[DM-MUG] Moving to DSL or not, which speed is important?

[Jerry Heiselman]

Victoria,

You're confusion seems to be with the way different ISP technologies are
billed.

DSL is billed in two parts:

1.  Qwest will bill you for the phone line running to your house
2.  A separate ISP will bill you for using their network to the Internet.
In some cases, Qwest bundles in an ISP and therefore you only get one bill.

Cable is only billed in one part because the cable company is charging you
for the ISP service.  They already have the cable line ran to your house
(which you or a contractor paid for sometime before).

If you plan on not running any services off your computer, I would highly
recommend that  you go with cable.  You get a big pipe that would cost you
almost 1/2 again as much if you went with DSL.  You don't get a large upload
speed with Mediacom (I think it's currently set to 512Kb/sec), but it is
generally good enough for most home users.  The download speeds though are
really fast.  For what the 256k/256k service from Qwest w/MSN costs you, you
get 5000k/512k with cable from Mediacom.

Jerry

On 2/9/06, Jon Thompson <jthompson at greatapetrust.org> wrote:
>
> For most users, Down is better than up.  When you are downloading a
> file from the internet, you are using the down speed.  However, if
> you are using your connection for serving files (which is now
> prohibited on Qwest's DSL wire, regardless of ISP,) you are uploading
> files to someone else (who is downloading them.)
>
> However, the exception is video chats, games, and other bidirectional
> communication.  You are uploading your video stream to the other user
> (s)' computer.  At the same time, one or more people are giving you
> the video stream to download.
>
> Apple's requirements for a four way video chat is 384Kbps for both up
> and down.  All of the options that you specify would work well with
> video iChat.
> --
> Jon Thompson
> jthompson at greatapetrust.org
>
> Insights through collaborations with apes
> Great Ape Trust of Iowa
> www.greatapetrust.org
>
>
>
> On Feb 9, 2006, at 11:01 AM, Victoria L. Herring wrote:
>
> > I'm in the midst of comparing various DSL providers and there are
> > different up speeds and down speeds to compare, some have 800+ up
> > and 3000 down, some with 800 up and 1000 down....just generally, I
> > do know I want lots of speed both ways, but if I have to take a
> > hit, is it better on the up or down speed??  For instance, the
> > Qwest info is 840k up and 1000 down...and another carrier is 1000
> > up and 1500 down....but there's another plan of 896 up and 3000
> > down...which makes more sense?  [pricing is more or less the same]
> >
> > I assume if I moved to DSL the DSL provider would then be the ISP??
> > Right now MCHSI is my cable company provider and ISP but I don't
> > use any of its services other than the 'pipe' and if something goes
> > wrong, phone call or in house service.
> > --
> > Victoria L. Herring, Attorney, Civil Rights, Discrimination &
> > Employment Law, <http://www.HerringLaw.com>;  Travel research and
> > planning, <http://www.JourneyZing.com>;  Des Moines, Iowa,
> > 515-255-4475.  Photographs at Borders Cafe and newest photographs
> > from Venice & Burano, Italy:  http://victoriajz.smugmug.com
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