Railfan Technology > Cable verses DSL, another techno rant

The short version of this techno rant is I am currently running cable internet (Comcast Xfinitity) and DSL (AT&T U-verse) side by side.  It just kinda ended up that way but while it lasts it provides an interesting side by side comparison.  Comcast likes to advertise that its internet service is something like 10 times faster than DSL, yada, yada, yada.  The bottom lines seems to be it doesn't make a whole lot of difference in terms of how quickly pages load and other user kind of things.  Based on speed tests (Speed of.me) the cable is generally a LOT faster (I got one cable download reading of 93.52Mbps!) while the DSL lumbers along at 5-6Mbps, but when I surf the net, open up my websites, etc. I can't really tell the difference.  I'm guessing the speed is constrained by the speed of the originating servers in a lot of cases.  I have noticed that the speed of the cable varies a lot, and has gotten down to as low as 5.27Mbps (slower than the DSL), presumably when there are lots of users on line.  The DSL by contrast tends to be rock steady at around 5-6 Mbps.  The one situation where cable did seem to perform noticeably better was when I uploaded images to my website.

The rant part has to do with the difficulty of dealing with the internet providers.  My old pre-U-verse AT&T DSL slowed down unacceptably, and trying to find real people to talk to to get it fixed or replaced turned into a multiday ordeal of long wait times on the phone, screwed up service appointment times, and extended phone calls to deal with installation that never seems to be as easy as the sales person claims.  When I ordered my cable service the nice salesman says just plug it in and call to activate.  No.....several hours of phone calls to activate and it only worked at a cable outlet in the wrong place.

I suppose I could bore everyone here with more details, but net net it would really be nice to have some techology that just plugged in and worked.  Or second best, provide fast access to a real person who can actually solve problems.  

And we seem to be moving backwards.  One technology company that seemed to understand customer service was Verizon, my cell service.  But now I hear they are laying off thousands of people, and the inevitable result will probably be that there will no longer be anyone to talk to.  

JBWX



 



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/16 10:38 by jbwest.

DSL means a copper network. Verizon for one does not want to maintain it. After Sandy, they told Fire Island, NY they are not rebuilding - have a nice life.
DSL worked fine for me for a couple of years until it didn't. Then for 3 days, it was up and down every 10 minutes. They will "ping" and test your line, keep you on the phone with India all day, and ship you a new modem, but will do nothing to inspect their line equipment. DSL also does not do well if you are more than a few miles from the old Bell switching station. I went to triple play Optimum/Cablevision after 3 days of being lied to, and their doing nothing, threw Verizon completely out of my house 4 years ago, and never looked back.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/16 11:42 by joemvcnj.

Just be happy you have some choices.  Where I live it is either dial up, satellite or wide area wireless option.  No cable, no DSL.  We have the wide area and if we can get to 3 or meg consistently we are very happy.  When we first moved 1 meg was the guarantee.  That even became problematical when the neighborhood trees started to get too tall.  And if the tower has troubles it requires special teams and no wind, which the latter is unusual in Kansas.

Maintaining any kind of hard wired network, be it copper wire, co-ax cable, or fibre optic cable is obviously expensive.  It will be interesting if the providers can develop a wireless technology that has both the speed, bandwidth, and the geographical coverage and reliablility to supercede hard wired networks. In are area there are a lot of hills and wireless coverage can be spotty.  How does the current wireless technology compare with hard wired service; I use it on my cell phone but have never really tried to use it intensively for surfing the net or uploading pix, etc.

JBWX

This is a discussion for future business at my employer. The Phone company is not interested in replacing all that copper; the local Cable company is kicking butt for speed, ie 4k TV, but you still need to be in an urban area to allow for cable to reach your location. Both are limited by their equipment and the service area, meaning their servers and who else is on the immediate network or server. The next alternative is Satellite Based Internet which is very costly in the US but is becoming available in other countries, for example Australia, as a Government supplied means of communication. So the US of A is once again falling behind in providing useful Internet to large numbers of folks who are not living inside Urban areas, similar to how Television had been before Dish and DirecTV or even Sirius/XM Satellite radio.

So the need has been identified but who will fill it?

We're thinking Google or a similar structured Company, so we'll have to wait for them to complete their idea and implementation process.

In the mean time it's interesting to hear the comparisons.

I have used satelitte based internet on cruise ships for weeks at a time and found it incredibly slow, in terms of its ability to be interactive (responding to two way communication).  Is this a solvable problem (I ask that because the distances are great and I don't think even the high tech companies can make light go faster, so to speak.)  But in the end I think the technology is less important that the customer service.  I think even mediocre technology can do well if it is supported by good customer service.  I doubt that most folks need to be on the cutting edge.  Personally I am happy to ride the back side of the wave of progress.

