AT&T DSL vs Comcast Cable Internet

[cityimrov]

Does anyone here have these services, especially at the higher speed levels?  Are you getting the advertised speeds w/o any major issues?  How is the tech support in this area? 

[Jim]

I have Comcast's Blast tier (advertised to burst at 20 Mb down / 4 Mb up) but I usually pull 4.5 Mb down / 1.5 Mb up.

But don't take my figures as likely speeds given I'm currently using a DOCSIS 1.1 rated cable modem which couldn't pull those Blast tier advertised speeds even if hacked the firmware.

I'm picking up a DOCSIS 3.0 rated modem in July which should put me much closer to the advertised speeds.  I'll come back to this thread at that point and give an update.

[thekillingwax]

I'm 20/4 as well and I've never had any kind of speed drop. My dad and brother both had AT&T- my dad had straight DSL and had horrible speed and my brother had Uverse and it was pretty awful- HD streams on it were really choppy and pixelated. He was supposed to get 6Mb down but rarely broke past 1 and their DVR service is extremely limited compared to Comcast.

[CS Foltz]

DSL limited to copper wire will be slow, same with comcast. Fiber optic is the way to go but both company's need to upgrade and won't be anytime soon! ATT is working on upgrading some of their lines but how many miles is out there........thousands and thousands!

[Jim]

Actually, Comcast is upgrading to fiber.   I can get it here on the southside already...up to 50 Mbps.   And 100 Mbps is on the way sometime this year.

[Steve]

I'm 20/4 as well and I've never had any kind of speed drop. My dad and brother both had AT&T- my dad had straight DSL and had horrible speed and my brother had Uverse and it was pretty awful- HD streams on it were really choppy and pixelated. He was supposed to get 6Mb down but rarely broke past 1 and their DVR service is extremely limited compared to Comcast.

I've actually had the opposite experience on U-Verse - very happy with the service.

[Lunican]

This is a useful site for testing speed: http://www.speedtest.net/

[Mattius92]

Ok, you have to know that the speeds are rated in Mbs aka Mega Bits a Second. NOT Megabytes a second. A Megabyte is 8 bits. Therefore an 1MBs speed will give you an 128 Kilobytes a second download speed. (1024 / 8 = 128)

Therefore an 50 megabits a second download speed will give you an 6400 (6.4 MB) Kilobyte a second download speed

Thats why poeple start to download something with their brand new 5Mbs internet and only see it downloading at 600 kilobytes a second, and they scratch their head wondering why it int 5 megabytes a second.

[Jim]

Ok, you have to know that the speeds are rated in Mbs aka Mega Bits a Second. NOT Megabytes a second. A Megabyte is 8 bits. Therefore an 1MBs speed will give you an 128 Kilobytes a second download speed. (1024 / 8 = 128)

Therefore an 50 megabits a second download speed will give you an 6400 (6.4 MB) Kilobyte a second download speed

Thats why poeple start to download something with their brand new 5Mbs internet and only see it downloading at 600 kilobytes a second, and they scratch their head wondering why it int 5 megabytes a second.

Correct.  That does throw a lot of people off.  Good thing they don't use the more correct terms of MebiBytes (MiB) and Mebibits (Mib) yet as that can really get confusing.  

[Bostech]

I'm 20/4 as well and I've never had any kind of speed drop. My dad and brother both had AT&T- my dad had straight DSL and had horrible speed and my brother had Uverse and it was pretty awful- HD streams on it were really choppy and pixelated. He was supposed to get 6Mb down but rarely broke past 1 and their DVR service is extremely limited compared to Comcast.

In plain english (with accent) computer and Internet performance depends on BOTH your internet connection and computer.

You can have fast Internet but computer infected with virus/spyware or even slow/older computer and it will give you trouble.
On average to get "descent" video stream performance you want to have min. 1MBs,less then that and you will get choppy or buffering on video.Browsing net alone usually works on most high speed Internet connections.
Usually you should be happy with 3MBs or higher which is provided both by ATT and Comcast.Having more then that usually is beneficial if you want to watch HD streams or download A LOT of files or need faster download then average.
For average user 1MBs is a must,3/6MBs preffered (usually they sell service rated at this speed) and more is always welcomed but it depends on budget.
ATT on other hand gives you dedicated speed where Comcast is "shared" so your 12MBs might be 3MBs after all of your neighbours pitch in.
Now most people I deal with usually have problems with their computer not internet service,so they usually blame "slow" Internet when their computers are infected with spyware or loaded with all sort of crap.
Once you clean their computers and optimize it they go Wow,I guess it was my computer and not Internet that was slow.

