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What's Faster at the same speed Cable or ADSL?

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
is 2mb/s the same speed in reality on cable vs ADSL?

I see Virgin Media have an offer for Broadband at £10 per month for the next 12 months - main selling point for me being it's unlimited

whilst at the moment I'm paying £15 per month for 8 mb/s ADSL but it's got a limit and peak and off peak hours (i.e. peak mean no more then 4GB per month in total during the hours of 4pm to midnight - which is a pain) - off peak is another 50GB

Anyway I hear that the speed you get on cable is supposed to be what you really get whilst ADSL is shared between other users on the exchange - although I never really notice a slow down.

So basically all things being equal is 2mb/s on cable enough to watch u-tube and other streaming things like that ok? I rarely download huge files and when I do it's on P2P so never going to realise the full speed of my current connection.

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    heard cable is more constant, i'd love cable if it were avaliabvle in my area.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I have only really become switched on about cable broadband in the past few weeks since the whole VM launch.

    From what i have read about cable broadband, it is more realiable and constant than adsl.

    I know when i need a new provider, i will be sure to consider cable.

    :yes:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Calvin wrote: »
    I have only really become switched on about cable broadband in the past few weeks since the whole VM launch.

    From what i have read about cable broadband, it is more realiable and constant than adsl.

    I know when i need a new provider, i will be sure to consider cable.

    :yes:

    I've never had any problems with ADSL in terms of having a constant connection - only real problems started when we were upgraded from 1mb/s to 8mb/s and there was a box on our phone line killing the signal, but removing the box solved the problem.

    Only trouble is because I'm on an LLU with Plusnet I cannot easily switch to a different ADSL company without a lot of potential internet downtime
    Cable internet for £10 a month is good if you don't want to pay Telephone Line Rental because you can always use an Internet phone - assuming the call quality
    is just as good because I've had problems with ours and it's always hard to pin point where the problem lies as there's like over 20 settings you can change.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    BTW one interesting thing I see in some forums is that from May Virgin may be upping their minimum cable broadband speeds .. i.e. the 2mb/s service could be 4mb/s or even 6mb/s

    And once you have a 12 month contract there's no way they can charge you any more .. hmm looks tempting. :chin:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Hmmm but could that be a ploy to get more customers? leak a few rumours ;)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I've got cable, and you get a much better speed, and you can haxor it, because the speed is determined by the modem.

    One of my friends has 22mb/s cable :|
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ShyBoy wrote: »
    I've got cable, and you get a much better speed, and you can haxor it, because the speed is determined by the modem.

    One of my friends has 22mb/s cable :|

    Can you swap out the standard modem they give you for any make and model of Cable Router?

    We have more then one PC in the house and a WiFi network - currently the ADSL Modem Router (NetGear) is in my room and then the other PC downstairs get a connection via WiFi.

    If we switched to Virgin Cable - I'm sure the easiest thing to do is have the cable go to the PC downstairs and have mine connect with WiFi.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Hellfire wrote: »
    Hmmm but could that be a ploy to get more customers? leak a few rumours ;)


    Well it's well known they're testing 50mb/s speeds with some customers in some areas and also testing 100 mb/s but apparently that's not really working out.

    It makes sense they'd want to up the speeds because they could offer a lot more TV over IP services - plus you can already get 2mb/s free from Sky TV - so they'd want to make their most basic services look better on paper.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Can you swap out the standard modem they give you for any make and model of Cable Router?

    I don't know, except we bought the modem off them, it's ours to keep. Except, when it broke, their engineer just gave us a new one, which is again ours to keep. That's with NTL.
    We have more then one PC in the house and a WiFi network - currently the ADSL Modem Router (NetGear) is in my room and then the other PC downstairs get a connection via WiFi.

    If we switched to Virgin Cable - I'm sure the easiest thing to do is have the cable go to the PC downstairs and have mine connect with WiFi.

    What we've done is have the cable modem on top of a desk downstairs, with a router next to it, and simply plugged an ethernet cable into the internet socket on the router. Then, a computer that is next to it is plugged into one of the ethernet ports of the wireless, and wireless cards in the other computers pick up the internet.

    Our cable modem is just a cable modem, but you may be able to get cable modem routers. When it first connects it downloads a file with all the network settings. Apparently if you are good at coding and stuff, you can open this file, modify it, and put it back for ridiculous line speeds. But they can tell by street the average load, so if you are one house and have 20mb broadband, they're gonna know it's you. If there are about 10 houses with it, they're probably not going to notice unless everyone else is using theirs compeltely full, and even then they might not.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm fairly sure that with NTL (Virgin Media) you cannot change the modem they provide since when you first set up the broadband it authorises the modem, you can use any other authenticated ntl/virgin modem, but if you just get a random modem it won't have been authenticated.

    I've just got a router sat on top of my modem next to the downstairs PC, and obviously connect the upstairs ones wirelessly.

    I know back in the NTL days they had a dreadful, awful reputation for customer services, and i remember me slagging them off to people, yet i've always found them able to resolve my problems easy enough, and i've not had to wait toooo long on hold!

    My only problem with them is always having to ring them up to authenticate your new modem (since the disc they provide never works) i've never had any problems with the service, i don't max it out often, but it's never been noticeably slow, i can watch youtube stream fine (i'm on 4mb, but my bro is usually downloading / on xbox live)


    Comparing that to the problems my GF has had in the past with Tiscali, and a few people i work with, with Tiscali, or other ADSL based providers, i think you'd be pretty safe on Cable
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm currently with PlusNet and they're pretty decent ISP - just if I want unlimited downloads I'd have to pay £25 per month with them.

    I've just seen Buffalo seem to do a really decent WiFi router with built in signal booster which can now be obtained for less then £35 that plugs into the back of a Cable Modem's Ethernet port - supposed to boost the signal by some 60%, not that coverage is a major problem in our house but then again I'm the one directly plugged into the ADSL atm, if we switch to cable then it will be me on the wifi end.

    http://www.trustedreviews.com/networking/review/2005/09/18/Buffalo-AirStation-G54-Wireless-Router/p1

    WHR-HP-G54-large.jpg

    Although I did like the idea of an all in one box, like I have now.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    As for what's faster, well, the speed is measured absolutely, so you can compare. You also need to look at contention figures and the upstream speeds though.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    oh ntl can be uncapped alright! ;)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    http://reviews.cnet.com/7004-7254_7-0.html

    Test your speed with that link!

    www.consumersearch.com and www.seepedia.com have reviews of various broadband speeds...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    http://reviews.cnet.com/7004-7254_7-0.html

    Test your speed with that link!

    www.consumersearch.com and www.seepedia.com have reviews of various broadband speeds...


    Their servers are outside of the UK, that in itself is a huge bottleneck and may affect the results.
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