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Saturday, June 4, 2016

ADSL Versus Cable

Which is better, ADSL or cable? That is like asking which operating system is better. Or which language is better. Or which religion. Which answer you get depends on whom you ask. Let us compare ADSL and cable on a few points. Both use fiber in the backbone, but they differ on the edge. Cable uses coax; ADSL uses twisted pair. The theoretical carrying capacity of coax is hundreds of times more than twisted pair. However, the full capacity of the cable is not available for data users because much of the cable’s bandwidth is wasted on useless stuff such as television programs.

In practice, it is hard to generalize about effective capacity. ADSL providers give specific statements about the bandwidth (e.g., 1 Mbps downstream, 256 kbps upstream) and generally achieve about 80% of it consistently. Cable providers may artificially cap the bandwidth to each user to help them make performance predictions, but they cannot really give guarantees because the effective capacity depends on how many people are currently active on the user’s cable segment. Sometimes it may be better than ADSL and sometimes it may be worse. What can be annoying, though, is the unpredictability. Having great service one minute does not guarantee great service the next minute since the biggest bandwidth hog in town may have just turned on his computer.

As an ADSL system acquires more users, their increasing numbers have little effect on existing users, since each user has a dedicated connection. With cable, as more subscribers sign up for Internet service, performance for existing users will drop. The only cure is for the cable operator to split busy cables and connect each one to a fiber node directly. Doing so costs time and money, so there are business pressures to avoid it.

As an aside, we have already studied another system with a shared channel like cable: the mobile telephone system. Here, too, a group of users—we could call them cellmates—share a fixed amount of bandwidth. For voice traffic, which is fairly smooth, the bandwidth is rigidly divided in fixed chunks among the active users using FDM and TDM. But for data traffic, this rigid division is very inefficient because data users are frequently idle, in which case their reserved bandwidth is wasted. As with cable, a more dynamic means is used to allocate the shared bandwidth.

Availability is an issue on which ADSL and cable differ. Everyone has a telephone, but not all users are close enough to their end offices to get ADSL. On the other hand, not everyone has cable, but if you do have cable and the company provides Internet access, you can get it. Distance to the fiber node or headend is not an issue. It is also worth noting that since cable started out as a television distribution medium, few businesses have it.

Being a point-to-point medium, ADSL is inherently more secure than cable. Any cable user can easily read all the packets going down the cable. For this reason, any decent cable provider will encrypt all traffic in both directions. Nevertheless, having your neighbor get your encrypted messages is still less secure than having him not get anything at all.

The telephone system is generally more reliable than cable. For example, it has backup power and continues to work normally even during a power outage. With cable, if the power to any amplifier along the chain fails, all downstream users are cut off instantly.

Finally, most ADSL providers offer a choice of ISPs. Sometimes they are even required to do so by law. Such is not always the case with cable operators.

The conclusion is that ADSL and cable are much more alike than they are different. They offer comparable service and, as competition between them heats up, probably comparable prices.

1 comment:

  1. There is no doubt pricing will be one of the considerations in choosing your connection. Also, the availability, since there are places who aren't supplied with these connections. It is good to note why ADSL plans are still being favored over other present connection.

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