[RiversideLoki]

Actually, the "shared" thing no longer applies in most neighborhoods. For instance, we've got the 20/4 here at my office at JTB and Philips, and we have consistent 20mb down. It all depends on how close you get to the fiber.

In most cases (suburban neighborhoods) it's once your connection hits that little green box on the side of the road. Depending on how many people are being serviced by that little green box.

And I can say as far as uptime, we've had DSL and Comcast for some time for redundancy. We dumped the DSL recently because downtime was horrible. We had Nuvox (ex FDN, now WindStream) DSL. But it doesn't matter, it's almost all running on AT&T's lines (at least where we are). More often than not, when we reported an outage, it was an AT&T truck fixing the issue.

I used to be hardcore anti-Comcast, due to their customer service being poor. But since they've really dropped the price to rock bottom for business services and their customer service has gotten better, I've really been happy with them. You can't balk at 275 a month for 4 lines with unlimited LD and local, and 20mb/4mb internet.

[Mattius92]

DSL is a total different setup then Cable, and Cable is different from Pure Fiber Optic. Each has its limits.

DSL uses a conventional phone line with 2 additional wires, because these are copper lines they do have resistance that will over greater lengths lower your speed. The max you can really get out of an DSL line is 16 megabits a second down, and around 4-5 up.

Next you have cable, which is totally separate of the telephone line. Cable lines have a moderate improvement over DSL lines, for what is called the last mile (the distance from a ultra high-speed fiber optic main line to your house, these main lines can have speeds of over 1 GIGA bits a second). Cable lines have more strands for transmission and therefore can get you speeds up to 50 MBs down, and around 15MBs up.

Lastly have have fiber optic lines all the way to your house. Fiber optic lines have virtually no transmission loss over any distances, and therefore can achieve speeds way higher then you will get. Fiber optic lines can handle speeds way over 250Mbs, though residential homes are currently limited to 100MBs. Another thing about fiber optic lines is the up speed. The up is generally a quarter of the speed of the down. However in fiber optic connections, the up and down are almost the same.

Verizon FIOS is an completely fiber optic connection, and it provides speeds up to 50Mbs down and 30MBs up. And 100Mbs speeds are coming out probably by the end of the year.

Oh for giggles, there is the most primitive of internet connections, dial-up. Dial up, shares your phone line (DSL partly shares, but it has 2 addition wires for the Internet). There for you cant use the phone while you are on the internet. Also the phone bandwidth is only limited to 52Kbs. Pitiful speed.

Satellite internet also exists, its down speed is considerable (1 to 6MBs), however its up speed is what kills its overall performance (128Kbs to 300Kbs). Also its latency is pretty low.

[Jason]

Mattius, I'm impressed on your knowledge of system speeds.  Are you taking electronics/engineering courses?

The only thing I can add to these comments is that the coax cable the tv signal uses can still be revved up a good bit when tied to a fiber optic network.  There is no reason why 1 gigabit speeds would not be possible.  From what I understand, Comcast and AT&T are completely rebuilding the "backbone" network by installing fiber to cover the long distance allowing them to retain the existing coax infrastructure entering the home.

DSL is pretty much maxed out and will soon go the way of dial-up.  Its outdated tech and physically limited because of the capabilities of the cabling itself.  When piggy backing internet on existing STP copper voice infrastructure you're bound to tap it out. 

High quality coax supported by a fiber-optic backbone network is/should be the future.  Multiple gigabit speeds up and down could be handled especially with the push to make television completely on-demand.  Instead of having the cable company transmit the entire tv lineup of hundreds of channels leaving a box to interpret and only allow what is paid for, they would be able to only transmit/stream the signal you've requested leaving the remaining bandwidth for internet traffic.

[Jason]

A descent read from 2003... 

6.7 gigabits per second speeds reported

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/03/07/speed.record/

[Mattius92]

Mattius, I'm impressed on your knowledge of system speeds.  Are you taking electronics/engineering courses?

No, however I have extensive knowledge of electronics. I have been messing around with electronics since the age of 11. At one point I was thinking of getting into MIT with a Computer Science Degree, dropped that. Now I am thinking of Civil Engineering.


6.7 Gigabits would be amazing. I could download a full length video in a couple seconds.