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I'm upgrading to high-speed internet at home with a wireless router and my two primary options are DSL through Verizon or high speed internet from Comcast. Neither company is known for it's customer service (and Comcast in DC is abysmal), but I've read that cable's maximum download speed is superior to DSL

Anyone feel like passionately defending one over the other, or bashing either or both transmission methods?

I'd go with cable.

My brother and his family loves the Cavalier DSL. It's reasonably priced at $24.95 a month with the local telephone package. I've used it, it runs well and is reliable. They have it set up on a wireless router, so they bring their laptop all over the house with the wireless set. I'm not sure how much the Verizon DSL costs compared to Cavalier. Do you have Cavalier in DC?

We use Comcast broadband. It's fast (quicker than DSL), and it has mostly been reliable. Comcast is trying to improve their image here in Richmond, so their response times to problems have improved. But, it does cost $50 a month, and we almost don't use it enough to justify the cost. If you do a lot of downloading and uploading of music .wav files and pics, it may be worth it to splurge for the Broadband. Those two tasks show the greatest performance gains when using Broadband compared to DSL. Still, DSL is not slow, and might be sufficient for your needs.

I like both. I think it comes down to cost, and how much you would use the product.

I have had both and I would go with cable as well. Comcast is now raising the speeds they offer on both of their tiers. I notice latency on cable is considerably better than DSL. Comcast's support is better than Verizon's in my experience.

Cable is definitely faster than DSL on download at the same price point (Im getting 4Mbps for $45 month, if I had digital cable they'd knock $10 off that), though upload tends to be slower if that's important to you.

DSL around here is about the same price (for around 1Mbps) if you take into account both the fee for the line and the ISP fee. Unfortunately, the local phone company (Alltel) is totally incompetent and unable to provide a noise-free line. After a dozen service calls and throughput comparable to a dial-up modem, I gave up and went to cable. Cable, for me, has been fast and dead-solid reliable.

Both should work equally well over a wireless router, unless one or the other uses a wacky authentication protocol or other weird proprietary software.

Ryan

It depends.

For pure download speeds, cable wins. The max you can get with DSL is around 1.5M (if you're lucky). That might slow down if there's a lot of traffic in your neighborhood, however. Cable also isn't distance limited (an issue with DSL).

All of that said, depending on who your provider is, DSL is usually more flexible. For instance, where we are, we only get 1 IP address with cable, vs up to 254 with DSL. Cable providers also often block ports, where DSL providers often don't. And DSL often has better upload speeds than cable. If you are purely using your computers as clients, none of that will matter. If you want to run a server, though (or just be able to access your machine remotely), that all becomes an issue.

They both suck next to FTTP.

Sadly, FTTP isn't available to me in my condo building.

Looks like I'm leaning towards cable, though Luke brings up some good points regarding DSL. I'll only be using my computer as a client so the port issue isn't as significant; I'm more concerned, at least initially with the download speed and the price. Comcast is offering a $20/month intro offer though it jumps to $50 after 3 months. DSL in my area runs around $50 so that's a wash.

Thanks for the info.

Cable would probably be the way to go, then.

Yeah, I'm just lucky to have good DSL features-wise. The speed isn't as great, due to my distance from the CO (~20k feet).

Just a warning: note only do cable providers tend to block ports, they can also be bastards about the meaning of "unlimited" in your unlimited service plan. I had a few friends with heavy STG addictions get into trouble in that fashion.

Yeah, that too.

Keep in mind this server is run on a DSL line, albeit not at my house.