I wanted to know what you users prefer. I know that cable is shared and can vary from neighbor usage and that DSL is direct but depends on how far you are from the central office? I wanted to know, in general which one do you prefer and have you tried both?

Thanks

And you don't think DSL isn't shared once it leaves the CO. I'd go with whatever is cheaper.

Grumpy

My experience is Cable is faster, I have Cable and 2 of my kids have DSL although I don't know what level they have. At least where I'm at, there is virtually no difference in price is the DSL has speeds close to cable.

Well that all depends. Now there are several companies that use DSL and the new ADSL2+ setup, which means the connection goes from the CO to the phone junction box near your premise,at the juction box is the new ADSL2+ "ERX" and can have speed of 24Mbs. I work with DSL and have worked with cable,depending on the service you get, you can get 6Mb DSL and have more bandwidth then cable (most cable companies have a 20Gb download/10Gb upload usage a month VS DSL and 60 GB a month downloads) and with comparable speed as cable and more stability then cable (constant 6Mb connection VS Cable variable rates due to many connection on same line). So you should check what the ISP's offer for the value and go with the better choice?

Cable is throttled these days. DSL is guarenteed.

Pick whatever is cheaper. I personally don't like signing contacts so I avoid DSL.

Thanks for all the input. What I might have to do is have both of them at the same time for a month. The thing is I cancel my land line a week ago so If I get DSL I would have to get a land line again. ATT top package is $35 at 6mb, so $35 + $16 for a land line would cost around $51. I have comcast now and pay around $50 (6mb) a month.

I would find people in your area that have each (DSL or CABLE) and test each one using speedtest (or similiar).
For me cable has been great... downtown Syracuse now, standard road runner = 1200KBs down, 120+KBs up = best I've ever had. (road runner $30/month first 12 months)

DSL signals are going to degrade and become much slower the further you are from the NOC. I guess the same thing can be said for cable, but to a lesser extent...

Anyways, I think this is one of the best suggestions so far.

DSL is going to be better in the future. A professor in Australia recently developed an algorithm that will increase DSL speeds up to 100mb/s, which is considerably faster then cable. Granted, he just did this, and the article I read stated that we probably wouldn't see it available to home users for another year to two years.

Cable is usually faster, and has a higher capactiy:

Docsis 3.0:
Down : 171.52Mb
Up: 122.88Mb

Plus the fact that most hybrid cable networks would be able to upgrade to fiber at some point if they needed to.

Bandwidth out of the ISP is very important. A DSL provider with 5Mb package and limited external bandwidth could be slower than a 2Mb cable package with adaquate bandwidth.

I've worked at both types of ISP's and cable is nice since the infastructure is actually owned by the same company, DSL still has to go through local telcos, and they don't always get along real well. Unless you get it straight from the telco.

Best advice is to check both though.

While Cable internet looks to be faster than DSL in a lot of cases it isn't. Just because an ISP states they provide 5 Meg-bit down and over 700 K-bit up doesn't mean you'll have all the available bandwidth to use. You are on a shared pipe with cable and not DSL.

I canceled Time-Warner (Road Runner) because of bandwidth problems. Even though they were giving me 5 Mb down and over 700Kb up I wasn't getting any where near the specified speeds because my node was to congested. So I was getting better throughput on my old DSL. I switched to FIOS and am very please with my experience.

Just my 2 cents ....

Cable and DSL both overbook, and generally to the same extent although this may differ per provider. The DOCSIS spec does indeed prmise a lot of bandwitdh, but this is shared and, if the provider is smart, uses balancing algorithms to mask this. DSL overbooking can gto up as far as 1:50 which is a nightmare at peak hours.

Which is the best? Neither one, as it's very dependent on the provider.