Cable, DSL, or satellite...

[Antimatter]

A friend of mine his moving out of the range of his current cable providor and wanted to know which is the best of the three overall. So any info you can give us would be great.

[beezee]

Satellite is not as secure as a cable/dsl line (but then again, what is secure, right?). Also, satellite cost a hell of a lot of money to setup and maintain each month... well compared to cable or dsl. It depends on what DSL service you're looking at, too. Att cable seems to be okay, there are occasional problems, lag spikes, etc. But yeah, I think your best shot would be one of the higher end DSL services or Cable.... it's really up to your friend....

[john240sx]

by my house cable has the highest bandwith and DSL has the lowest ping.

i have AT&T cable, i get 2Mbit/sec down 250Kbit/sec up and about 25-50ms pings.
my uncle has Sprint DSL, 768Kbit/sec down 128Kbit/sec up but he gets 10-20ms pings.

satellite is only an option when Cable/DSL isn't availble IMHO. it's expensive, extremely high pings (1500-2000ms pings are not unheard of) and usually have lower bandwith then cheap DSL.

[nebben]

An employee at my work has Satellite internet. I had the opportunity to check it out last week. I went to DSLreports.com to check some stuff while I was there....

1.2mbps download (about the same as my ATT connection at optimum times of the day) , 30kbps upload (yes, that is 3.6kbps slower than a 33.6kbps modem), and the pings were between 600ms and 1100ms.

I guess if I were surfing pr0n all day, it would be fine, but the 30kbps upload...sheesh...forget it. Especially after $60+ a month after the initial $500+ install.

-ben

[ManOfKnight]

if he has moved out of range for cable...then most likely he is moving out the range for dsl (mostly 2mile radius). satellite or maybe even wireless would be his only options

satellite has a 1/4 second delay to get to the satellite, then a 1/4 second delay to get to where it is going....1/2 seconds of total delay...(this is why they has such bad latency)...the DirectDuo here offers 128kb u/l...so not too bad, and it is an extra 40 on your satellite bill (if you catch it right, installation can be free or as cheap as 100 bucks)

wireless and satellite both have problems during storms, so if you live in an area that is prone to stormy weather...i guess get the ole 56k...cuz neither are going to be worth a crap

[ManOfKnight]

if he is just moving away from his part of town...i would recommend DSL...as there are generally NO slow downs as cable has when many users get on, and it uses something you already own...a phone line

i don't have cable, i use satellite, so it would cost almost 70 a month if my cable company was to offer internet, while only 40 with DSL

[nebben]

I used to own a phone, but Qwest charged $28.88 for the most basic, cheap, lame phone service they offered. A far cry from the $14ish they showed on their website.

I use a cellular phone exclusively now, and find that I don't even use all its minutes every month. Unless you already have a phone line and want business grade DSL, cable is just so awesome.

-ben