I know its complete BS but does it have some truth.

[Mad-Baron93]

I was looking up Centurylink Speeds and rates in my local area. The sales person I was talking to was trying to tell me that their 100 Mbps over DSL is the equivalent of Cox Communications' 500 Mbps. Working in the Sounds and Communications trade I know its mostly BS but I was just curious if there was some truth to the claim. 
 

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, Mad-Baron93 said:

The sales person I was talking to was trying to tell me that their 100 Mbps over DSL is the equivalent of Cox Communications' 500 Mbps. Working in the Sounds and Communications trade I know its mostly BS but I was just curious if there was some truth to the claim.

Equivalent in what way? If they didn't clarify specifically what they meant, there's literally no way of saying much about it. Besides which, it's never a good sign if one has to try to sell one's product/service by badmouthing a competitor.

[Levent]

Wat. If you are advertised to get 500Mbps and getting significantly less, than its either a fraud or you didnt read the fine print. 

[WereCatf]

Just now, Levent said:

Wat. If you are advertised to get 500Mbps and getting significantly less, than its either a fraud or you didnt read the fine print. 

They typically word it as "up to 500Mbps" instead of promising the full 500Mbps. If it contains the words "up to", then it's not false advertising from a legal standpoint.

[Levent]

Just now, WereCatf said:

They typically word it as "up to 500Mbps" instead of promising the full 500Mbps. If it contains the words "up to", then it's not false advertising from a legal standpoint.

Yes, my point exactly. 

[Mad-Baron93]

Just now, WereCatf said:

Equivalent in what way? If they didn't clarify specifically what they meant, there's literally no way of saying much about it. Besides which, it's never a good sign if one has to try to sell one's product/service by badmouthing a competitor.

They said its the equivalent in speed and performance. Cox is notorious of pushing an old copper infrastructure that was built in the 1960's to its limit without must upgrading it in the city I live in. 

Centurylink is the only one pushing for fiber backbones. 

[Mad-Baron93]

4 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Equivalent in what way? If they didn't clarify specifically what they meant, there's literally no way of saying much about it. Besides which, it's never a good sign if one has to try to sell one's product/service by badmouthing a competitor.

I wouldn't really say it was a badmouth, it was them trying to compare their speeds to the city's cable monopoly 

[Mad-Baron93]

9 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Equivalent in what way? If they didn't clarify specifically what they meant, there's literally no way of saying much about it. Besides which, it's never a good sign if one has to try to sell one's product/service by badmouthing a competitor.

I think I know what they were comparing to. I think they were comparing to when it comes to the evenings and weekends when everyone wants to use or watch TV at the same time. 

 

I was paying for gigablast and only received about 400-450 Mbps down. So I think they are saying that times of high traffic, my speed won't be effected as much?

[Alvin853]

2 minutes ago, Mad-Baron93 said:

I think I know what they were comparing to. I think they were comparing to when it comes to the evenings and weekends when everyone wants to use or watch TV at the same time. 

 

I was paying for gigablast and only received about 400-450 Mbps down. So I think they are saying that times of high traffic, my speed won't be effected as much?

It's the old discussion of cable vs. DSL. In short: cable is a shared medium, so if nobody else in your neighborhood is using their cable connection, you get the full advertised 500 Mbps speed, but during the evening when everybody is watching Netflix, it might slow down to a crawl. DSL is your "private line" so you're always getting your 100 Mbps no matter what anyone else is doing. 

 

Also because cable is shared it is much more prone to outages than DSL. If you're okay with being limited to 100Mbps you should consider going DSL, if you want the most speed at times of low usage and are okay with the downsides, go cable.

[Lurick]

12 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

It's the old discussion of cable vs. DSL. In short: cable is a shared medium, so if nobody else in your neighborhood is using their cable connection, you get the full advertised 500 Mbps speed, but during the evening when everybody is watching Netflix, it might slow down to a crawl. DSL is your "private line" so you're always getting your 100 Mbps no matter what anyone else is doing. 

 

Also because cable is shared it is much more prone to outages than DSL. If you're okay with being limited to 100Mbps you should consider going DSL, if you want the most speed at times of low usage and are okay with the downsides, go cable.

