Hey guys, DSL recently became available in our area, it's only
256k, and it's $40.00 a month and like 20$ for the first three months, yeah, not the greatest price, but I am determined to get out of this 28.8k hell hole. I need your assistance, I need beneficial reasons to get DSL. My reasons (I already printed this off for her, but she hasn't seen it yet as she is not home.)





My friend got it on friday, I installed some of my games on his computer and we had some MOH:AA going on (Only good game I had that could actually run on his piece of crap computer), I now have a craving that is eating my craving. Whoever suffices this craving will get my eternal gratitude and cookie.
Thank you.

Get higher if you at all can. And btw, DSL does too take up a phone line :p. Cable doesn't. And you said it was always on twice.

Trust me. It's much more than 10 times faster.

Number wise, it is. 28 * 10 is 280. (Like 256)

But in reality, you don't get 28k/s, do you? You get closer to.. 3. Or less. So it's far far far faster than 10 times faster.

And DSL doesn't take up a phone line. It might use one, but you can use the phone while online without any interference.

Woah thanks for finding that typo, and no, it doesn't , because I called my mom at my friends house when he was playing online games on his DSL. So MEH. And yeah 28.8k I get about 3.4k/sec, and on my friends 256k he gets about 35k or higher a sec.

I have 256k DSL and I only download about 26.5k/s, but we are kinda far out, so the connection degrades. Not very fast at all, but beats the living **** out of 3k/s dial up downoads

Interesting on the last part. But the first part's wrong.

It IS only 10x faster. 256k means kilobits, not kilobytes. 56k means 56 kilobits not kilobytes. 56k=7 kilobytes/sec 256k=~35 kilobytes/sec

Though the speed is only slightly faster, you'll see like an exponential increase in the performance. Downloads may not be a WHOLE lot faster, but the time it takes is a whole lot less, regardless.

I want this mainly for gaming, and homework... it's a real hassle waiting for freaking ever for pages to load, therefore, if I can get my homework done faster, that leaves more time for gameage! :p

Trust me, you arent gonna be able to do much gaming on 256k. I have had a couple instances where online games ran decent, but most of the time my ping is off the wall

And why should I trust you? Experiances I've had with it are quite opposite, pings at around 150 -- or is that kind of ping ''off the wall''?

Suit yourself, I am speaking form experience

I have no idea what my DSL speed is.
When connected to p2p networks, I've had downloads up past 1.5 Mb/s. I don't think I've ever had it that high with typical downloads, though.

Latency has nothing to do with bandwidth.
Your ping-times depend on where you, your ISPs router and the recieving (sp?) end are. Not to forget everything in between and how fast they respond.

150 is a lousy ping time. I usually get no more than 50, but plenty of factors can influence that. I imagine 150 was a one time thing for a 256 k line.

One time thing as in, coud/should go faster? Coulda been the server..., but I'm probobly going to get it, will anyone assist me with the issue instead of criticizing things?

It's obvious that you don't use DSL, and quite possibly are using cable. (if you;re stuck with dial-up, you have my condolences) I'm using DSL right now. I've heard horror stories about installing it, but none of them applied to me; my family had it up and running within an hour of getting all the equipment. (getting the equipment to arrive was a several-day wait, though)

As for speed, here it's quite nice. So far, it has entirely depended on the server on the other end, with my download speed averagin over 2000kbps (250KB/sec) for some things (such as the updated Ut2k4 demo I recently got) or as low as 360kbps (45KB/sec) for some of the more bogged-down servers (Thief III demo). Trust me, this is far faster than cable. My friends who have cable have to share those "incredibly fast connections" with everytone else in thw whole neighborhood using cable, so that theorietical 12mbps is more like 150-200kpbs most of the time, heh.

As for latency (ping), that has almost nothing to do with your connection speed; the ping time is merely the time it takes for a single signal to travel from Point A to Point B and back again; this has to do with transmission speed, and in comparison, the connections are quite aptly called broadband. The more steps from Point A to Point B, such as network routers, and the like. For example, I get a somewhat higher than normal ping of up to 300 miliseconds, (though usually less than 100) only because my coumputer has to first go to a router past 25 feet of cable, then another 50 feet to the modem, (also another router) which is connected to a phone jack though another 10 feet of phone cord.

