I was wondering what is the best isp to use for broadband? I have bellsouth fastaccess dsl right now, but it is expensive. Like $60 bucks a month or something. A buddy of mine has comcast cable internet and it is a lot faster and like 20 bucks cheaper. I have heard there is a cap on the maximum download/upload speeds a provider can use. I guess what I am trying to ask is am I getting fucked? My download/upload speed is 3000/384 kbps.
There is no mandated bandwidth cap to my knowledge; the maximum speeds are determined by today's technology (at least at an affordable price).
Generally speaking, cable ISPs are faster; this basically due to the fact that copper coaxial cable can carry more packets than twisted pair copper telephone lines. I'm not an electrical engineer, so please ask one of those people for a more technical explanation or read a book.
Due to the bandwidth limitations, the phone company has to decide how to use the line capacity to its customers' best benefit. The upstream and downstream can be equal (SDSL, symmetric digital subscriber line) or not (ADSL, asymmetric digital subscriber line). The vast majority of phone ISPs have decided to use ADSL because the vast majority of home users download far more than they upload.
A couple of years ago the phone and cable companies started capping bandwidth so they can charge more for faster connections in the future and thus offer tiered service.
The consumer broadband market is very competitive and companies are constantly changing rates and service plans; the big thing now is bundling. Phone ISPs will offer local calling, international calling, and Internet services packaged in one monthly price. You will have to do you own homework and figure if you benefit from such a package (look at your phone usage). Cable companies will offer digital cable, maybe HD, and Internet services in a bundle.
I use pretty basic ADSL at home; cable-based Internet is faster, but more expensive in my area. I don't upload much, so ADSL works fine for me. My phone bill is extremely low, so bundled service would not provide any cost benefit. I use the cable ISP about five years ago when the price was very, very close to DSL, but the connection was highly unreliable ; for that reason alone I dropped them (also their customer support sucked large rocks).
You don't say if you need extra uploading speed and what you need to Internet connectivity to do, so it's hard to make any recommendations to you.
Also, you have not mentioned whether or not your local cable ISP is any more reliable than your local phone ISP. There are websites that rate this sort of stuff (try Google). You might ask your buddy as well.
However, based on the fact that your buddy is getting more for less, it would seem that you should consider switching.
i get somewhere between 4000-5000 down depending on how crowded things are on comcast. the upload is very similar to yours. you can pay to get over 6000kbps and supposedly they're increasing speeds for everyone. cable's definetly capped and they'll take you to court for uncapping your modem which isn't hard to locate on their side. you're not getting screwed though and it's really all about where you live---the best way to find this out is dslreports.com, it's one of the best tech sites focusing on consumer-grade networking i can think of.
Thanks for the info. I can't really get anything else than what I have now because Comcast doesn't run out here in the middle of hickville. Man, the heffers look better than the chicks do around here...sometimes I wish somebody would stab me in the eye with a pencil or something. I have some buddies that live in Canada and have Auroa Cable or something and their download/upload speeds are 9000/1000 kbps. I have never saw anything near that fast here in the U.S. But again, thanks for the info.
You have the fastest consumer-grade broadband connection available (satellite-based Internet is worse); your phone company knows that it has no cable competition in your area so it can charge anything it wants.
You will either have to wait for the cable company to show up, or move to someplace more metropolitan.
Since you don't have a choice, be grateful with what you have; some people don't even get DSL, so they're relegated to satellite Internet or worse, dial-up.
Dial up in a rural area is the worst. Around here the line quality is so bad you're lucky to get a 21.6k connect rate. The phone company doesn't give a shit either. They say that they only guarantee the lines for voice quality. It's not their problem if a computer doesn't like the line.
You can get a T1 anywhere but be prepared to pay through the nose for it. $600 - $1000/month is typical depending on your location. It's only 1.5 mbits each way which is typically slower than cable.
I did have one more question though, since I got this dsl I have not been able to sign into msn messenger at all. Once it connects to the service it freezes up the dsl connection. Bellsouth said that it was not there problem, that the problem is on the other end. I could sign into it just fine before I got this dsl, does anyone know why this is?
MSN Messenger works fine with my DSL and I don't see the reason why it shouldn't. Do you use any router or just a dsl modem? maybe you need to configure your router for the necessary ports. Also I use Trillian and not the regular MSN client.
Nah, I don't use a router. Does it matter? The connection is just going to this one computer. I went into the expert mode in the modem and opened the ports for the msn messenger to go through, but that still didn't help. Matter of fact, I download Bellsouth Messenger as well. With it, you can connect to msn, yahoo and aim at the same time. But still, when the msn connected to it, the dsl freezes up. So I uninstalled it. Maybe I should try that trillain thing you are talking about.
Since you say your 'modem' has an expert mode where you opened ports, it must have a firewall built into it. The problem might still be the firewall, though you've opened some ports. You might try disabling the firewall but, before you do, get ZoneAlarm for your PC (it is free). That way when you disable the modem's firewall you won't be instantly blasted by the script kiddies.
