Thursday, August 19, 1999 - Hilbert Hagedoorn

So you want to grab several more frags without having to try? Want to be called names and yelled at because everyone else is jealous of your 30 ping? Want to watch your enemy complain of lag while you run circles around them? Oh yeah, it's good for web browsing, too. If you want all of this, then you need one of these... ADSL or cable.

What are they?

ADSL and cable modems are the new contenders for high speed internet access. It used to be that your only choice for high speed internet access was either the very costly ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), or the even more costly dedicated access such as a T1 or frame relay. A new breed of high speed access has come, and it's finally aimed at the residential user. ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) and cable modems utilize technology already run to your home, ADSL with phone lines, and cable with the your cable television lines. Both rival the speed of a very costly T1 line, yet are relatively cheap. They usually will run you between $30 and $50 a month, depending on your connection speed.

So what's the catch?

There are a couple, first of all, both are a costly upgrade for the phone company and cable operators, so they're not available in a lot of places. Second, cable has a big catch, you share your access with your neighbors, so if the kid down the street hosts a busy warez site, you're out of luck. If you know your neighbors well and know they won't be making any big downloads or playing a lot of online games, this isn't a bad option. Third, ADSL doesn't share with your neighbors, but you have to be within a certain distance of your telephone company's office, generally about 18,000 feet (5.5 kilometers) without repeaters. As the distance between you and your telephone company's office decreases, your data rate capability increases, even though it's probably capped well before the 18,000 feet's capability of 1.5 Mbps.

Where can I get it?

You'll have to check with your local phone company and cable company about availability. Depending on how large your city is, you can probably already tell. If you live in a city of 10,000 or less, don't expect either anytime soon. Most availability is based in large cities, but it is starting to spread out. To be sure, check with your local providers. If it's not available, you may be able to get ISDN which runs at about 128 Kbps if you can't wait (again, not widely available, but more so than ADSL and cable, check with your local phone company). Another way to get high speed access that is available everywhere is DirecPC, a satellite connection running at about 400 Kbps download, but you'll still need to upload through your modem, so gamers shouldn't expect any increase in gaming latency (plus it's costly as hell).

Conclusion

If both are available in your area, choose whatever meets your needs. The ADSL will have a bigger installation fee for the modem (sometimes you have to buy your own, others are packaged), but you won't have to worry about the neighbor kid downloading porn and warez. If you want a slightly cheaper route and don't care about what the neighbors are in to, go with cable. If no one else in your neighborhood has cable, by all means, get cable, it's usually faster than ADSL to begin with. But again, check your local prividers, ADSL could be cheaper, especially with package deals. In other words, ADSL is more reliable, can be faster (depends who else is on your cable and whether or not it's capped), but can be slower if limited by your provider. Talk to your neighbors if you want, find out who else in your neighborhood or building plans on getting a cable modem, that can really change the speed of your connection. If your whole neighborhood/building is getting cable, go with ADSL. It's that simple.

From: Ares @ Ingava

Copyright 1999 - All rights reserved Hilbert Hagedoorn