Not exactly "dedicated" for DSL. Cable is oversubscribed but it's not always a "everyone watching netflix = dog slow" scenario. You generally won't see a 400:1 over-subscription ratio on a cable trunk but more like between 50:1 and 100:1 or so, depending on the area/ISP/etc. But the same thing is true for DSL, you're not getting full dedicated 100Mbps from the ISP's backhaul to your premises, it's oversubscribed from the DSLAM as well but the link going to your home is "dedicated" in that sense. Unless you're on metro ethernet or some dedicated business line you are over-subscribed. DSL also has the lovely drawback of distance coming into play so the further you are from the DSLAM the slower your speeds will be and the more issues you might experience on the aging infra compared to (generally) newer-ish coax lines.

[Mad-Baron93]

I switched back to the 500 Mbps plan because I know it drops to about 100 Mbps during high traffic. 

 

I never got anywhere close to 940 Mbps down with gigablast. It was always around 600 during no busy hours and 300 to 450 during busy hours. 

 

Personally I was very happy with their 150 plan until evening hours. 

 

The issue is CL is that their actual speed was about 66 down due to the old cat3 in my apartment. 

[Mad-Baron93]

11 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Not exactly "dedicated" for DSL. Cable is oversubscribed but it's not always a "everyone watching netflix = dog slow" scenario. You generally won't see a 400:1 over-subscription ratio on a cable trunk but more like between 50:1 and 100:1 or so, depending on the area/ISP/etc. But the same thing is true for DSL, you're not getting full dedicated 100Mbps from the ISP's backhaul to your premises, it's oversubscribed from the DSLAM as well but the link going to your home is "dedicated" in that sense. Unless you're on metro ethernet or some dedicated business line you are over-subscribed. DSL also has the lovely drawback of distance coming into play so the further you are from the DSLAM the slower your speeds will be and the more issues you might experience on the aging infra compared to (generally) newer-ish coax lines.

What I was being told by CL, it's not really a DSL line back to the office. It's a DSL back to a fiber node, which is supposed to help guarantee 100 down and 10 up for most residents in the city. The new issue is how far people live from the node instead of the office. 

 

 

[brwainer]

The other way not discussed so far is that DSL can sometimes have better latency. But I haven’t seen a rigorous testing of this in a long time (over a decade) and the phone companies aren’t even claiming it any more, so maybe that advantage is gone now.

[Mad-Baron93]

When I do a speed test at my Parents, they have CL DSL, their ping is about 9 to 15 MS. When I do Cox, is about a consistent 7 to 9 MS. But that's to their servers

[brwainer]

 

3 minutes ago, Mad-Baron93 said:

When I do a speed test at my Parents, they have CL DSL, their ping is about 9 to 15 MS. When I do Cox, is about a consistent 5 to 9 MS. But that's to their servers

Do a ping test to 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 - this will essentially tell you how close the nearest datacenter is. But the distance, and number of routing hops, can be drastically different between DSL and Cable at the same location which may be more impactful than any inherent difference.

[Donut417]

On 4/17/2021 at 10:40 AM, Mad-Baron93 said:

Centurylink is the only one pushing for fiber backbones. 

Cox uses Fiber as well. DSL is crap compared to Docsis in most circumstances. The phone lines have been on the poles a hell of a lot longer than Coax. The only benefit Century Link has I believe is no data caps, because Cox does cap. 

 

The biggest issue with Coax internet is you share a Fiber cable with others in your neighborhood. So that means when a metric boat load of people are on, you might see reduced performance. But there is no way 100 Mbps DSL will outperform 500 Mbps cable internet. Further Id like to state we used to use Century Link at the job but there service was SOOOOO crap we had to move over to LTE internet. 

[Mad-Baron93]

Cox doesn't use fiber backbones for the majority of the city. They are still using the old copper infrastructure that was built in the 1970's. 

[Donut417]

13 minutes ago, Mad-Baron93 said:

Cox doesn't use fiber backbones for the majority of the city. They are still using the old copper infrastructure that was built in the 1970's. 

Cox uses Fiber to the node like every cable co out there. If they were still using 1970's cable network then they wouldn't be able to offer faster speeds. So unless you have slow ass speeds they have to have Fiber on the network, by slow I mean they would probably be Docsis 1 speeds. Because in order to offer faster speeds they need Fiber to do it. There is a chance that your city is not as upgraded as a majority of their network. That does happen, as they look at the economics of upgrading an area. But as it stands in order to compete they do have to run Fiber. 

