Not many people use Satellite connection. One big flaw--If you get rain, you dont get signal--
My friend had it, and cancelled it 3 days into the raining season, poor guy

A friend of mine had AT&T satellite and he said it was fast and great. You just had to make sure no tree limbs blocked the line of sight.

Personally, I use DSL and am quite happy with it.

I've currently got a 2528k/864k link for $45CAN/month. But I don't need that much speed, so I'm dropping it back to 1500k/640k for $35CAN/month.

On that I get 2 IP addresses (cable in this area only gets one), 25Mb of web space, and 25Mb of email space (and for some reason, they don't include attachments when calculating space allotments). I tried to send an 8Mb file to a friend with cable and, even though his email account was cleaned out, it bounced. Sending the same file to another friend with DSL, it went through. I've sent emails with 15Mb attachments to DSL accounts and never had any problems with them.

Also (although this may be a practice of the cable company in my area), but my friend with cable was unable to get a good (if any) ping rate off of my system when we were trying some direct link gaming, and yet, neither of us had a problem connecting to a 3rd friend in Resolute (very far north Canadian military base), who was using the monstrously huge 10 meter dish to connect to the data satellites.

Now, I do have to say, in cable's defense, that they did get rid of the annoying data ghosting they had at one time. Data ghosting: Your kid is surfing the net looking for information for his history project and images from your next door neighbour's porn surfing are ghosted onto his monitor (no colour in the images, a lot like ghosting images on your TV when a station isn't coming in right). Didn't happen often, but it did enough to be a problem.

All in all, I have to say that I prefer DSL for my home.

I've had my Roadrunner cable for about 14 months now. If I ever had to go back to dial-up, just shoot me and get it over with.

T1 - 1.544 Mbps (megabits per second) both directions
T3 - 45 Mbps both directions

My current cable connection - 3Mbps down / 256kbps up
My previous DSL connection - 1.5Mbps down / 160kbps up

Best for home user would be either cable or DSL, depending on area and provider. T1 = expensive and T3 = REALLY expensive.


I've been very happy with the cable modem, myself. DSL was not only lower performance network, but also lower performance technical support and customer service (both cost about the same in my area).

@ kona –
The Dedicated Digital Line vs. Shared Bandwidth is pretty much a myth perpetuated by DSL providers that while at one point, in theory was somewhat true, does not hold true with today’s hardware. It still pops up here and there, but a majority of the hardware that the cable lines were using has been replaced and these days the “shared bandwidth” thing is the same on cable as it is on DSL, dial-up, or what ever, that being that we’re ALL going to experience a performance hit if loads of people are using the same pipes that we are in the same area, regardless of our connection type. I had just as much of a perf hit during “Prime Time” on my DSL line as I do on my cable line, which at times is hardly noticeable. And according to the figures in my area, the cable users outnumber the DSL users almost 4 to 1.

Although my speed varies, I was pulling down 4MB files in about five minutes on my DSL line. On my cable line I get these same files from the same location in just over a minute.

So needless to say (then why am I saying it you ask?), I’m happier with my cable line.

@ KarmaGirl –
Satellite has come a long way since it first came out, but it still suffers from latency issues which are pretty much a fact of life because of the distance that the signals have to travel. Until someone comes up with a way to break some of the laws of physics (or finds a lower orbit) there will always be a slight latency issue. This is actually only an issue if you’re a gamer, because you need the precision, and with the latency in the satellite signal you’re gonna get pwned by every L337 Do0d in the game. Other than that it is a great option if you simply cannot get broadband in your area.

Btw, T3 @ work and it's not even a contest... hehe...

ISDN is offered here in my area but I choose not to get it. i heard that my DSL is cheaper. We also have the choice of cable.

I hate dial up... Even if it means I never get online again, I will never use dial up as long as I live, but don't quote me on that!!!!

My ADSL is 1500/256 and is incredibly stable in my area... Quite a bit more desirable than the unstable Cable offerings here.