Cable vs DSL *and* router suggestions...........

[Dooin' it]

(Omar's gonna pop-in soon so the rest of ya better get your .02 in quick......he he)

I've had it. I've made an appointment for cable to be installed at my house. I've choked on dial-up for too long & can't stand it anymore. Here's what I'm lookin' at........

Adephia cable.......$32.95/mo for 12 mos. They claim significantly faster than DSL

Verizon DSL.........(hmmmmmmm interesting. For the last month Verizon DSL's been *available* for my phone #, but tonite it's telling me *not*) Oh well, looks like it's cable after-all.

Well, I'd still like feedback from folks if you care to give it about cable vs. dsl.

Then.........I need to get "routed". Actually, I only want to have it hooked up to my main pc for the moment, but still want a firewall anyway *and* eventually will want to network the other computer in the house. Suggestions?? Worth it to go just "wired" first to have a firewall or just buy wireless now??? "b"?? "G"??? Dlink? Linksys? SMC?

CompUSA has an SMC "G" wireless router for $59 AR and/or a cheap "B" router for $19 AR.
Is a Siemens cable modem for $39 worth it or just rent from Adelphia for $3/mo??????

Humbly.........TIA

www.dslreports.com

user reviews of ISP in your area.

As for wireless its up to you. WIll you be transfering large amounts of files? Will you add computers on where you dont want wires? I have a G network in my house because i have a laptop and like to roam around while being on the internet.
what standard is right for you

As for wireless brands i suggest Dlink or linksys

As for renting the modem, if you figure you will keep cable the modem will eventually pay its self off in a year. But for 3 bucks a month to rent, if anything goes wrong with it, they will replace it for free.

[teengeek88]

or you could always do a combo network where you would have a router and then a wireless access point. I have it in my house because wired is more reliable and faster (unless you have a 108 mbps card/AP). So all my desktops are wired and then my laptop can roam around on the access point. I would definitley go with G. I have had great luck with Dlink networking products and i have heard that linksys products are just as good

good luck and have fun

[John Prophet]

Ive had adelphia and now have verizon dsl

I dont see any speed difference though I am not a gamer etc

I did have some issues with adelphia where they had a bad filter on my line and I was out of service for several days.

SO far the dsl has been good. The dsl modem is a LITTLE more complicated to work with as far as getting a router set up...because it is set one way for a single comp but another way for going into a router.

The clincher for me was adelphia=$55/mo and dsl is like $29 (or 34, cant remember)

JP

[noprob]

I've always prefered Cable over DSL,because
The best data throughput I've recieved in this area when I did have DSL before was 20kb download,but that may have been because I connected thru the USB Port.
And that was the fastest DSL package at the time.(512/256)
Cable from my experiance is usually good if not many users loged on,the more cable users on the slower you will transfer data.
Also it is my understanding that Cable is a shared line,so I would install a firewall for sure.
The cable box itself should have it's own firewall/router permissions/configurations.
Should I download from other users it has been 90% good from cable & about 50% or less from DSL users.
just my 0.02

[Dooin' it]

Ground zero, thanks for the results from that page. I think my reservations about DSL for myself were justified. Using the "search" feature it tells me I'm 16,830 ft from the phone co which means I'm *just barely* under the 18,000 ft limit. My assumption is that I would have rather *slow* DSL compared to cable due to my distance from the telco.

And is there anything wrong with SMC?? (Maybe that's why it's $59 for an SMC "G" ?)

[ShawnD1]

I would say go with DSL. I have have had cable before and it was very fast but Comcast actually called me to tell me to stop using so much bandwidth. That was after I left my computer on... running kazaa..... for a week straight.....

Verizon has yet to call me and tell me to stop using so much bandwidth.

[HeadBand]

it depends...cable is much faster downstream but dost dsl services are faster upstream....i would only get dsl if you plan on hosting a lot of online games

I have adelphia cable and usually get about 4mbps down and 256kbps up...i baught my own modem(motorola)...it has a 3 yr warranty and i think is better than the one friends have from the cable company...they are always getting disconnected and having to powercycle the modem alot

teengeeks idea isn't a bad one...but now they make a hybrid kinda router so you only have to have one thing on your desk...atleast have a wire to the main pc

[Tekk]

I just made the switch from Earthlink DSL (768/128) to Adelphia PowerLink (3000/256) and good lord am i happy with the results so far. Setup was a little shaky but their tech support got me up and running the SAME day I ordered it. No two week crap like DSL makes me wait.

The speed? Well with a Linksys BEFSR41 I was getting approximately 3100 downstream from www.DSLreports.com test sites. Average download speeds from good sites have been over 200KB/s. Even with my dang roommate download anime till the wee hours of the morning, I still get very good download speeds myself and pings in games.

Adelphia per month for me is $18 for the first few months (3) then $44 after that and thats slightly better than Earthlinks $50 a month that had less than half the speed

But Check DSLReports.com for reviews of local options. Thats why I chose Adelphia.

[Dooin' it]

Tekk,

Thanks. Ya, I'm in SoCal like yourself. Like I mentioned earlier too, I'm a good distance away from the telco hub (16,000+ feet) and judging by what I get here at work w/ Verizon DSL........(650Kbps @ approx 10,000feet) and what my buddy gets (1,100Kbps @ approx 4,000feet) I'm guessin' that at nearly 17,000 feet I'm not gonna be one who gets great results from DSL. (FWIW, yes my buddy lives very close to the telco hub and gets waaaay too much speed out of his $34/mo DSL) LOL!!!

Anyway, I think cable is the right decision for me based on the above so now I just need to figure out what to do with a router. Another consideration I had was to buy a cheap ( and I mean CHEAP) hard-wired router as a temporary (or that SMC "b" router for $19AR from crapusa) and just run my one pc hard-wired 'til I make a decision about wireless. ????????????