JBWX

Back, what seems like a long time ago, I had AT&T DSL, then I decided to upgrade to AT&T Uverse.  It basically with the installation from hell.  They said that they would have to turn off my DSL for at least 24 hours before the AT&T Uverse would be activated.  Same phone lines. 
I am in the two way radio communications industry and could not understand what was going on.
After two weeks of trying, I finally gave up and ordered Time Warner roadrunner and never have looked back.  I get 200+ Meg down and 20+ up.
Google fiber is building out in my area and is offering 1G service.
It just works.
We are looking at moving out to the country either in Flagstaff or Prescott and not looking forward to slower internet service.
AT&T's network was installed in the late 50's and there is NO interest in upgrading the wire plant.  Many wires are bad due to age and animals eating on the cables.
Most folks use their cell phone for telephone service.

Unless there is really a good price to change to Google fiber, I am going to stay with cable internet service.

At least you have a choice.
Good luck
Pat
South Austin, TX

 

A lot depends on what your alternatives are.  In my area the hard wired choices are Comcast (Xfinity) or AT&T (U-verse).  No Verizon Fios.  I notice the Comcast cable speed is REALLY variable.  I just did a check (2 p.m.) and the cable download speed was in the 5 Mbps area, slower than my ATT DSL.  As opposed to around 95 Mbps at around 2 a.m. when everyone (except me) is sleeping.  So the "sharing" aspect of cable definitely has an effect.  But cable definitely seems to be the more robust technology, if for no reason than the co-ax cables tend to be newer than the old copper wires. But as others have commented, no one wants the expense of a hardwire network whether it is copper, cable, or fibre, so hardwire is probably only going to go downhill as the networks get older.

JBWX  

In selected areas copper telephone lines have been replaced with fiber cables to each house, actually two fiber cables in case one breaks or is damaged. The consumer then uses the supplied VOIP for telephone, but this is usually offered by a 'Cable' TV Company. The key being 'selected areas' as they go for the high dollar consumer who buys Movies and supports other expenses, along with the density of a modern community.

Different communities or Companies have different designs approaches, different equipment, etc. Last years Satellite is not next years Satellite, old cell towers vs new cell towers etc, 2G, 3G, 4G, stuff changes pretty quick.

But no coverage is still no coverage. Low density attracts slow service. From what I hear the Australian Satellite will cover large areas of low density population and also the high density population areas along the coastlines. But that's not what we get in the USA.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/16 17:04 by TCnR.

U-Verse is provided to residential subscribers in one of three scenarios but it's not common DSL (digital subscriber line entirely over copper).

One version is VDSL2 fed over copper to your house from a VRAD, which is fed from fiber optic. Next is ADSL2+ fed over copper to your house from an IPDSLAM, normally located at the central office, which is fed by fiber optic. Finally, there is fiber optic direct to your house, which is the fastest option.

In any case, comparing U-Verse to regular DSL is apples and oranges.

Before we moved, I had DSL.  No problems but not very fast.  Had DirecTV for television and ATT for phone.
When we moved out here, DSL isn't available.   We signed on with Charter and the "bundle".   I have 90-100mbps on the desktop and about 50 on the laptop.  No complaints and after ten years, very few problems.  (Knock on wood)
I don't look for anything better coming along in my area soon, so I'm satisfied with what I have.
I remember dial up, so this is great.

trainjunkie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> U-Verse is provided to residential subscribers in
> one of three scenarios but it's not common DSL
> (digital subscriber line entirely over copper).
>
> One version is VDSL2 fed over copper to your house
> from a VRAD, which is fed from fiber optic. Next
> is ADSL2+ fed over copper to your house from an
> IPDSLAM, normally located at the central office,
> which is fed by fiber optic. Finally, there is
> fiber optic direct to your house, which is the
> fastest option.
>
> In any case, comparing U-Verse to regular DSL is
> apples and oranges.

I am comparing U-verse DSL to Comcast cable.