 

Cox advertises "Gigabit" so they are using Docsis 3.1 and I know in order to use that tech, most companies had to deploy more Fiber and do node splits and kill nested nodes and such. 

[Mad-Baron93]

6 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Cox uses Fiber to the node like every cable co out there. If they were still using 1970's cable network then they wouldn't be able to offer faster speeds. So unless you have slow ass speeds they have to have Fiber on the network, by slow I mean they would probably be Docsis 1 speeds. Because in order to offer faster speeds they need Fiber to do it. There is a chance that your city is not as upgraded as a majority of their network. That does happen, as they look at the economics of upgrading an area. But as it stands in order to compete they do have to run Fiber. 

 

Cox advertises "Gigabit" so they are using Docsis 3.1 and I know in order to use that tech, most companies had to deploy more Fiber and do node splits and kill nested nodes and such. 

What Competition?

 

Cox is the City's Monopoly and they know it. If I want to to use a different service, it's CL and it's a crap shoot with their DSL they way it sounds. It's either you love in an area where they can offer 100 Mbps down or you are lucky to get 40 Mbps down on a good day. 
 

The best part, the City council has turned down two other competitors (Arlo and Google Fiber) from coming to the city due to being paid off from Cox and their stupid contract with the City. CL lucked out when they bought out Qwest, so they kind of gotten grandfathered into the city. 

 

 

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, Mad-Baron93 said:

What Competition?

1) Starlink

2) T Mobile LTE Home internet / 5G

 

There is your completion. T Mobile offers 50 Mbps for $50/m and Starlink is like $100/m, not sure on its speed. But I have read reviews on both service and they are the real deal. 

 

Also even though they are your only cable provider doesnt mean they dont upgrade their network. We only have Comcast in my area and they offer Gigabit speeds and all that jazz. Because they have to, in order to compete with companies in other cities where they do have competition. Cox is not a small provider either, I mean they aint Comcast big, but they are a large cable provider like Charter or Mediacom. 

 

4 hours ago, Mad-Baron93 said:

City council has turned down two other competitors

Well, then you get people together and vote those fuckers out, this a Murica, we do have a voice, especially in our local government.

 

At least you have companies who want to come in. WOW told one of our residents that our city was not good enough for them for the most part.

[Mad-Baron93]

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

1) Starlink

2) T Mobile LTE Home internet / 5G

 

There is your completion. T Mobile offers 50 Mbps for $50/m and Starlink is like $100/m, not sure on its speed. But I have read reviews on both service and they are the real deal. 

 

Also even though they are your only cable provider doesnt mean they dont upgrade their network. We only have Comcast in my area and they offer Gigabit speeds and all that jazz. Because they have to, in order to compete with companies in other cities where they do have competition. Cox is not a small provider either, I mean they aint Comcast big, but they are a large cable provider like Charter or Mediacom. 

 

Well, then you get people together and vote those fuckers out, this a Murica, we do have a voice, especially in our local government.

 

At least you have companies who want to come in. WOW told one of our residents that our city was not good enough for them for the most part.

T mobile is still kind of a joke here when it comes to service. It's Verizon Wireless or AT&T when it comes that type of service. 

 

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, Mad-Baron93 said:

T mobile is still kind of a joke here when it comes to service. It's Verizon Wireless or AT&T when it comes that type of service. 

 

I have T Mobile. They are not a joke. There service is good and their customer service is better. 

[Mad-Baron93]

In Nebraska, TMobile is a Joke when it comes to coverage

[Rolling2405]

On 4/17/2021 at 7:54 AM, Alvin853 said:

n short: cable is a shared medium

 

On 4/17/2021 at 8:05 AM, Lurick said:

Cable

So is there a way to not share my bandwidth with others in my neighborhood? I have a gig plan with Comcast/Xfinity.

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, Thomas001 said:

 

So is there a way to not share my bandwidth with others in my neighborhood? I have a gig plan with Comcast/Xfinity.

NO. You and x amount of other customers are connected via Coax to a node. That node is fed by Fiber that leads back to Comcast. Because of that, you have to share. 

 

The only way to get more dedicated bandwidth is to sign up for their Gigabit Pro service. But its pretty expensive.