[Gllug] ADSL or cable?

[David Damerell]

On Monday, 11 Nov 2002, Tethys wrote:
>Most people assume cable to be faster because it gives higher bandwidth
>numbers. What they don't tell you is that with that you get higher
>contention ratios. The last number I heard were 200:1 for NTL's cable
>service.

This seems rather unlikely. We have this service, and usually can get
the full speed out of it even at 'high' times of day. I don't know the
contention ratio, but it seems highly unlikely that it is 200:1. We
have had it in 2 different areas, so it is not just that we are in an
area unusually undersubscribd.

>more likely to be able to find an unfiltered pure IP connection. With
>cable, the providers seem more likely to prevent you running servers,
>for example, and may well block certain (or in some cases all) incoming
>ports. Of course, this can apply to ADSL too, depending on your ISP, but
>it seems that cable providers are more anal about it.

There only _are_ 2 cable providers. I can't speak for Telewest, but
NTL only restrict world-accessible servers (and this is a political,
not a technical restriction; if they see huge chunks of traffic, then
they lean on you) and do not appear to block any incoming ports. The
service is also cheaper than ADSL _if_ you also require cable
television (if you don't, it is very difficult to impossible to get
the service without TV, effectively raising the price to 40-odd quid a
month if you have no use for the TV service).

In general NTL seem to have a sensible technical setup; the problem is
the gross incompetence of their customer service and billing
departments. 

-- 
David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?

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