Internet Tech Help Please!
 

I have a question... I'm not real savvy about this type of thing. Currently we use broadband cable as our internet connection. Since we don't subscribe to the cable TV service, it seems that we are penalized and pay more for just internet service.

I keep getting advertisements in the mail about A T & T internet service. Their "Elite" plan (best) is less than my broadband connection. It states "up to 6.0 Mbps". (Whatever that means.) :noidea

Can someone who has used both tell me if the speed is comparable? I have gotten used to having fast service and would hate to lose that just to save a few dollars.

So........... if you have made the switch from broadband to A T & T - are you happy? Thanks so much for any input!

:sos

I had Sonic.net out of Santa Rosa for I think $13 a month and loved it.

I had Yahoo/Att/SBC for a year at $14.95 and the only thing I did not like was email. So I started moving EVERYTHING to gmail.

:woot.

SweetPea PM me a number and I can explain more.

I have a Bellsouth modem here too not being used. When I moved I am too far from the switch so I have Cable - Horrible but all there is and $50 a month....

The "6 Mbps" is a tricky one that they're throwing at you. On most TV cable systems the download is usually around 4 MB per seconds. Notice that the "B" is capitalized.

A megabit (Mb) is a million binary pulses, or 1,000,000 pulses (or "bits").

A megabyte (MB) is 2 to the 20th power bytes, or 1,048,576 bytes in decimal notation.

Basically they're measuring two different things but trying to get you to think it's "all the same."

Is AT&T's 6 Mbps faster than Cable's 4 MBps? No. AT&T's 6Mbps really comes out to .75 MBps when you compare apples to apples. So it's less than one fourth the bandwidth you're probably already getting.

Of course, the price difference might make AT&T the better deal over all. It all comes down to a consumer decision. Just look for the capital "B's" verses the lower case "b's". It's an old slight of hand trick.

I have used both DSL and Cable- for most practicle purposes they are indistinguishable - at least to me. I use cable at home right now and DSL like connection at work and I have to be doing some heavy downloading to see any difference. If price is a factor- go with the cheaper DSL.

The "Elite" is AT&T's highest level of residential DSL (they have 1.5 Mbps, 3 Mbps and 6 Mbps)... I'm getting it installed next Tuesday so I can let you know then... I'm currently getting about 4 megabits per second on Comcast (was TimeWarner until a few months ago).

I'm going to be trying out the new broadcast television service through my phone line (not cable and not satellite)... I wonder if that will put a new wrinkle on whether you have an antenna or not. lol.

Unfortunately, I have to disagree with Pelathais here. When referring to network speeds, it is measured in bits and not bytes... for example a T-1 is 1.54 Mbps not 1.54MBps.

You should also note that when it says (up to) that does not mean this is the performance you will actually see. My current connection is rated at up to 7.0 Megabits but right now I am getting about 4.0 Megabits per second... which is way more than most people need anyway, some of us are just bandwidth hungry.

Is it because of the crack I made about your shaggy shin-bones in another thread?

Actually I looked and paid attention this time - you are correct. My confusion stems from the old @Home service - I think. I went through their customer service training several years ago and they were banging it into everyone's heads that they were dealing with "MB" and not pulses at Mbps like everyone else. It was like a marketing angle. @Home, through many iterations became Comcast and I've still been spewing what they told me without looking into it.

And you do have shaggy shin-bones - just so I save a little face here! http://apostolicfriendsforum.com/ima...ons/icon11.gif

lol, I'm not self-conscious about my legs at all, except for the big scab where I wiped out on my bicycle last week... but hey, skin grows back... if i would have ripped my pants they would have been ruined. No worries. :)

Thank you for your responses!!!!!!! I guess the bottom line is the savings - and the change of e-mail addresses. :roseglasses

Currently we pay 59 (includes all taxes)for comcast cable and it looks like we can have the "elite" for 34 (don't know if this includes all taxes).

Our cell phones are A T & T as well as our landline. I'm trying to find the "combo package" that best suits our needs and saves the most money. But I didn't want to change internet providers if I am going to lose speed.

Can you tell me how to find out what speed I am actually getting now?

Again......... thanks for the input.

type "broadband speedtest" in any search engine and you will find about 11 dozen million of pages (ok not THAT many :heeheehee but enough to find one to test bandwidth)

check out sonic.net also.

I found a site that let me do a download bandwidth test. I did it twice. These are the results. Is this good?

Download speed: 2499 kilobits per second
Test details: 1577 kilobytes downloaded in 5.047 seconds.
Receive buffer size: Not available


Download speed: 2354 kilobits per second
Test details: 3200 kilobytes downloaded in 10.875 seconds.
Receive buffer size: Not available

thanks BOOM. I'll check out this sonic.net... All I knew about sonic is that they have great food and fabulous cherry limeade! :roseglasses :roseglasses

DSL vs. Cable? We've used both, and when it comes to heavy uploading/downloading, I'd say Cable is faster, but DSL is competent. Certainly DSL is MILES ahead of dial-up, which I can't even tolerate.

So for normal internet usage, you probably won't even be able to tell the difference between Cable and DSL.

Or...what pelathais said. :coffee2

The problem with cable internet is that it slows down at different times of the day, depending on how many people are signed on. I don't remember all the details, but I can say that speed is more consistant with DSL than with cable. You really won't notice that much of a difference, though. Your computer is only going to accept so much information at one time, regardless of how fast your connection is.

I am at home now and on Comcast. Here's my test result from 2wire.com

Your current bandwidth reading is
10.82 Mbps

I just used 2wire and this is what it said


Your current bandwidth reading is

127.66 Mbps
127.66 MbpsYou
3 Mbps
1.5 Mbps
1 Mbps
768 Kbps
384 Kbps



Am I understanding all this correctly? I would say this is quite a bit better than "up to 6.0 Mbps"

Not for a 4Mbps service

Are you sure it did not say 127.66 kbps?

I "cut & pasted" this straight from their website after it came up because it seemed pretty fast compared to what everyone else was saying. Of course, this was at 5 am so maybe no one else was online.

An update:

I had signed up for the new AT&T U-verse offering but am too far from the switching station for it to work. I did talk to the technician while he was out though.

It actually gives you a dedicated 27 Mbps for your total connection from which it carves out a maximum of 6 Mbps for your internet connection, reserves another 8 Mbps for your high definition television signal, another portion for regular "non-HD" channels, etc. It sounds like a very interesting service and is not the same as DSL although it does come from the phone company (using fiber optic cables for at least part of the connection). The interesting part is that the set-top boxes connect to the central "router" via a cat 5 cable, just like a computer... so this would make the standard RG-59 coax obsolete if it functions as advertised.

I know that I could get a regular DSL line here, but am still not close enough to the switching station to get "U-verse". The MAXIMUM throughput you can get through DSL at this point is 6Mbps, where with cable the potential bandwidth can go much higher. Right now I am getting about 8Mbps on cable but it does go down as low as 4Mbps during "primetime". A standard DSL connection would only be 1.5Mbps which is much better than an analog phone line but not nearly as good as a standard cable connection.

SheltieDad, unless you are watching movies online in HD, what do you NEED that much bandwidth for?!?

:boomm

I don't need 27 Meg, and you were still limited to 6 Meg of internet bandwidth... the rest of it is used by the the "system" to deliver the television content. I don't need the 8Mbps that I am getting now either, but am not going to complain about it since I am just paying the standard 39.95 for cable internet. :)