Roadrunner Cable Modem vs. ATT DSL?

[steve666]

I am about to move to San Diego and I am trying to decide what to use for my internet connection-Time Warner Cable's Roadrunner service or AT&T's DSL Service.
DSL has a few different speeds and prices. The lowest price is $12.99 but I assume that would be too slow. The mid price is 17.99 and the highest is $27.99 which is almost as fast as Cable Modem.
Roadrunner service is $45.99/month, which I am dissapointed to find is just as expensive as Cablevision is here in NY.
How much faster do you think Cable would be over the fastest DSL?
Does anyone have any experience with DSL good or bad? With Roadrunner good or bad?
Thanks!

I've got RoadRunner and I've never had a problem -- well, other then the few power outages and all. They say we get 7mb down but I usually get between 3 and 5, still it's plenty fast.

[steve666]

Originally Posted by jdcfsu

I've got RoadRunner and I've never had a problem -- well, other then the few power outages and all. They say we get 7mb down but I usually get between 3 and 5, still it's plenty fast.

Between 3 and 5 is what the 27.99/month DSL gets I believe. I want to hear from some DSL users though. I had heard some horror stories when DSL first came out.

[e1618978]

Roadrunner is fast, but they have a very crappy DNS server, and all the speed in the world is worthless if you spend a lot of time with "looking up google.com", etc. It takes me 10-20 seconds to load the CNN page, 99% of which is waiting for the name server to respond.

I want the Verizon FiOS - somebody here was raving about it, but it is not yet available in my area.

[Splinemodel]

My parents actually have FIOS at their place in suburban DC. It's fast. I have "RoadRunner Lite" which is fairly slow by modern standards (1Mbps) but I don't really do anything awesome at home. DSL here is slower and the same price when including the fact that I'd have to buy a phone line (which I do not currently have). If I were to buy a cable package, that would also allow me to get some form of reduced rate, but then I'd have to pay for TV I'm not going to watch.

[e1618978]

Originally Posted by e1618978

Roadrunner is fast, but they have a very crappy DNS server, and all the speed in the world is worthless if you spend a lot of time with "looking up google.com", etc. It takes me 10-20 seconds to load the CNN page, 99% of which is waiting for the name server to respond.

I want the Verizon FiOS - somebody here was raving about it, but it is not yet available in my area.

HA! A quick search for "roadrunner DNS slow" lead me to this page:

http://www.opendns.com/

My DNS search is now super fast.

[steve666]

Originally Posted by e1618978

HA! A quick search for "roadrunner DNS slow" lead me to this page:

http://www.opendns.com/

My DNS search is now super fast.

Well, I guess its between the full roadrunner and the most expensive DSL option at 27.99.
I am going to be using timer warner cable but I think the internet discount is only $5 less.
I will be using an ATT landline. Decisions decisions.

I have a feeling my cablevision DNS is slow also because lately its been dragging. I dont want to mess with my settings though since I am moving in a week and I dont want to have problems till then.

[vinea]

FiOS is nice. For an extra $10 a month I can go from 5/2 to 15/2..and that's still only $44.95.

As far as cable vs DSL it really depends on the two companies. SBC owns the lines so if they upgrade your area to ADSL2+ or VDSL2 you'll have access to higher rates (20Mbps) than cable until RoadRunner go to DOCSIS 3.0...which wont be for a couple years since the standard was only ratified recently...at which point they can offer 4 times current data rates.

Unfortunately SBC isn't going the FTTH route (FiOS) but "Fiber to the Node" which limits the top end to low profile VDSL2 speeds (20Mbps vs the 100Mbps of normal VDSL2). Also, their buildout is going slower than they planned so when or if you get ADSL2+/VDSL2 is the big question.

But its not that much trouble to switch...just find a nice email forwarding service and its all more or less transparent when you switch providers. So go with the cheapest that you can live with.

The BEST thing about FIOS is that it pretty much guarantees that Comcast will upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 in the next couple years in my area to compete with Verizon.

Vinea

[steve666]

I use web based email (yahoo) so that won't be an issue. I would just prefer not to have to switch if i can avoid it.
DSL has better prices but I know cable is reliable.

[lakingsfn]

I'd stick with Cable, DSL is too spotty in areas and the same rule applies that if you are far away from the telco station, DSL will suck big time.

[vinea]

Originally Posted by steve666

I use web based email (yahoo) so that won't be an issue. I would just prefer not to have to switch if i can avoid it.
DSL has better prices but I know cable is reliable.

If there is no lock in try both and get rid of one after a month.

Vinea

[skatman]

Originally Posted by steve666

I am about to move to San Diego and I am trying to decide what to use for my internet connection-Time Warner Cable's Roadrunner service or AT&T's DSL Service.
DSL has a few different speeds and prices. The lowest price is $12.99 but I assume that would be too slow. The mid price is 17.99 and the highest is $27.99 which is almost as fast as Cable Modem.
Roadrunner service is $45.99/month, which I am dissapointed to find is just as expensive as Cablevision is here in NY.
How much faster do you think Cable would be over the fastest DSL?
Does anyone have any experience with DSL good or bad? With Roadrunner good or bad?
Thanks!

My friend has Roadrunner in MN. Regular speeds of 3-5 Mbps... however, he gets 100 Mbps+ when he runs in uncapped mode (that is speed is, of course only valid to the upstream modem node). No problems so far after 3+ years.

I have 3 Mbps ATT DSL at home (Nor. Cali) and I get very solid 3 Mbps on file transfers and such. No problems so far after a year.

[trick fall]

I had Road Runner in NYC since it first came out and it was great until last December. Than I started having all kinds of problems which they were never able to resolve. Every night at around 12:00am my internet would start dropping randomly. My mostly uneducated guess is that they oversold their bandwith as I also had problems accessing video on demand and my tv guide would not update.

A month ago I moved to Long Island and got the FIOS service and so far so good. It doesn't necessarily seem that much faster until you go to download large files. It's blazing doing any kind of software updates. The only problem I've had so far is that I was sometimes losing my connection when the computer woke up from sleep. This happened for the first two weeks I had the service, but now it seems to have stopped.

[132GHz,4TB DDR8 SDRAM,95TB HDD]

Dont confuse your Bits & Bytes gentlement...
MB = Megabyte
Mb = Megabit (8 Times less than a MB)
Why does the internet sector always use Bits, not Bytes ?
I think its a way of ripping people off their money, and just giving the 'Wow' factor.
I always wondered why I had a average of 200KBps download, but then I discovered 200KBps = 2Mbps !
Even though BT told me I should be getting 8Mb...
*Humph*
So take it from me, dont confuse MB with Mb or MiB

[iPoster]

I'm on DSL for the first time after being a cable modem user, and I'm happy with it so far. It's the 'DSL Lite' that is 12.99/month and I normally get 1.5Mb down and 756K up in speed tests.
It feels almost as 'speedy' as the 3Mb/512K cable I had previously.