I might reccomend going to the website of whatever your service provider is. From there, you should be able to get more information as to what the plan for DSL they have is, how much it costs, who can get it, and who you contact for it.

Also, for anybody who considers that cable could possibly be cheaper than DSL, keep in mind that getting cable internet service required that you also get cable television service. Of course, we all know that of the hundreds of channels you must pay for, you might occasionally like one or two shows. Cable TV is a large waste of money. However, most of us make use of phone service, don't we? That makes it mabye a totla of $75US a month for some of the cable bills I've seen, compared to mabye $20 for most standard phone service, (plus whatever you pay for long distance) plus an average of $40 a month for the DSL service (our price as well), which adds up to $60US.

nottheking--no I don't use DSL, but I do use Cable, and you're horribly wrong about it being only 150-200 kbps. I usually get 300-330 kbps, on a 3.0 mbps line.

First part: just as I had thought. Second part, I was reffering to my neighborhood, if you didn't realize. I suspect it would be faster elsewhere, as when cable became availible, for some reason, almost everyone had to get it, and I mean it, more or less. A conservative estimate would say that at least 60% of the households in the city use cable Internet access. As a result, the connections are all bogged down. And I can tell that cable is very popular here, given that Charter Communications (which only does cable here) has five branches in a city of only ~30,000. You figure would seem much more accurate for someone who likely lives in urban or suburban area, but where things aren't as crazy as they are here.

Ok, my opinion:

"On all of the time." Bad. Take it out of your...manifesto. Spending all of your time online is not a positive thing, and if DSL would seem to encourage that, it will hurt your chances of getting it. Maybe you meant that the DSL is connected all the time, but later you have, "It's always on," so....

"Long distance is free." Depends on the details, but if getting DSL gets you free long-distance, without any catches, that's positive.

"Only $40/month..." Depends entirely on how much $40/month seems to the person you're presenting it to.

"10 times faster than what we have." Good, obviously.

"It's always on." Might need to be explained, but obviously good.

"Can get schoolwork done faster." That's risky. Sounds fishy. Do you really download large files or web pages for schoolwork? If not, take that out.

"Doesn't take up the phone line." Perhaps the best reason.

"No limit on the time or hours of use." Kind of redundant. "Always on" and "Doesn't use phone line" say this. I think you should take this line out; see reason #1.

"It's AWESOME!" Depends on how the reader will take this line.

"Because I love you." Obviously a come-on; depends on how the reader will take it.

"We can at least try it..." Make sure there's no big cancellation fee if you decide against it, or a fee to return to normal service.

"I'd be willing to use Xmas money..." If you mean it, that's pretty good.

"I LOVE YOU!!!!" See reason before last before last.

Overall, having this printed up could make it seem like you've done your homework on it, or it could get you into trouble.

Good luck!

2¢

blujay, you realize it's probably his mom that will be reading this...

Still inaccurate. Everyone in my town uses cable as DSL is not widely offered.

Please use the right abbreviations.

kbps = kilobits per second
kBps = kiloBytes per second
mbps = megabits per second
mBps = megaBytes per second

8 kbps = 1 kBps
1 mbps = 1024 kbps = 128kBps

3 (mbps) * 1024 (kbps) = 3072 kbps
3072 (kbps) / 8 = 384 kBps

That doesn't include overhead, of course. Anyway, the shift key does make a difference. I prefer using "kbps" and "KB/sec," myself; easier to distinguish visually.

Yes, that's the whole idea behind my post.

I have slower DSl. My average download speed is 160 kbs.
It often starts higher and drops down to 160. Is there any way i could speed this up?

Then how is "Because I love you" a come-on?

Well, what would you think if your kid came up to you and said, "Mommy, buy this for me, PLEASE! PLEASE! I LOVE YOUUUUU!!"?

I would think that the only way I could show my love in return would be to purchase DSL.

Oh...right...my bad. :p

If people don't know what I'm talking about just by my context, then I'll educate them. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter.

