NAC - Cable Modem vs DSL - sorry but someone asked.....

[superba1st]

Hi,

I "had" DSL, or rather it had me for about 1.5 years.  There were outages
constantly, that is, but you don't notice them until you're actually up and
running, which took 3 months or so.  My provider was PacBell which became
SBC which became SBC Yahoo.  When they tried to make themselves into AOL
DSL, I finally threw up my hands, bit the bullet, and changed to cable
modem.

There is a class action suit against PacBell, which apparently the class
won.  The first XXXX share in $1.125 million to a max of $20 each or you can
sign up again and take a month's credit.  What is notable is that the
attorneys get ***$2.845 million***, over twice as much as the class gets!

PacBell and other telephone companies use pair gain amplifiers to service 2
subscribers with one line;  unfortunately, the bandwidth of the PGA's is not
suitable for a 33kb modem let alone a DSL modem.  Also, they signed up far
too many subscribers for the amount of plant they installed and far exceeded
the capacity of their DSLAM's, DSL Aggregator Multiplexers.

The service sucked to say the least.  Many times my former dial up service
was faster than the DSL, except when downloading files.

Cable promised to be better and, on the whole, it is.  However, I signed up
with AT&T, which became Comcast before it was installed.  Comcast is
apparently strapped for cash and nickeling and diming all over the place.
By and large cable modem has been better for me.

Except for one caveat.  I bought a cable modem instead of renting one from
the cable company.  I got an RCA over the internet that was supposed to be
new.  However, it couldn't be installed on the Comcast network BECAUSE IT
HAD ALREADY BEEN REGISTERED ON THEIR NETWORK PREVIOUSLY.  It took me several
weeks to get to a Comcast Tech who would change the WAN registration so I
could use it.

The truth of the matter is that you get what you pay for.  Consumers get
taken in by the promises of the DSL and Cable Modem providers;  there is no
Quality of Service, QOS, as there is with higher priced commercial systems.
You get it when, and if, it's available.  Don't like it?  Tough.

My $.45 worth on that.

Cheers!

Jim Jordan