JBWX

 =12.0ptI worked for BellSouth (now AT&T) and as someone that likes to support the company that pays for my insurance and a few other things, I find it hard to defend the service when you need to deal with a live person.    I retired in 2002 when the test center I worked in was moved to another city.  In our center we worked on residential and small business ISDN.  Our center worked hard to get the customer the service they were paying for and in a timely manner.   BellSouth was highly regulated and when a customer had internet service problems, they were supposed to call the internet part of the business.  If the customer was having trouble with their own equipment they were supposed to call the equipment vendor.  We were only supposed to work on the lines and the telephone switching (ISDN was a digital dial-up service capable of 128KB/s.)   Our center went beyond what was required of us.  We obtained samples of the most popular devices that the customers used and learned how to set them up or diagnose set-up problems.  We would talk a customer through how to set up his computer for our internet service and sometimes our competitors.  And, of course, we would handle problems with the switching or the line.  Occasionally, the customer would have to call the internet service provider part of the business.  Basically, we were the only place that could look at the whole picture and really determine where a problem was and we usually got them fixed.  Today, that’s not the way things work. =12.0pt =12.0ptI had a problem about a year ago and had to have a visit to the home.  Now this is a really weak point for AT&T.  They gave me a window of 8A to 8P.  I waited all day and they didn’t show.  I called that evening and they had someone out the next morning.  Usually they will give you a four hour window which is a lot better that “We’ll be out there sometime tomorrow.”=12.0pt =12.0ptToday, you are lucky to get someone in this country, if you even get anyone live.  If you do get someone they only know to ask a question, put that into a computer, ask another question, put that into the computer, and ask another question for the computer.  When something should be obvious in the process, they still have to follow the lead of the computer.  They don’t know anything other than how to ask the questions the computer wants them to ask, If you are an AT&T U-verse customer, I apologize but that’s the way things are today.  I will say one thing.  AT&T is moving more of the phone based support back to the USA.  If your service provider still has live people, just consider yourself lucky.  The other major provider in our area is Time Warner, the cable service.  I don’t deal with them but I saw them listed as #4 regionally as the worst company (all businesses, not just telecommunications) to deal with.  I think that got their attention and they have improved but friends say it is still a pain in the rear to deal with them.=12.0pt =12.0ptWhen I worked in the AT&T 4ESS long distance switch.  It was new and it cost several million dollars.  I don’t know what it cost to put in a new central office today but most switches in service now are electronic switches now.  A few small companies may still have electro-mechanical switches but they are probably rare by now.  As expensive as the switches are, the outside plant is probably even more expensive since the cost of installing it is so high.  The cost of poles, underground conduits, remote (neighborhood) devices is unbelievable.  Most cable companies use existing poles where they rent space.  The “Last mile” is always the most difficult.  A fiber to your neighborhood can handle you and a thousand other customers with phone, TV, and internet.  That has to have electronics to break it down for each home.  Some places have “fiber to the curb” or “Fiber to the premise.”  That’s only been in place in subdivisions built in the last 15 years and no one is going to retrofit the outside plant to upgrade you to that level of service.    Fiber is capable of Gigabit service if people want to pay for that bandwidth.  Some businesses do.    When I was working for AT&T there were four customers in the Easter Kentucky mountains that wanted phone service.   The estimated cost was about $250,000.  If they had applied five years earlier, we would have had to supply it but new regulations allowed other companies to provide service in our area so they were told that we didn’t service that area and they could go to another provider.  The cost of providing the service would not have been recovered in 100 years or more.  I don’t know if they ever got service or not.   New companies have the advantage of installing the latest and greatest equipment and only serve the customers in a small area until they can move into another area.  Established phone and cable companies have embedded equipment and it is expensive to keep replacing it with the latest and greatest every five years.  Customers wouldn’t stand for the cost involved.=12.0pt =12.0ptAll of this is to say, it is expensive to provide telephone service.  Technology has reduced the cost by reducing labor hours.  An office that forty years ago required 50 people is now handled by maybe 8 people.  Equipment is more reliable ad can be centralized to reduce cost.  A fiber in the ground is a lot cheaper that a 500 pair copper cable.   One state I know of has sold the entire outside plant to another company.  I don’t know how well that works.  If you have a landline, the phone company supplies the dialtone and the other company supplies the connection from the central office to your home.=12.0pt =12.0ptI have AT&T U-verse and it works pretty good.  I pay for the 5MB/s service and consistently get that speed with 1.5MB/s upload speed.  My service is on copper pairs.  I live about a half mile from where the fiber stops and the electronics convert it the copper.  When it was installed the installer said the line was good for about 50MB/s.  Good copper works great.  Old urban neighborhoods have outside plant that may be 75 years old, or older.  It still works if it is maintained but it has been exposed to the elements for a long time and some connections are not quite what they used to be.  They will work for phones but not so good for high-speed data.  We used to say, “If it touches, it talks.  That may work for dialtone and voice but not so well for data.=12.0pt =12.0ptAnyone can get just about any speed they want, where ever they are, if they want to pay the price.  JBWEST mentioned the slow satellite service while on a ship.  Satellites are capable of Gigabit service if the ship company wants to pay the price.  He also mentioned how the speed on cable varies at different times of the day.  I’m not sure what technology they are using now but it used to be like a big wide area network and everyone on your street or neighborhood was on that same network and it had one link to the internet.    If someone had the technology they could see what you were doing, steal passwords, credit card numbers, etc… You could probably network with your neighbor.   I hope that has been addressed and fixed.   =12.0pt =12.0ptThe whole thing comes to dollars.  Companies want to provide the better service but it all cost money.  It cost money to train people, pay them and their benefits, provide office space, heat, air, phones, lights, etc…  In the days of the “Bell System,” the equipment was built to work a minimum of forty years.  Some of it lasted sixty years or more.   Technology has changed that.  We live in a throw away world today. Nothing is expected to last even twenty years now.   Everything has a dollar amount attached and the companies need to arrive at the end of the year with a positive balance sheet.
John

