Forums General Discussion Cabel VS. Dsl and What is the best Networking

I have a notebook and a desktop. I want to network them and im not sure what is the best router or whatever you call those boxes. Which is the best brand to use. I want to use it for dial up sharing and maybe some file sharing (Wireless) and i do know that wireless is weaker. But it is easier for me. The 2 products that I have seem to me 2 be good. Is Netgate and Links Some people say dosent matter what brand and just as long that its not a cheap one. Best Buy said Links is that better and Frys says Netgear is much better. Im not sure what to pick. I just went to Costco and bought Netgate. It had the box and the usb for a very good price for only $114.00us. But i am not gonna open it yet cuz im not sure what brand is good to use. I need some advise.

Cable VS Dsl internet
Now between Cable and Dsl which is better?
Is there a big difference between them?
I have a dish and I think that would be a problem if I get cable.
Which do you prefer?

Those are issues that lots of ppl have differing opinions on. One thing i will say is that if you use netgear router, dont connect to a server on port 6667, netgear seems to not get along with it at all.

A good website that may interest you is http://www.practicallynetworked.com/howto/ They have a lot of reviews, both equipment and various cable and dsl companies, as well as good forums. Seems to me i even saw a general cable vs dsl article there. Great place to do some research

To begin with it will depend on what country you live in. Some countries such as South Korea live, breathe and eat broadband internet and you can get top-notch service and bandwidth as a standard issue and fairly cheaply, actually I think the government there even subsidise it in some cases. In the middle of the spectrum is Australia where you can have whatever you want if you are prepared to pay through the nose for it. The huge landmass and small population largley being the cause. Other countries, probably most when you think about it, don't have broadband at all and would be lucky to have any kind of internet access.

After you work out what you can gain access to, you then choose the technology based on what is available. As an example, in my case I have ADSL because I want an always-on connection that is genuine broadband at a reasonable price. I'd love Cable because it has unlimited bandwidth (upto 8 Mbit) but I live in a flat which means that, in my case, Cable is generally not available. ADSL also has many limitations which can affect your access to it such as multiplexing of your telephone service (Where your line is split into 'channels' and shared with other phone subscribers) and the distance you are from the exchange.

Other fast connections include ISDN and Satellite. ISDN is old tech and very reliable and proven technology but it is slow. Satellite is faster than ISDN but slower than ADSL and more expensive than both. The advantage with Satellite is that it can be used anywhere.

As for your choice of router, it comes down to personal choice as Parabrat said. It's no different to GM v's Ford. You just pick what you like the best but consider the functions too. Don't buy a router that doesn't have a firewall. They are all fairly expensive so you may as well have one that has everything. My next purchase is the Netgear FM114P at a cost of AU$364.00 because I want the functions that my existing router has, SPI, NAT, Print server, etc with the addition of a 11Mbs wireless LAN port and dialup backup connection. It works on Cable and ADSL so a change of connection for me will mean not having to buy another router.

LAN-wise, it's much of a muchness, most home networks are 10/100 base to allow compatability with 100 base network cards on the local machines and the 10 base connection to your broadband modem. A 100 base router is not likely to work with a broadband router so get the 10/100 base model. This, of course may vary, depending on the country you live in.

In reality the best source of what is available in your area can be provided by your ISP. Also note that some ISPs allow home networks and others don't. Those that do will often allow you to do it but not provide support for it as you are then not using hardware supplied by them. Some will allow you to run servers and others won't. Some will allow open access on all ports and others block certain ports, namely port 80, to stop you running web servers. :tongue: So a bit of shopping around will be necessary.

I personally use cable, my main reason was it was much cheaper, nearly half the cost of DSL. Plus, cable is generally faster, although unlike with DSL, the speeds can vary. But, where I live, not many people use cable and therefore I average about 1mb/s for both uploads and downloads.

One other thing I want to mention, you said $114 is a good price for the router. Is this a wireless router? Because if it isn't, then you got ripped off. A wired router should cost you no more than $80, and even that is high. But as for netgear, I personally don't like them. I've used Linksys, D-Link, and Netgear and the one I've had most success with is Linksys. They are easy to set up and easy to configure. If you are using wireless, then $114 is about right, but if I were you I'd either get a wireless router that is 802.11g or 802.11a, 02.11g sounds better for your purpose though. Both of those standards allow for 54mb/s connections rather than the 11mb/s allowed by 802.11b. 802.11g has a longer range than 802.11a, which is why I say that might be better for you, I use that so that I can have my laptop anywhere within about 150feet of the router and still be able to connect to the network. An 802.11g router should cost you about $130, but then you also need a wireless network card which will cost about another $60. Other than what I've said, unless you have some specific questions you need answered, your best bet would probably be to look at review sites. www.broadbandreports.com has excellent comparisons of all broadband services, as well as a forum where people who use a specific company can report their experiences.