I suppose that's a point. But so many people aren't educated about it, I hate to further misconceptions.

Nine times out of ten cable is faster. While although they have the bogging down issues (which most areas are fixing by increasing their branches, and lowering the load on each pipe), most DSL costs more just to obtain the speed of cable. You'll find in most places that DSL costs more than cable, for the same speed.

For example... my cable internet costs the same as Monoxide's plan for DSL. Including that $20 a month 3 month deal. My speed on average is 275KB/s. His would be in the area of 20-25KB/s. I may not be getting my maximum due to the load on the pipe (my theoretically max is 375 KB/s, I've hit it, but not often. This might be more of a limit on servers than me though, I'm not sure.), but its still higher than what he is getting. Of course, if that's all he can get in his area, than my blabbering is a moot point.

Also, DSL has the 13,000 feet limit. If you are 13,000 or more feet away from their routing station, they cannot sell you DSL. (Well, they CAN, but you'd get horrible speed and possible packet loss)

And DSL does use a phone jack. It may not tie up your phone line, but it sure does take a jack (Although there are horror stories about the DSL line causing severe interferrence on the phone, most of that can be taken care of by a simple adapter.)

Is cable TV service obligatory for you to get cable Internet? If so, then how much are you charged for that? That's why DSL is cheaper where I live than DSL, as cable may claim to cost only $30/month compared to DSL's $40/month, but you're required to sign up for at least $45/month worth of cable TV service, which is a waste of money. Face it, when you've got the Internet at high speeds, (or even low speeds, for that matter) who needs TV?


Hmm... I think the limit may be greater than that, as we live arround 3-4 miles from the telephone office, a bit farther than you stated was the limit. However, we still get excelent speeds averaging arround 1.5mbps, very low latency, (game pings never exceeeding 175ms) and so far, packet loss comparable to what we get over our home network.


Those kinds of horror stories come from the stupid people, who don't deserve to use the Internet, be it on dial-up, cable, or DSL. Because DSL runs off of a phone line, you must install a filter at every phone jack, else you'll get interference. For the first day or two, we got a little static interference with our phone calls, but it dissapeared shortly thereafter.

You don't have to get cable TV to get a cable internet line. The line they install is just capable of piping in the cable TV and the internet sevice. There are package deals that will save you a few bucks a month though.

No, its not obligatory. We have cable, but we don't have to have it. I know this for a fact, my neighbor had RR without cable in any form. It may be obligatory in other areas though.



I said the routing station, not the telephone office. There's a difference. The routing station is usually unmanned, a little building off to the side of the neighborhood. All the DSL connections run to there, and from there they run on a large pipe to the central distribution area. Cable runs on a similar system, but there is no length restrictions.



You don't HAVE to have a filter. I've seen some places that don't require them, one being where my grandmother works. (Small business) But many places do, and some need even bigger filters on them, depending on how old and crappy the phone lines are.

Which brings me to a new situation I remembered with DSL. If your phone lines are really old and crappy, it won't work on that either. Generally they don't know if it'll work in your house until they try it. They can try boosting the signal, but it rarely works. Cable suffers from this problem a little also, but boosters are much more effective on cable. They can only boost the DSL signal so much before it overrides your phone conversations.

Crap that. I have DSL, and I average at 88kBps.

We pay $40 a month for cable internet. We do not have cable TV though. We switched our landline over to the cable company and it costs less than the Baby Bell. We have 4mbs service. On a good server I get about 680Kb/s. As far as P2P it all depends but I normally get abour 100Kb/s.

DSL does not exclusively use the phone line while you are using it but it does use the phone line. IIRC the only company that allows for 'naked' DSL service is Verizon and that's only in some East Coast states. So you do have to get a phone line to have DSL.

$40 a month! Damn! I'm only paying about $25 a month.

$29 Canadian here. $40 is farking expensive.

10 American here.

I think it's out £25 or so for Blueyonder. I don't know exactly. Plus, I just know our connection as "broadband"... I don't know specifically what it is. It uses the same co-axial cables, so it might be cable, but I don't know the speciifics.