Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire DSL or Wireless

I expect to receive a new computer in the next week or so. I've been on a dial-up service forever and we now have choices in our area of dial-up, DSL or Wireless. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

No one locally has much experience with our two new options and I'd like the opinions of those of you who do.

My tendency is to go DSL as they can hook me up sooner and the price is a couple bucks less than the wireless.

Whatcha' all think?????

TIA

Just made the switch form d i a l-u p to dsl myself. Huge diff.

I dont know much about wireless, just saying if yer comin' from d i a l-u p , dls is SMOKING. You'll love it

Don't have any experience with DSL, but have wireless at work. If DSL is faster than wireless, I don't need it! Of course my point of reference is dial up out here on these country phone lines, more like molasass in January.

I went from wireless to dial up when I moved out here--no other choice is available in this area yet.

If the few extra bucks a month isn't a big issue with you, I'd go for the wireless. But right now dsl sounds awfully good to me.

DSL or wireless is not an option.

You get yourself a DSL or cable, or SAT connection, and then connect to a wireless router.

My DSL line come out of the wall straight into my DSL modem. From the DSL modem it splits off to the wireless router, and also splits off to my desktop PC which is not wireless, and at the same time putting out a wireless signal through out the house that I use for my laptop.

You have to have either a DSL or cable, account, and an optional wireless router.


Am I making sence?

If you have no laptop, you have no need for wireless. If you have a laptop then it must have a wireless modem, and you must buy a wireless router, but your account will still be DSL or cable. Either one is as fast as you would need.

Oh--that's right....for some reason I was thinking dls vs cable.

DSL can be cheaper but it's a bit slower than cable.

If your not a gamer, or download lots of files (graphics ?) then you'll be more than happy with DSL.

DSL can be had for a song, Cable will jack you up to 40 bucks a month after a certain term.

I design the stuff so If you have any questions that I might be able to help with let her rip.

Spot

Spotshooter is partially correct. The cable companies advertise that they are faster than dsl, but there are different levels of dsl. I'm running 6 mb/s dsl and it rocks. I also have a wireless router on this connection for my laptop. Cable also slows down as more subscribers are added in your area.

Thanks guys. I guess I'm not up on the technology jargon but the "wireless" choice we have, I believe, is a "satellite radio" type of service.

As I recall now, the "wireless" is an in-house deal, not an out-house <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />, deal.

M- I believe what twodogs is talking about is wireless internet service that feeds the signal from a receiver to a modem via cable, not necessarily a Wi-Fi setup. I have "wireless" internet service and have a dish on my roof with a cable running to a modem, then to the PC. When I got it installed, DSL was not available at my address and it was considerably cheaper than DSL. It's much faster than dial-up and has been very reliable. I do wonder sometimes about security of ordering over the internet using a wireless connection. Anybody know how secure these connections are?

I think either way you go you'll be much happier than with dial-up, twodogs.

There is a company offering "wireless" in a Denver neighborhood,
there routers are mounted on power poles & you rent their reciever.

We have that out here, but it is through SAT TV, such as Direct TV.

Check your phone company, a lot of times if you get the DSL account through the same people you have your phone with, they will give you a discount and a credit on instalation.

The wireless that they are talking about is a WAN, it's signal covers a large area network, you have a reciever on a small tower by your house. They are okay, but not the most secure, I prefer hardline for the security aspect. It is not an 802.11 wireless signal. it is a little different. Les

ADSL starts at about 8 Meg and the signal degrades as you get further away from the Centeral office. After you get past 8 thousand feet it gets pretty weak, most companies are trying to rewire to get the length of the copper loops down so speeds move up.

So Technology wise in DSL you have ADSL2 that can make it up to 12-14 Meg, and VDSL2 will be released this year and it can go well above that, again as you get further away from the Central office the speed decreases.
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With Cable it depends what Docis (Cable head software load and equipment version) you have to tell how fast. The 3.0 standard that's coming will kick some serious butt.
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WiFi - 802.11 g /b /a ...
A LAN (300 ft) network

WiMax 802.16e - WAN or broad band wireless provided by ISP's (this will add a whole new competitor to the broadband space) will become standard this summer, and by early next year 2007 you'll see it available.
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Again what you pay is the big key, unless your surfing dial up is good.

If you surfing DSL is just fine - If you want to sit in living room get a WiFi (linksys or other best buy type) 802.11 g router for your house and if you have a laptop your in business.
- Disclaimer - Make sure you secure your network.. that's a differnt conversation.

Spot

We don't have that around my parts that I know of, but I have heard that some cities are trying to set up blanket coverage for the whole city.

I'm sure that will erode performance having forty thousand or more on the same wireless signal.

I used to work at a wireless ISP. As has been said it is different than wifi. The wireless gear we used had a range of just over 30 miles. As was also said it requires a small radio attached outside your home (with a dish if over 2 or 3 miles or through heavy cover). The signal can be (should be!) encrypted, and is quite secure, more so than wifi. Latency over wireless is less than DSL, and speeds can be higher, our equipment could do 20 mbs but we limited customers. depending on frequency there were occasionally problems with weather. I'm in the mountains so fog was an issue on our 900mhz gear but not usually the 2.4 ghz. Wind was our biggest enemy, sometimes blowing customers radios out of alignment. If you do wireless make sure the radio is well grounded outside your home. Double check the install, I saw a few that were'nt grounded and a few that called in with lightning damage. Anyway, 1 isn't really better than the other. if you have a choice look at cost/speed/features. Also might want to get feedback from other customers as networks can be vastly oversubscribed. HTH.

Can't answer the original question, but we just switched our Verizon DSL service to the Verizon FIOS (Fiber Optic). My DSL connection speed varied from about 700 kb/s to 1.2 mb/s. Pretty darn fast for "regular" DSL. End user speed is nothing to sneeze at.

The switch over to their fiber optic system was painless. I paid for the 15 mb/s service and I average between 13 mb/s to about 14.67 mb/s download and 1.87 mb/s upload.

Difference between the DSL and fiber optic is negligable that I can tell. The choke point is not my connection, but whatever site I am visiting. Could be that I am visiting at exactly the same time Steelhead is downloading. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

The only real advantage that I feel I will see with the Verizon FIOS is when they start offering TV service over the system. Maybe that will give DirecTV and the local cable company some competitive pressure to lower their cost of service.

I have DSL at home and wireless at work. There's a difference in speed, but unless you do large downloads or play games online, there's little practical difference. Both will hit websites as fast as a TV remote.
I'd decide more on customer service rather than connection speed. Do some research. I've found that a small local company will give better service than a big one like AOL, MSN, etc. You can call and get real people.

Dick

If it's BPL stay away from it. The Technology isn't there yet they are having major problems with it as the current technology is interfering with Amateur Radio Bands and the FCC is starting to crack down on a number of Electric Utilities that are doing the test on the BPL systems in place and as an end result a number of the Electric Utilities are abandoning there investment and joint operating agreements in the Technology with BPL Systems.

Nash,

The new WiMax 802.16e is what all the vendors have been moving to standardize over the last few years. Many of the vendors have pilots out now with proprietary WiFi with special antennas (directionals) that will get you up to 5 miles.

WiMax in the licensed specturm will reach up to 30 but again antennas. In the unlicensed spectrum it will go about 5 miles (due to power restrictions).

Pretty interesting stuff, lots of fun for us Techyguy's.

If there are any other Telecom guy's out on the board shoot me a PM. Just interested to see who's out there, and it doesn't hurt to network (LOL) a bit.

Spot