Cable is cheaper than ADSL here too, and as far as speeds go, once again, the same experience, though don't forget that it's possible to make ADSL be consistently faster if your ISP provides it, though admittedly it is very expensive. Here you can get plans which are around the 8Mbit mark for downloads (I forget upload speed) but I'd be looking at around $2,000 a month so it would be good for business only, not residential.

I have to disagree with you on ease of setup in Netgear stuff though, it took ten mins for me to set mine up and at the time I was new to that task. At the time Netgear also lead the way in security features. As for price there is no way known that I could buy a router with 'the works' here for $80 in any currency. The price would firsly depend on the country you're in and then allowing for import taxes, stamp duties, GST/sales taxes and lastly retail markups. Consider also the exchange rates that apply between the exporting and importing nations.

Yeah DSL can be faster, but you also have to keep in mind that with DSL you need to be geographically close to the phone company or else the speed decreases rapidly.

About the routers, yes of course it depends on where you live, but since he specifically said US dollars, I assumed he is in the US. In the US, according to pricegrabber, you can get a 4 port Linksys router for $40.

Also about Netgear, I misstated, the Netgear router is not hard to setup, it was just sometimes a pain to configure, granted it was a while ago, but the web browser configuration interface was kind of hard to understand to me. But I do prefer Linksys, even more so since they were bought by Cisco, because Cisco is _the_ company for high-end routers, so hopefully they'll bring some of their high-tech router features to the home/small business solutions offered by Linksys.

Yes, I think it's 1.5km for 8Mbit and upto 3.5km for the more common plans.

where are u checking your connection speed at. i also use cable and have also experianced well over 1mb according to mcaffee speddometer ..... again id like to know where your checking as im not totally sure thats a decent assumption to only go by the one ive seen ..... its told me at times over 2500kbps 2.5(mbps) which really sounds way to high for a cable connection. which makes me think its not correct.

My mate who uses BigPond Cable can get high 5's to DSLReports speed test and that's from Sydney to Los Angeles. He can also download my script in about a second (1.4MB). The top speed would simply depend on what the ISP will allow and what traffic you are sharing the pipe with. The only thing I don't like about cable is that because it is a shared resource the usage of others in the same street can play havoc with consistency whereas with ADSL you are the only user back to the exchange, hence the slightly higher price.

well from what was explained to me about DSL ... u pay for a certain amount of usage ... like if u want 500 kbps u pay for it to consistantly be that. The cable in my experiance is definatly the way to go ( in my area ) i live in a retirees town and most ppl are only here half the year. Which also means that most ppl here are not really into pcs. which could explain my faster than normal speeds. but i had no idea that it could rate right off the chart they have at times... thats what is confussing to me.

I use the one on broadbandreports.com but, if I remember, cable can go as high as 2.5mb/s, it just costs more. I know my ISP offers a 1.5/1.5 service as well, I just don't have $120/month to spend on it.

well i guess the tests from the other are infact accurate cause that site u said u use is reprting roughly the same for my download ... on 2 of their 3 servers mine came out above the 2mb ... but my upload was only 370? why is there such a huge difference? and is that normal? the other site ive been testing from doesnt have upload only download

Here and here are the BigPond Cable/ADSL and OptusNet Cable results. If you want to look at results from your ISP try http:/ /www.dslreports.com/archive/<YOUR ISP SUBNET HERE>?r=722

I would say that the reason we can get higher speeds is probably because we have download limits instead - there's always a tradeoff.

Having said that, there's speeds of upto 18Mbit quoted there, if they are true then the users are very lucky lol.

How about everyone just agrees that it's impossible to say whether cable or DSL is better? DSL and cable are no single technology, there are variants on both of them. There's little point saying which is faster where you are because just 2 miles away could be a very different story with totally different line quality, exchange reliability, ISP quality/reliability, contention ratios, service speed, service price, and so on. Ultimately this guy is just gonna have to ask locally to find out which is best for him.

Because no-one is suggesting that one is better than the other, just what they use and why.

i dont think this was a debate of the best internet service either ... i figured it was just a way to learn alil more about each type and how it works. maybe im missreading but i didnt feel there was any debate going on here.

Well it just seemed like everyone was comparing speeds and prices of DSL and cable, but those things could be entirely different to the situation and the services for the area that the original poster is in.

ofcourse they can .... not to mention a 56k dialup connection is almost never 56k. like i said i think everyone was just comparing and sharing their own personal experiance with certian internet connections. i am sorry if ur reading more into than that.

i got 8064/512 kbit adsl for 99 euro per month(sharing costs with my brother), after the summer they gonna change it to 8064/1024 for the same price,
thats the max they can get with the technolegy they using now

Well. I live In South Africa and our telecoms is one big joke. Reading all the different adsl configurations and cable. We would kill to have those options. The technology that is now being released in SA is broadband satellite and wireless. But of course its highly shared and cheaper than anything else here. VSAT has just been launched and Broadband wireless in November. I think I must come and hop to ur side of the world for technology. Appreciate it and enjoy it.