Poll: What kind of internet access do you have?

I'm new to cable modem and it truly is wonderful!

amen!!! I never get below a megabit downstream. I *heart* my cable modem. :)

So...is that, like, a date? :)

(Good thing we got rid of the thumbs up/down system so I can make pointless posts like that, eh? ;))

Even more sadly than the fiber trunk thing, I'm forced into using the T1 at the public library. So, as long as the content continues to be safe for young eyes, I'm still able to access FHDC... one hour at a time.

Hopefully, within a week, my vote will change. But I think it will change to dial-up, so I'm not sure it will be an improvement.

DSL is way better. yeah, it's a little more expensive, but they also don't tend to have horrendous terms of service that don't actually let you do anything, either. I've found that most cable modem contracts are highly restrictive and tend to offer less bandwidth than DSL.

the bottom line is, if DSL is available in your area, pay the extra little bit. it's so worth it.

I'm not sure I agree. I mean, granted, it depends on where you live and what cable modem/DSL providers are available.... but around here, cable modem is MUCH better.

I had Verizon DSL when I lived in Easthampton..... usually got 500 to 700 downstream.. and quite a few outages.

Here in Northampton, I've got AT&T cable modem.... it's been out maybe once or twice... and I never get below a megabit downstream, usually more like 1.5. To get even CLOSE to that speed on DSL would cost about $20 to $40 a month more than what I'm paying now.

As far as terms of service.... *shrugs*... since when did those ever have an effect on what you can ACTUALLY do, anyway? *grin*

the apartment will soon have it's own non-affiliated high-speed connection. Unfortunately, back at school as I am, I'm still stuck with the school's shitty connection which is actually slower than dialup. AAAAAARGH!

well, not really, but it'd be nice. maybe someday... ;)

in the interim, I'm quite satisfied with my cable modem.

-- Pauley

so, ummm, what exactly is ethernet?

"Ethernet is a network standard of communication using either coaxial or twisted pair cable. The most widely used for of LAN communication, Ethernet typically runs at 10 megabytes per second, though newer systems use 100 Mbps, or ever gigabit of transfer.

Ethernet is the IEEE standard 802.3. It has several different flavors, with the original Ethernet designed with 10base5. The "10" stands for 10 megabytes per second. Base is the Baseband communications it uses. The "5" stands for a maximum distance of 500 meters to communicate with. Original Ethernet used coaxial wiring, while newer versions use twisted-pair cabling. There are several flavors of Ethernet, including 10Base2 (10 Mbps, 200 meters), 10BaseT (10 Mbps, 100 meters, twisted-pair), and 100BaseT (100 Mbps, 100 meter, twisted-pair)."

But... assuming you mean, "what does that make my connection, which is ethernet?" .... ethernet is basically the way your computer talks to the internet connection you're using.

In other words.... I use an ethernet connection to talk to my cable modem. In schools, there is usually a network which uses ethernet to communicate and then uses (depending on the size/budget of the school) anywhere from a T1 or up to communicate to the Internet.

:)

Yup, Nate's a geek.

But a helpful geek! =D

Yay helpful geeks!! Thanks, you two... I never knew I could learn so much from an FHDC poll! ;)

yeah...dial-up sucks, but it doesn't really matter when i just log on from home on the weekends.

yeah... guess I should've had a "i don't care about speed" option of some kind. :)

I'm just always thinking like a geek. hehe

speed is just so important.
that's actually why I'm on cable.
because of the way my neighbourhood is wired, i can't get anything more than 60
k/s on DSL, which really isn't worth the extra money.
my cable's speedy, but lately service in my area is crap.
i'm left with the choice of slow internet, or reallyfastinternet that only works half
the time. ;)

yeah, that tends to be the tradeoff.... DSL and cable modem both have downtime.... it's just that, when it's up, they're faster.

And, around here at least...... cable modem is about 5 to 10 times as reliable.

Although truthfully, the effective downtime for either of these may not really be any greater than dialup. At least it wasn't with my old dialup.

I can think of a number of times when I was on dialup where I would call and get:

o a busy signal
o "Unable to establish connection"
o Connection, but can't get to any web pages

You also aren't connected 24/7 with dialup so you are less likely to notice an outage as you are with cable/DSL.

Yeah... I was thinking that right after I submitted mine.... very good point.

Now that I have a decently speedy and up to date machine I can consider putting out the extra bucks to get out of dial-up....or I can go into work and use the cable modem service we currently have (rumoured to be changing to DSL soon). Around here, both the cable and the DSL are about even in reliability, they are now offering the capped "flavours" of DSL at almost dial-up prices and the fast DSL is about the same price as cable but it is faster. For me, the final deciding factor is the shared bandwidth and email security concerns that I have heard about that push cable off my wish list.

Well, that "shared bandwidth" thing is just a way DSL providers try to sell DSL. All bandwidth is shared. With DSL, it's just shared at the office instead of the node. *shrugs* It's all "shared bandwidth".

As far as "email security concerns"..... how do those differ from DSL to cable modem??

I'm with nate, why are you concerned with email security more so with cable than DSL?

I have DSL and Norton's internet security and have records of attempted hacks from diffrent IP addresses since I've installed it. (mostly from Korea - don't know why that is.)

If you're running DSL or cable and don't have a firewall, that's taking a chance you'll also be hacked while online and never know it since you don't have the firewall protection.

yup. Best suggestion I can make is that if you're not behind a router/firewall, you're at least running something like the free version of Zone Alarm

It's actually one of the better firewalls out there, especially if you really want to know everything that's coming and going from your computer.

And hell, it's free! :)

This will also help you if you don't want your computer to be part of an attack on someone ELSE'S system, through a DoS (Denial of Service) attack... about which a VERY interesting read can be found at this web site.

*shrug* I know that connecting to a particular site is only as fast as the slowest point and that could quite easily be somewhere other than your neighbourhood node, and of course it may never be a problem if your node shares enough bandwidth or you don't ever surf in your node's prime time. This all may have been a bigger concern several years ago when cable could hardly keep up with the initial growth. The same may go for my second point. My understanding was that it was/is painfully easy to pry into the node and see things you are not entitled to (as opposed to how hard it might be to hack from "outside"). Maybe things have improved, maybe some kind of virtual firewall to isolate node members? I dunno. Of course you should be running a firewall on any always-on connection, that is an excellent suggestion, I have XP's built-in one running even on my dial-up (dunno if that is any use but I figure it can't hurt). Today I recieved two bounces on a message I never sent....I think I'm being spoofed by a spammer, oh joy. *laters*