jbwest Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am comparing U-verse DSL to Comcast cable.

I understand. My point is that U-Verse isn't DSL but you keep calling it "U-verse DSL". U-Verse isn't traditional DSL. It's either fiber broadband or a fiber/dsl hybrid but it's not the DSL service that AT&T and other telcoms advertise as DSL. AT&T does offer DSL, but it's a separate product from U-Verse.

I would expect U-Verse to be faster than Comcast cable service just as I would expect Comcast cable to be faster than regular DSL service, which, I believe is the point of Comcast's speed claims versus DSL. Comcast didn't claim to be faster than U-Verse, which is not DSL.

I am a techno dinosaur so the details are usually of little interest to me.  But now I am curious.  Since  you mention U-verse is VDSL2 or ADSL2+ (both have DSL buried in the name), are there differences I should be aware of.  Last week I had the old AT&T DSL, then AT&T insisted I upgrade to some form of U-verse (have no idea what kind, other than it comes in on a copper wire, probably from a VRAD in the neightborhood, whatever a VRAD is.  Moreover AT&T lowered my bill and did the install for free.  So now I am using U-verse, probably VDSL2.  I find U-verse to be only slightly faster than the old DSL, and a LOT slower than the cable service, although the cable internet service varies greatly.  But net net I find little difference between the two in how my internet performs in terms of how quickly pages load, etc.  I think there are faster versions of U-verse but am not sure they can use my existing copper wire.

JBWX


trainjunkie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> jbwest Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I am comparing U-verse DSL to Comcast cable.
>
> I understand. My point is that U-Verse isn't DSL
> but you keep calling it "U-verse DSL". U-Verse
> isn't traditional DSL. It's either fiber broadband
> or a fiber/dsl hybrid but it's not the DSL service
> that AT&T and other telcoms advertise as DSL. AT&T
> does offer DSL, but it's a separate product from
> U-Verse.
>
> I would expect U-Verse to be faster than Comcast
> cable service just as I would expect Comcast cable
> to be faster than regular DSL service, which, I
> believe is the point of Comcast's speed claims
> versus DSL. Comcast didn't claim to be faster than
> U-Verse, which is not DSL.

 
One other comment.  DSL is a generic term that stands for “Digital Subscriber Line.”  There are many types, depending on how they are provided, speed, and usage.  The normal DSL we talk about is actually ADSL.

 ADSL.  Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line,  Typically about 1.5Mb/s download, 256Kb upload speeds.
 SDSL.  Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line.  Typically, 1.5 to 2Mb/s both directions.
IDSL.  A DSL service that used ISDN technology, 128Kb/s.
HDSL.  High bitrate DSL, although at the time, 2Mb/s was high speed.
SHDSL.  Single pair HDSL.  Bit rates to about 5Mb/s on a single pair of wires.
RADSL.  Rate adaptive DSL.  Speeds up to 8Mb/s on copper.
VHDSL.  Very High bitate DSL  Speeds to 52 MB/s on copper, 100 Mb/s on coax.

Most of these are obsolete by today’s standards. There are several other that Ididn't list.  I’ve been retired for 13 years and have not kept up with the nuts and bolts of the industry.  There are several others but you get the idea.  Some of the DSL type services would also provide dialtone services, not the VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) that most bundled services provide today.  Add to  the bunch, there are some propriatary protocols used for business applications.   So, the term "DSL" is just something to describe a whole family of services.  In the railroad anology, everything from the Tom Thumb to the Tier 4 Diesels could be called motive power.  

