to increase the 2Mbit/384 speeds to 4Mbit. Dallas / Ft. Worth metroplex area.

I have the same experience here in Dallas / Ft. Worth with DSL vs. Cable. I previously had Comcast Cable and switched for pricing and soon discovered that the speed was more consistent and the service was more reliable with SBC DSL.

lol
been there ;-)

Wow, that *is* crap.

Love it! Can't wait for the new add-on!

Let's do math. 15 dollars / 29 dollars.

And what is your phone bill, not the DSL service, the ENTIRE phone bill. You can't pay for JUST DSL you must have analog which adds another 20 bucks to your bill, so you are back up to 50 bucks. . . .

you get 3 meg. I bet 15 dollar customers aren't getting 3 meg.. they would be lucky to get 1 meg.

I get 8 meg. For another 30 bucks I get almost 3 times your speeds..

I will take it.. plus 16 meg is on the horizon, DSL has reached its limit..

Yes ANOTHER thing people take for granted in this country...

What server are you on? you need a "exp" partner?

And what is your phone bill, not the DSL service, the ENTIRE phone bill

Same goes for cable. Point is moot.

you get 3 meg. I bet 15 dollar customers aren't getting 3 meg.. they would be lucky to get 1 meg.

I get 8 meg. For another 30 bucks I get almost 3 times your speeds..

I will take it.. plus 16 meg is on the horizon, DSL has reached its limit..

This is anecdotal. Based on region and usage. Yeah, if cable offered 8Mb, I'd jump on it. But they don't. Right now, both are offering 3Mb/sec, and DSL wins on price, stability, and reliability in *my* area.

That in *no* way means it's the same for *your* area. Obviously, it's not.

But syaing one is *better* than the other only applies ina perfect world, where we all have the same options and service levels.

We just don't.

Yeah, cable tech beats DSL hands-down on capability alone. No-one would argue that.

Yeah...

unlike Japan, witrh nationwide wireless faster than our fastest wired.

;P

...just sayin'.

Oh God...

For this, I might actually have to buy WoW...

BetaNews clan, anyone?