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There's been some discussion recently of the merits of cable vs dsl. Also,
MB mentioned that he's currently got T1 (expensive), but would replace it
with dsl if he could. Some of his problems are explained by the following
article:
http://www.forbes.com/tool/html/00/aug/0807/mu8.htm
Several people recounted problems with cable. What I can add was that I
used to have dsl and I had unbelievable problems with it. The support
newsgroup for dsl was filled with people wishing they could replace it with
cable (it wasn't available to them). I now live in a place where my home
has cable modem and it works great (but it's only used casually and mostly
by kids). I can tell you that the cable modem support newsgroup is filled
with people wishing they could use dsl instead.
The bottom line is that these are consumer products. They're low-priced and
deliver tremendous value for the money. But everyone's experiences will
differ. Neither technology is appropriate for mission-critical
applications. That's why T1 is 20x more expensive. It comes with
performance guarantees, access guarantees, and is as reliable as the
Internet can currently be. If you have a T1 line and call a technician,
someone answers the phone immediately. They'll fix your problem on the spot
or, if need be, roll a truck immediately. (There are cash penalties for
outages. Shortly after my T1 was installed, there was a major fiber cut on
the Worldnet backbone in the NYC vicinity. That translated into a free
month of service.) When I had dsl, I was lucky to get a call back within 48
hours. Outages were common and provoked mostly yawns from the telco.
Allan
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