John
 

Thanks, guys, for the fascinating discussion!

I learned some things I didn't know.  I always enjoy that. 
As for our telecom infrastructure  -- I wish the federal
government would provide it, and then let private companies
vie for individual customer ISPs.  It does not make any
sense at all to have completely separate and different
infrastructure for every single private conpany.

About customer "service": What "service"?  You-all are
right that is it very rare to be able to talk to a real, skilled
human being who hs the ability to really help you solve
your problems when you need help.  That is quite wrong,
and it is a real shame that the federal government has not
stepped in and done something useful about this sorry state
of affairs.

AT&T has even laid off almost all of its human 411 operators.
You have to talk to a dratted robot to try to get a telephone
number.  I do not have a smart phone, so I do need to be
able to call 411 from time to time.

About those AT&T customer "service" people in India:  I am
sure that if they ever deviate from their script, they wold lose
their jobs.

I wish there were some way we each could bill the telecom
companies for the time we have been forced to waste trying
to solve telecom prblems by using their very poor customer
"service" people in their call centers.

We all need and deserve really good telecom service.  And
ditto for consumer goods.


 

Margaret_SP_fan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks, guys, for the fascinating discussion!
>
> I learned some things I didn't know.  I always
> enjoy that. 
> As for our telecom infrastructure  -- I wish the
> federal
> government would provide it, and then let private
> companies
> vie for individual customer ISPs.  It does not
> make any
> sense at all to have completely separate and
> different
> infrastructure for every single private conpany.
>
> About customer "service": What "service"? 
> You-all are
> right that is it very rare to be able to talk to a
> real, skilled
> human being who hs the ability to really help you
> solve
> your problems when you need help.  That is quite
> wrong,
> and it is a real shame that the federal government
> has not
> stepped in and done something useful about this
> sorry state
> of affairs.
>
> AT&T has even laid off almost all of its human 411
> operators.
> You have to talk to a dratted robot to try to get
> a telephone
> number.  I do not have a smart phone, so I do
> need to be
> able to call 411 from time to time.
>
> About those AT&T customer "service" people in
> India:  I am
> sure that if they ever deviate from their script,
> they wold lose
> their jobs.
>
> I wish there were some way we each could bill the
> telecom
> companies for the time we have been forced to
> waste trying
> to solve telecom prblems by using their very poor
> customer
> "service" people in their call centers.
>
> We all need and deserve really good telecom
> service.  And
> ditto for consumer goods.
>

Instead of giving the AT&T service technician the "you're getting paid, so do your !@#$ job" attitude, I assisted him with an inside-the-house wiring issue on a U Verse installation not too long ago. I brought out my tape measure and assisted him in drilling a wiring hole (and thanks to the team work, he got it done precisely), and helped him with troubleshooting, since he noticed line noise issues, which ended up on the AT&T side of the wiring. He was all done in less than 30 minutes, and he thanked me for the assist, and griped about the customers with unrealistic expectations who'd demand this and that - not too different from The Micro Manager talked about in the Steam Discussions, people who hide their incompetence with arrogance, power, and money.

He gave me his name and number for any follow up, which there was, because the line noise issue wasn't completely resolved yet. Well, I made the call to an Indian customer support lady, then she followed the script with the exception that I requested the same technician, and the problem was resolved the same day without my needing to be on site.

Sometimes, I wonder if some of the complaints and unrealistic expectations are the root of customer service problems? I usually take the "Let's Solve This" attitude, so it might not be coincidence that I do NOT share many of the service issues I hear about all the time?


 

In my experience the people are fine, but they are spread thinly and the systems often don't support them very well.  Even the tech support folks in India have been fine for the most part.  The immediate frustration is almost always the long winded phone trees and then the long times on hold.  I have been on hold multiple times for over 15 minutes.  In my most recent experience with AT&T, after the long wait, the initial tech and sales rep were good and the installer was excellent (spending three hours bringing my house wiring up to snuff), but in between their computer got the appointment all screwed up and when I got to a person to reschedule he was not all that responsive, like it was my fault.   Also the "simple" self-installs are rarely that simple; following a "just buy the modem, plug it in, and call to activate" Comcast sales pitch, I spent several hours plugging the modem into various outlets while on the phone with a nice lady in India trying to get the cable modem to work.  Net net, it is a pain to deal with these people, I'd rather get a tooth pulled.

JBWX

cchan006 ---

The only reason you had any success at all with ytour
telecom issues was because YOU did HALF the work!
The tech should have been able to do that all by himself!
Since when should the customer have to help any technician
do a job? 

Good grief!!