Is Cable faster than ADSL?

stphnstevey

I was just looking at the Virgin Media site and obviously they are trying to sell me broadband - but they seem to have a point. I am estimated to get 1MB with ADSL broadband down the phone line (checked with another estimator and the same) as it depends on how far the exchange is. But with cable they are saying it makes no difference how far away you are, you can get upto 20MB

Is this true?

banger9365

Cable faster than ADSL no ,is cable bettter than adsl no , it a post code lottery just the same ,put cable do's not suffer the same speed drop that adsl suffer from the exchange ,so you can get 20mbs,
do they have caps o throtelling on them ? they all do .
do you get contenion (slow speeds at peek) yes on both again it a post code lottery.
do you have a limit of how much you can download , not with cable (you can download the internet if you want) at peek ,your speed will drop after so much.20mbs will drop to 5mbs after 3GBs between 1600 and 0000

impy78

I found cable much faster than adsl. But that just could be because I was with BT, the worst company in the world, ever.

JEFFM_3

I have been on cable since it first started ( United Artists) and they deliver what they promise. Being Housebound, I find it more quiet in my life by sleeping daytmes and staying up at night.My wife and I are both disabled and find it more peaceful. But no matter when I download ,between 3pm and 7 am My downloads are always between 159 and 640 KBps..And no, I dont moonlight for Virgin lol

iolanthe07

I have found cable much more reliable and consistently faster than adsl, but I was with Tiscali and they were rubbish - terrible customer service too. I think Virgin are quite expensive though, after the introduction special offer. I suppose as in everything you get what you pay for.

BillScarab

I've been with cable for years, started with Telewest on a 512kb connection. They have always been very reliable with good consistent speeds. The big difference as far as I know is that with ADSL you get up to 8mb or whatever, with cable you get 8mb. I think the faster cable speeds also have faster upload speeds than ADSL as well.

MercilessKiller

Sorry but I really disagree with these points.

Cable is factually more reliable and faster than ADSL due to the technology of the lines they use.

With cable, distance from exchange is irellevant.

You mentioned contention as been slower during peak? Thats not what contention means....

Contention is the number of people that have their internet provided by the same exchange.. peak/off peak is irellevant (though you would see speed changes obviously)... For example, ISP's advertsie contention as 20:1 or 50:1 for cheaper ones meaning 50 people on 1 server. This is nothing to do with speed ratio's.

Due to the above points a Virgin Media connection is without a doubt more reliable, faster, better and even cheaper for the average home buyer. The technology is simply better than DSL.

banger9365 wrote: »

Cable faster than ADSL no ,is cable bettter than adsl no , it a post code lottery just the same ,put cable do's not suffer the same speed drop that adsl suffer from the exchange ,so you can get 20mbs,
do they have caps othrotelling on them ? they all do .
do you get contenion (slow speeds at peek) yes on both again it a post code lottery.
do you have a limit of how much you can download , not with cable (you can download the internet if you want) at peek ,your speed will drop after so much.20mbs will drop to 5mbs after 3GBs between 1600 and 0000

MercilessKiller

impy78 wrote: »

I found cable much faster than adsl. But that just could be because I was with BT, the worst company in the world, ever.

With ADSL it doesnt matter who you're with, you're connected to the same exchange with the same line The reason your speeds would have been slow would be distance from exchange, contention ratio and quality of copper line internally. This is why cable is much better.. it eliminates all 3 of those.

Stubert

From having had both, cable is much better and faster.

Currently we have cable and are on are on 4 meg package which could definitely go up to at least 8. ADSL we can only go up to 2 meg due to our local connection, absolute rubbish.

Nilrem

As mentioned with cable if you go for say 10mb speed, you should always connect at 10mb - however actual speeds may vary depending on contention/if you've downloaded enough to trigger the slowdown for 4 hours in the evening.

ASDL is always "up to", so as well as any throttling and contention (as seen on cable), you are also at the mercy of wiring that may be 30+ years old and never intended for anything other than voice (DSL tech tries, and generally suceeds in shoehorning high speed networking onto cabling that was never intended for it in a relatively cheap manner).

Having said all that, it's still a bit of a lottery - you can have a great cable connection and very poor adsl in one area, and the reverse in another, so I would suggest talking to neighbours before making any decision.

One last thing, don't take any speed test sites results as conclusive - a lot of them cannot cope with the sort of load they are under now (i've have results of 4, 5,8,13, and 18mb from one site in the space of 15 minutes).

Hotspur

Moved to the basic 2Mb cable broadband a couple of months ago and can say it's much more stable than my ADSL provided by Plusnet. Yes, at peak times, it can slow a little but nothing like it used to through the telephone line. Customer service isn't too good if you need them but that's another issue.